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This is why we can't have nice, or at least affordable but slightly less than perfect, things. I really enjoyed reading the article just as someone who likes w

This is why we can't have nice, or at least affordable but slightly less than perfect, things. I really enjoyed reading the article just as someone who likes writing and reading. It was very engaging and I enjoyed the process he went through from having an idea to finally committing to it and I especially liked him commenting on things like choosing materials that fit in his car. I also really am enjoying the comments on HN from knowledgeable, experienced people who know whereof they speak and I appreciate your comment because I spent years homeless and I've studied housing issues and lack of affordable housing is a root cause of homelessness in the US. So this is a real issue and I'm reminded of the fact that after racist White people burned down "Black Wall Street" they then began interfering with the rebuilding by trying to pass more stringent fire safety codes when building codes had nothing to do with why it burned down. It burned down because hateful people torched it. And I wonder how we solve this. I wonder how we balance all those concerns of not squelching creative impetus and not squelching a desire to add something cost effectively with real world concerns that "If you do it that way, people die or you burn out your Ethernet card (or whatever)." Seems like with the internet being a thing, we could find ways to balance those many issues. But so far we really aren't. People in the know are often comfortably well off. They have no problem with saying "Well, pay the few extra bucks to do it right." and the result is some people are sleeping in the streets and it falls on deaf ears when you try to draw those connections. It's frustrating.

caslon 5y ago
(For anyone who thinks DoreenMichele was being hyperbolic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre)
- Taywee 5y ago
  I don't think anybody thought they were being hyperbolic, but I also don't think that particular event from a century ago has much of anything to do with modern building codes and regulations. I am having a really hard time seeing at all how it's relevant to this topic.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> So this is a real issue and I'm reminded of the fact that after racist White people burned down "Black Wall Street" they then began interfering with the rebuilding by trying to pass more stringent fire safety codes This 100% has nothing to do with it. Screws aren’t even the easy, cheap, or fast option for construction. Everyone defaults to nails anyway because they’re the cheap, fast, easy, and correct option for framing. Building a code-compliant small structure is basically trivial these days. The information is readily available from so many different sources that you have to ignore them all and choose to improvise your own thing, such as using screws instead of framing nails in a framing nailer, to get things done. Many of the code violations in this build are just common sense problems, like putting high voltage wiring in a pipe with low-voltage wiring. > People in the know are often comfortably well off. They have no problem with saying "Well, pay the few extra bucks to do it right." and the result is some people are sleeping in the streets and it falls on deaf ears when you try to draw those connections. Construction workers are well-versed in building to code. It’s definitely not causing housing shortages or even remotely related to it. Code isn’t causing houses to not be built, and abolishing building code wouldn’t increase the rate of construction. Zoning, on the other hand, is a huge problem.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  Trivial for someone in the know can mean (something like) "If you have a PhD and a decade of experience, it's obvious." People not in the know who look things up online have the problem that they often cannot properly judge the quality of the information they are seeing. I'm confident that some of the people on HN saying "Oh. God. Don't do that." actually know whereof they speak. But reading the article in no way tripped any warning lights for me. I just thought it was an enjoyable read for other reasons. This is not the right forum to say that. I said that and it was downvoted and I deleted that comment to leave the one above cuz reasons, not due to the downvote per se, but the downvote helps tell me my enthusiasm for the writing quality etc is unwelcome here because so many people here do know it's bad construction. I agree zoning is an issue. It's a huge issue, as is car-centric design. But, no, it's not trivial from my perspective but I feel like it ought to be easier to sort the wheat from the chaff and so forth. The internet seems like a huge opportunity to foster better processes for DIY projects. But, then, I naively thought nearly two years back that "Surely, the CDC or WHO will have a list of recommended OTC meds for self care for Covid to discourage people from going to the hospital and spreading it." and was unable to find such. I was at one time pursuing an online degree. I have had a college class in online search. If an officially recommended list of OTC drugs existed at that time and I was unable to find it, I am skeptical that "your average Joe" could find it. I think there is so much potential to do things better than this. The internet is a tremendous opportunity to help make effective answers available for "free" to the masses and we see some of that happening but I remain shocked and confused by the huge gaps in such that still remain. (Edited slightly for clarity.)
pjc50 5y ago
It's very tricky, and while I think it's usually a safe bet to look for racism when some US policy is inexplicable, building code inflation is a problem in a lot of places. Each individual measure usually makes sense, and may even be driven by a particular incident - see the Grenfell fiasco in the UK which is forcing everyone in an apartment to check for flammable cladding. But the totality of the measures can be quite onerous. We get a particular version of NIMBYism here in Edinburgh with living in a UNESCO world heritage site. There's strong pressure to freeze the city core in its 19th century appearance; I broadly agree with that, except that exceptions seem to be made for the most expensive and ugliest buildings. While round the outside two-floor suburbs are going up.

