10 ms·

It's a bit juvenile to blame building codes without also admitting why we have them: they save lives. Look at the death tolls of earthquakes that happen in cou

by stolio 12y ago

It's a bit juvenile to blame building codes without also admitting why we have them: they save lives. Look at the death tolls of earthquakes that happen in countries with and without enforced building codes. On the other side of the coin, thanks to deregulation houses are commodities that people buy, sell and trade for profit, which raises their prices and causes volatility in the market. Is that Atlantic article really comparing the building codes of Dallas and L.A. without admitting one of those cities has to plan for earthquakes and the other doesn't? And that one of those cities is already too big while the other is looking to grow? Where's L.A. going to get the water for these cheap new housing developments? TL;DR building codes and growth restrictions are a lot more complicated than some rich people wringing their hands and using regulations to make themselves money.

baddox 12y ago
How does turning something into a commodity that people buy, sell, and trade for profit raise prices?
- stolio 12y ago
  Supply and demand? Increase demand, supply is largely fixed* , prices go up. * a house in the boonies isn't really a substitute for a house in the city. Every house has demand from people who want to buy it as a home plus the demand of people who want to buy it to rent/flip/scrape it.
  - spikels 12y ago
    You are confusing land and housing - they are not the same. Land area is fixed but habitable space is not. In built up areas the constraint on building new housing is largely regulatory (mostly planning regulations).
    - stolio 12y ago
      I lump land and housing together because that's how reality does it. Aside from trailer-houses they all stay on one piece of land for the duration. If an analysis depends on houses being able to fluidly change land positions I don't think it would be very useful.
- refurb 12y ago
  It creates additional demand because the house not only provides shelter, but also takes on the form of an investment. How many people do you know who talk themselves into buying a house because of the potential pay off when prices rise?
  - baddox 12y ago
    I have heard that people do that, but I know zero people who have done it.
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      My dad tried. Lost a bunch of money.
  - pakled_engineer 12y ago
    It gets worse when foreign real estate speculation is allowed. Where I live most new condo developments are bought out by millionaires in Asia for the sole purpose of making money thus I need $700,000 for a tiny studio.
derefr 12y ago
I don't blame building codes, but I do blame governments for just trying to derive their own building codes in an NIH fashion. Engineering best-practices (which is what building codes are) advance in global lock-step in every other industry, because—once it's proven that approach X fails less than approach Y under conditions Z—X should be used instead of Y for all Zs, no matter what country you find the Z in. Regional considerations for things like earthquake proofing, density planning, etc. can be built into a single overarching engineering standard, just like considerations for different company shapes with different needs are built into a single larger tax code. There's nothing having many different local algorithms can optimize, that wouldn't be even more optimal as many different local parameter values to a single parameterized algorithm.
- brudgers 12y ago
  Building codes are not engineering best practices. They are minimum standards based on experience and filtered through the political process. "Built to code" is the worst legally allowed construction. The equivalent in programming terms is "It compiles".
seanp2k2 12y ago
It is more complicated than rich people gaming the system to get richer, but that's definitely part of it, and the generations-long monopoly on land ("ownership", as much as any human can claim that a piece of the earth belongs to them and them alone) enables basically unlimited rent-seeking priced at whatever the market will bear. http://m.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/What-San-Francisco-didn-t-learn-from-the-06-quake-2520018.php http://m.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/What-San-Francisco... goes into what happens to building codes after e.g. an earthquake. TL;DR not much, and I'm sure SF will get absolutely wrecked in the next "big one", people will die because stuff is old and not up to code, there will be public outcry for safer buildings, developers will lobby against it and basically do anything they can to continue to slap apartments up as cheaply as possible while charging $3000/mo for a 500sqft studio, and they'll build even-more-expensive yet not much safer buildings in the ruins. Then repeat.
- stolio 12y ago
  There's definitely some legacy family land holdings, but I don't know how much that effects the market. I would like to know, but I suspect that as you touched on they're making money off rents, maybe lending. What I was getting at are the houses that are bought and the mortgage goes into a CMO[0] or a CDO[1] because the new owner really had no business buying a house in the first place but they're "getting into real-estate" and the bank found a way to get paid for writing really questionable loans. Why are people without money even in the real estate market? (See the 2008 financial collapse for more details.) And that's just the worst of it, there's still the more legitimate case where people move their wealth into real estate because it's a good medium-term investment. I can't fault anybody for that, but I do believe it raises prices for everybody. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_mortgage_obligation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_mortgage_obligat... [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
- obstinate 12y ago
  > developers will lobby against it Eh. I don't believe this is true. For example, in the Great San Francisco earthquake, something like 90% of the damage was caused by fires. Most of these fires were and are caused by unsecured water heaters, rigid gas connections, etc. There are now building codes that improve on these issues -- all water heaters are now strapped, gas connections are flexible, etc. Among other protections that I know of, shear walls are mandated in certain cases, engineering reviews are done, houses are bolted to foundations at more regular intervals, the proportion of various walls that are windows is more limited, etc. Yes, regulations were slackened in 1906, but 1. Earthquakes between 1906 and now show that regulations DO tighten over time. If developers are trying to lobby against these, they are failing. (More likely, the property owners paying the developers are the ones who would lobby. It benefits the contractor to charge for more work.) 2. Even if we didn't have historical evidence to discount your position, the resources available to the people of that time and the people of our current time are not remotely comparable. Our capabilities for manufacturing and building are dramatically more vast. More on the evolution of these codes, which further contradicts your view that developers have been able to prevent their strengthening: http://quake06.stanford.edu/centennial/tour/stop10.html http://quake06.stanford.edu/centennial/tour/stop10.html
yummyfajitas 12y ago
Safety related building codes are not the issue. It's disingenuous to bring them up. If they were the problem, then you'd have little difficulty building up Mountain View to SF level densities, or SF up to Hoboken (a suburb of NY) level densities. All you'd need to do is copy the safety features for already existing larger buildings (which currently meet safety codes) and build them everywhere.
- stolio 12y ago
  > If they were the problem, then you'd have little difficulty building up Mountain View to SF level densities, or SF up to Hoboken (a suburb of NY) level densities. You just said that if building codes were removed there would be "little difficulty" in doubling the density of San Francisco or tripling the population density of Mountain View? What? Like there's no logistical issues involved of doubling or tripling the capacities of roads and utilities, figuring out where the trash is going to go, where the water's going to come from, etc. Like there's no reason a city might reasonably decide against unlimited growth. This is so far removed from reality I don't even know where to start. At the bare minimum, if you're going to call me disingenuous at least make a case of why.
  - dsymonds 12y ago
    You said "It's a bit juvenile to blame building codes without also admitting why we have them: they save lives."; namely, for safety reasons. yummyfajitas pointed out that safety has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Your follow-up post here now raises a bunch of reasonable issues, but none of them are safety-related.
    - stolio 12y ago
      Pushing infrastructure to the point of failure is most certainly a safety issue. It's a huge safety issue.

