1) is no barrier at all to a residence. Maybe 30x30ft is all you need at most for a small family sized structure. 2) Is only a barrier in rural areas, otherwi

1) is no barrier at all to a residence. Maybe 30x30ft is all you need at most for a small family sized structure. 2) Is only a barrier in rural areas, otherwise hauling in water into a tank is still a lot better than being homeless / having all your wealth extracted by a landlord. 3) is merely an artificial restriction created by the government. We shouldn't be restricting property owners from building a residence. 4) If you're already ok with living far from anything you can already find a few counties in the US with virtually unrestricted building codes and zoning, so this is a non issue. I have found some land that only suffers from (1) and (2) and (4), that is close to a city, and has no building codes in a western state. It's been a long haul getting there because there are so few places in the US that allows it, and this is the only county in the country next to jobs I've been able to find it. Believe me, I understand, and truly lament how much we hate for people to freely build their homes here. We'll probably move there within the next 5 years, but it would have been a hell of a lot easier if everywhere was like that so I didn't have to slowly acquire jobs and contacts closer and closer to the one area like this. And now that I've _finally_ acquired the contacts in this area, and a job reasonably close, and my partner has obtained all the credentials to work in the area, they are talking about closing off the option of self certification of meeting code here! So we will be back to square one. This is how people get locked out of every owning a home, because frankly my family can scarcely afford to even rent a badly run down home in a bad part of town where we live currently. You watch property prices rise and rise, the number of places allow bypassing codes dwindle. And then some asshole comes around saying "Well the codes and zoning are there to keep you safe!" What about all the years lost working to buy that "safe" house? It's better to risk a 1/20 death in a horrible house fire than it is the certainty I'll lose 1/10th of my life completely if I slave away to buy a slightly safer house. And these people also don't seem to realize I have an incentive to not kill myself or anyone else, code or no code.