8 ms·

What I'm not seeing in these articles about this place is any sense of responsibility by Hacker Dojo's owners for not doing the due diligence to know what they

by varelse 14y ago

What I'm not seeing in these articles about this place is any sense of responsibility by Hacker Dojo's owners for not doing the due diligence to know what they were getting into in the first place. I don't consider well-intentioned cluelessness a barrier to innovation but your mileage may vary. Ellis Berns doesn't sound like a villain to me but rather just a guy in a tough situation. If the town of Mountain View doesn't enforce their codes here, and if something like the fire in the video posted here were to occur, they'd get their keesters sued out of their pants and rightly so. That said, it's not even a drop in the bucket of Silicon Valley's vast wealth to fix this so if it's worth saving, I suspect it will be saved.

ramanujan 14y ago
All regulation from the TSA to the local building officials is optimized to sound like a good idea. Who could be against health or safety? And that then becomes the thin end of the wedge, as the requirements and fees spiral from there. 1. Sprinklers and fire exits? Arguably necessary. 2. ADA compliant bathrooms and wheelchair ramps? Not part of a reasonable MVP[1]. What if every website "had to" be readable in Braille and multiple tongues on day one, before one had the revenue to pay for that sort of thing? 3. As for "building permits", they are just a tax by the local government[2], like red light cameras: In his opposition, Inks said the permit would "incentivize" code enforcement officers to go out and find major violations to bring in revenue. He added that city officials already get paid a salary. "To be clear ... this is about raising money," he said, adding that similar permits and fees in other cities have led to "further noncompliance" and the "collapse" of code enforcement efforts, which led to the necessity of giving property owners an "amnesty" period. Inks pointed out that small businesses were already being hit with fines for "petty" violations, such as a $500 fine on the Milk Pail Market for selling pumpkins in the parking lot. In other words: give these guys an inch and they'll take a mile, asserting their author-it-ay the whole way. It always starts with something reasonable sounding (fire codes) and then moves to incentivizing the government for uncovering more violations and more fines. And it's very hard to figure out all the violations ahead of time [3]: As we wrote earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is continuing its program of in-depth investigations of hotels to determine whether they comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA. The investigations are called "sweeps" because they target all hotels in a given geographic area. There is also some basis to believe that the sweeps may now also focus on certain industries such as hotels, restaurants and other places of public accommodation. ... In my experience, even the best design professionals typically have an inadequate knowledge of all of the accessibility standards. And local building official approvals provide no protection against accessibility violations. Like all regulation, the ADA stuff is optimized to sound like a good idea. Who could be against providing access for the disabled? Then you realize the Department of Justice is spending scarce resources conducting sweeps on business owners, and that the total cost for a large ADA upgrade can easily be millions of dollars per facility. Just one example [4]: Owners and managers of swimming pools at hotels, city recreation centers and public parks are scrambling to install mechanical chair lifts to comply with new federal requirements that all public pools be accessible to disabled swimmers. Some hotels fear the cost of the equipment or fines for noncompliance could put them out of busines The law doesn’t affect private clubs or pools owned by neighborhood associations that aren’t open to the public. It’s a massive and expensive undertaking. The Association of Pool and Spa Professionals says its research shows that between 235,000 and 310,000 pools require the upgrade. Manufacturers estimate the lifts run $3,500 to $6,500, and installation can double those costs. Altogether, owners could face combined costs exceeding $1 billion. A billion here, a billion there...soon you're