Seattle allows them, it wasn't a magic bullet. ` We need to look at historically successful housing and just legalize that. For example - SF's row houses. You

Seattle allows them, it wasn't a magic bullet. ` We need to look at historically successful housing and just legalize that. For example - SF's row houses. You can't build anything like those due to rules about stairs, environmental laws about multiple family dwellings with internal stairs, and building codes that have such strict environmentally friendly rules that people cannot afford to live indoors. Up here in Seattle I was inquiring about extending my roof out to convert my cape code into a salt shaker style house, basically giving me two more bedrooms on the same lot. From an environmental perspective this is great, my house is over 70 years old, it is a sunk cost in terms of building material, and it was already updated with modern insulation years ago. I had an energy assessment done with I first moved in, and basically was told there isn't much I can do except fix the duct work but sadly no one does duct work anymore (I tried to find someone!) So anyway, my roof extension? The city would want me to replace my roof with larger wood so I could put in more insulation. An expensive undertaking that would have ZERO benefit to the house's energy profile. If they wanted me to paint the roof white, sure, that'd make sense and help more than $30k extra of roof work. Another example is how the electrical code keeps getting more and more strict, such as having outlets every few feet in kitchens. That adds a lot to costs, with little to no benefit. If you add up all the incremental safety rules since the 90s, we're paying a ton for a very very small margin of improvement in safety. And none of these rules are making houses better! "Home inspector discovers entire subdivision has leaking walls" is an entire sub-genre of video on YouTube. So we're paying a lot small things we don't need (kitchens with a dozen outlets, AFCI breakers everywhere, 30k of lumber to save $5 a month on cooling) while the important things (walls that don't leak) are being ignored.