caslon 5y ago

(For anyone who thinks DoreenMichele was being hyperbolic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre)

Taywee 5y ago
I don't think anybody thought they were being hyperbolic, but I also don't think that particular event from a century ago has much of anything to do with modern building codes and regulations. I am having a really hard time seeing at all how it's relevant to this topic.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> So this is a real issue and I'm reminded of the fact that after racist White people burned down "Black Wall Street" they then began interfering with the rebuilding by trying to pass more stringent fire safety codes This 100% has nothing to do with it. Screws aren’t even the easy, cheap, or fast option for construction. Everyone defaults to nails anyway because they’re the cheap, fast, easy, and correct option for framing. Building a code-compliant small structure is basically trivial these days. The information is readily available from so many different sources that you have to ignore them all and choose to improvise your own thing, such as using screws instead of framing nails in a framing nailer, to get things done. Many of the code violations in this build are just common sense problems, like putting high voltage wiring in a pipe with low-voltage wiring. > People in the know are often comfortably well off. They have no problem with saying "Well, pay the few extra bucks to do it right." and the result is some people are sleeping in the streets and it falls on deaf ears when you try to draw those connections. Construction workers are well-versed in building to code. It’s definitely not causing housing shortages or even remotely related to it. Code isn’t causing houses to not be built, and abolishing building code wouldn’t increase the rate of construction. Zoning, on the other hand, is a huge problem.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
Trivial for someone in the know can mean (something like) "If you have a PhD and a decade of experience, it's obvious." People not in the know who look things up online have the problem that they often cannot properly judge the quality of the information they are seeing. I'm confident that some of the people on HN saying "Oh. God. Don't do that." actually know whereof they speak. But reading the article in no way tripped any warning lights for me. I just thought it was an enjoyable read for other reasons. This is not the right forum to say that. I said that and it was downvoted and I deleted that comment to leave the one above cuz reasons, not due to the downvote per se, but the downvote helps tell me my enthusiasm for the writing quality etc is unwelcome here because so many people here do know it's bad construction. I agree zoning is an issue. It's a huge issue, as is car-centric design. But, no, it's not trivial from my perspective but I feel like it ought to be easier to sort the wheat from the chaff and so forth. The internet seems like a huge opportunity to foster better processes for DIY projects. But, then, I naively thought nearly two years back that "Surely, the CDC or WHO will have a list of recommended OTC meds for self care for Covid to discourage people from going to the hospital and spreading it." and was unable to find such. I was at one time pursuing an online degree. I have had a college class in online search. If an officially recommended list of OTC drugs existed at that time and I was unable to find it, I am skeptical that "your average Joe" could find it. I think there is so much potential to do things better than this. The internet is a tremendous opportunity to help make effective answers available for "free" to the masses and we see some of that happening but I remain shocked and confused by the huge gaps in such that still remain. (Edited slightly for clarity.)

pjc50 5y ago

It's very tricky, and while I think it's usually a safe bet to look for racism when some US policy is inexplicable, building code inflation is a problem in a lot of places. Each individual measure usually makes sense, and may even be driven by a particular incident - see the Grenfell fiasco in the UK which is forcing everyone in an apartment to check for flammable cladding. But the totality of the measures can be quite onerous. We get a particular version of NIMBYism here in Edinburgh with living in a UNESCO world heritage site. There's strong pressure to freeze the city core in its 19th century appearance; I broadly agree with that, except that exceptions seem to be made for the most expensive and ugliest buildings. While round the outside two-floor suburbs are going up.