talking real money. Anyway, this sort of thing is a big part of the reason that Bay Area housing prices are so high. And it all starts with taking regulators at their word that they are out to protect your health and safety. POSTSCRIPT: There's at least one obvious alternative to rule by unelected regulators. We already have reviews of everything else under the sun on Google, Amazon, Yelp, Zagat, Consumer Reports, and the like. Some of these reviewers we trust with life and death decisions, like Consumer Reports' car safety ratings. So just do the same for those codes that are truly crucial (e.g. fire codes), by allowing different certification authorities to compete. Maybe you start by expanding the domain of the Palo Alto and Mountain View fire departments such that they overlap, and a certification from either is sufficient to do business such that you get some competition into the mix. With just a little bit of choice, you'll suddenly see much more reasonable and cost-conscious behavior from regulators. [1] I know it's "the law". But there are unjust laws. [2] http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=2260 [3] http://hotellaw.jmbm.com/2010/06/ada_defense_lawyer_implications.html [4] http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x596769962/New-ADA-access-rules-may-scuttle-swimming-at-some-hotels
- Eduardo3rd 14y ago
  The great thing about the issues that you raise here is that they can be impacted by voting for city council members who are more supportive of startups. I'm not familiar with city politics in Mountain View, but maybe if the community got behind candidates who were in favor of relaxing these restrictions there could be some change there.
  - sriramk 14y ago
    Isn't that backwards? I'm in favor of making things easier for startups in most cases but here, I feel like people should bias towards making things safer and more accessible, even if that means a bunch of startups can't find a place.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  "1. Sprinklers and fire exits? Arguably necessary." "Arguably"? No, they're absolutely necessary. It's a multi-tenant building. Why should my property and livelihood be threatened by your inability (or lack of desire) to follow the fire code? "2. ADA compliant bathrooms and wheelchair ramps? Not part of a reasonable MVP[1]." A reasonable MVP should include the ability for a social, interactive space to be inclusive. And sorry, it's not the same as a startup deciding what features to include in their initial launch (which arguably happened a long time ago - this, now, is when the details need to be nailed down). Oh, and the ADA is Federal Law, precisely because of businesses and such that felt that discriminating against a subset of the populace was an "acceptable" omission (for their "MVP" or otherwise). "3. As for "building permits", they are just a tax by the local government" That they are. Building permits are a method of more fairly distributing the cost of amenities and public services. You have ongoing property taxes for maintenance and upkeep, but a development may trigger a review - is water, power, sewage, traffic control, parking, adequate? Such reviews cost money. I'm confused though, how you then chose to quote an out-of-context example about "some" (unnamed) cities choosing to root out code violations - something not entirely the same, and actually largely designed to find people who have chosen to skirt their community obligations by not using the permit process. For the record? I'm absolutely for the Hacker Dojo and wish more existed around here (and / or that I had the time / ability to found one).
kragen 14y ago
A small but crucial point: Hacker Dojo doesn't have owners; it has members.
- veemjeem 14y ago
  So everyone shares the blame equally then. It's too bad the actual owner didn't mention this to the to-be-lease-holders. My guess is the owner was more desperate to lease the space out.
anamax 14y ago
> If the town of Mountain View doesn't enforce their codes here, and if something like the fire in the video posted here were to occur, they'd get their keesters sued out of their pants and rightly so. No, MV wouldn't get sued. Or rather, if someone did sue, said someone would be at risk for sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit. US govts have no obligation to enforce their laws. They certainly have no liability for failure to do so.

by varelse 14y ago

ramanujan 14y ago

All regulation from the TSA to the local building officials is optimized to sound like a good idea. Who could be against health or safety? And that then becomes the thin end of the wedge, as the requirements and fees spiral from there. 1. Sprinklers and fire exits? Arguably necessary. 2. ADA compliant bathrooms and wheelchair ramps? Not part of a reasonable MVP[1]. What if every website "had to" be readable in Braille and multiple tongues on day one, before one had the revenue to pay for that sort of thing? 3. As for "building permits", they are just a tax by the local government[2], like red light cameras: In his opposition, Inks said the permit would "incentivize" code enforcement officers to go out and find major violations to bring in revenue. He added that city officials already get paid a salary. "To be clear ... this is about raising money," he said, adding that similar permits and fees in other cities have led to "further noncompliance" and the "collapse" of code enforcement efforts, which led to the necessity of giving property owners an "amnesty" period. Inks pointed out that small businesses were already being hit with fines for "petty" violations, such as a $500 fine on the Milk Pail Market for selling pumpkins in the parking lot. In other words: give these guys an inch and they'll take a mile, asserting their author-it-ay the whole way. It always starts with something reasonable sounding (fire codes) and then moves to incentivizing the government for uncovering more violations and more fines. And it's very hard to figure out all the violations ahead of time [3]: As we wrote earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is continuing its program of in-depth investigations of hotels to determine whether they comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA. The investigations are called "sweeps" because they target all hotels in a given geographic area. There is also some basis to believe that the sweeps may now also focus on certain industries such as hotels, restaurants and other places of public accommodation. ... In my experience, even the best design professionals typically have an inadequate knowledge of all of the accessibility standards. And local building official approvals provide no protection against accessibility violations. Like all regulation, the ADA stuff is optimized to sound like a good idea. Who could be against providing access for the disabled? Then you realize the Department of Justice is spending scarce resources conducting sweeps on business owners, and that the total cost for a large ADA upgrade can easily be millions of dollars per facility. Just one example [4]: Owners and managers of swimming pools at hotels, city recreation centers and public parks are scrambling to install mechanical chair lifts to comply with new federal requirements that all public pools be accessible to disabled swimmers. Some hotels fear the cost of the equipment or fines for noncompliance could put them out of busines The law doesn’t affect private clubs or pools owned by neighborhood associations that aren’t open to the public. It’s a massive and expensive undertaking. The Association of Pool and Spa Professionals says its research shows that between 235,000 and 310,000 pools require the upgrade. Manufacturers estimate the lifts run $3,500 to $6,500, and installation can double those costs. Altogether, owners could face combined costs exceeding $1 billion. A billion here, a billion there...soon you're talking real money. Anyway, this sort of thing is a big part of the reason that Bay Area housing prices are so high. And it all starts with taking regulators at their word that they are out to protect your health and safety. POSTSCRIPT: There's at least one obvious alternative to rule by unelected regulators. We already have reviews of everything else under the sun on Google, Amazon, Yelp, Zagat, Consumer Reports, and the like. Some of these reviewers we trust with life and death decisions, like Consumer Reports' car safety ratings. So just do the same for those codes that are truly crucial (e.g. fire codes), by allowing different certification authorities to compete. Maybe you start by expanding the domain of the Palo Alto and Mountain View fire departments such that they overlap, and a certification from either is sufficient to do business such that you get some competition into the mix. With just a little bit of choice, you'll suddenly see much more reasonable and cost-conscious behavior from regulators. [1] I know it's "the law". But there are unjust laws. [2] http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=2260 [3] http://hotellaw.jmbm.com/2010/06/ada_defense_lawyer_implications.html [4] http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x596769962/New-ADA-access-rules-may-scuttle-swimming-at-some-hotels

Eduardo3rd 14y ago
The great thing about the issues that you raise here is that they can be impacted by voting for city council members who are more supportive of startups. I'm not familiar with city politics in Mountain View, but maybe if the community got behind candidates who were in favor of relaxing these restrictions there could be some change there.
- sriramk 14y ago
  Isn't that backwards? I'm in favor of making things easier for startups in most cases but here, I feel like people should bias towards making things safer and more accessible, even if that means a bunch of startups can't find a place.
FireBeyond 14y ago
"1. Sprinklers and fire exits? Arguably necessary." "Arguably"? No, they're absolutely necessary. It's a multi-tenant building. Why should my property and livelihood be threatened by your inability (or lack of desire) to follow the fire code? "2. ADA compliant bathrooms and wheelchair ramps? Not part of a reasonable MVP[1]." A reasonable MVP should include the ability for a social, interactive space to be inclusive. And sorry, it's not the same as a startup deciding what features to include in their initial launch (which arguably happened a long time ago - this, now, is when the details need to be nailed down). Oh, and the ADA is Federal Law, precisely because of businesses and such that felt that discriminating against a subset of the populace was an "acceptable" omission (for their "MVP" or otherwise). "3. As for "building permits", they are just a tax by the local government" That they are. Building permits are a method of more fairly distributing the cost of amenities and public services. You have ongoing property taxes for maintenance and upkeep, but a development may trigger a review - is water, power, sewage, traffic control, parking, adequate? Such reviews cost money. I'm confused though, how you then chose to quote an out-of-context example about "some" (unnamed) cities choosing to root out code violations - something not entirely the same, and actually largely designed to find people who have chosen to skirt their community obligations by not using the permit process. For the record? I'm absolutely for the Hacker Dojo and wish more existed around here (and / or that I had the time / ability to found one).

kragen 14y ago

A small but crucial point: Hacker Dojo doesn't have owners; it has members.

veemjeem 14y ago
So everyone shares the blame equally then. It's too bad the actual owner didn't mention this to the to-be-lease-holders. My guess is the owner was more desperate to lease the space out.

anamax 14y ago

> If the town of Mountain View doesn't enforce their codes here, and if something like the fire in the video posted here were to occur, they'd get their keesters sued out of their pants and rightly so. No, MV wouldn't get sued. Or rather, if someone did sue, said someone would be at risk for sanctions for filing a frivolous lawsuit. US govts have no obligation to enforce their laws. They certainly have no liability for failure to do so.