by stolio 12y ago

baddox 12y ago

How does turning something into a commodity that people buy, sell, and trade for profit raise prices?

stolio 12y ago
Supply and demand? Increase demand, supply is largely fixed* , prices go up. * a house in the boonies isn't really a substitute for a house in the city. Every house has demand from people who want to buy it as a home plus the demand of people who want to buy it to rent/flip/scrape it.
- spikels 12y ago
  You are confusing land and housing - they are not the same. Land area is fixed but habitable space is not. In built up areas the constraint on building new housing is largely regulatory (mostly planning regulations).
  - stolio 12y ago
    I lump land and housing together because that's how reality does it. Aside from trailer-houses they all stay on one piece of land for the duration. If an analysis depends on houses being able to fluidly change land positions I don't think it would be very useful.
refurb 12y ago
It creates additional demand because the house not only provides shelter, but also takes on the form of an investment. How many people do you know who talk themselves into buying a house because of the potential pay off when prices rise?
- baddox 12y ago
  I have heard that people do that, but I know zero people who have done it.
  - vinceguidry 12y ago
    My dad tried. Lost a bunch of money.
- pakled_engineer 12y ago
  It gets worse when foreign real estate speculation is allowed. Where I live most new condo developments are bought out by millionaires in Asia for the sole purpose of making money thus I need $700,000 for a tiny studio.

derefr 12y ago

I don't blame building codes, but I do blame governments for just trying to derive their own building codes in an NIH fashion. Engineering best-practices (which is what building codes are) advance in global lock-step in every other industry, because—once it's proven that approach X fails less than approach Y under conditions Z—X should be used instead of Y for all Zs, no matter what country you find the Z in. Regional considerations for things like earthquake proofing, density planning, etc. can be built into a single overarching engineering standard, just like considerations for different company shapes with different needs are built into a single larger tax code. There's nothing having many different local algorithms can optimize, that wouldn't be even more optimal as many different local parameter values to a single parameterized algorithm.

brudgers 12y ago
Building codes are not engineering best practices. They are minimum standards based on experience and filtered through the political process. "Built to code" is the worst legally allowed construction. The equivalent in programming terms is "It compiles".

seanp2k2 12y ago

It is more complicated than rich people gaming the system to get richer, but that's definitely part of it, and the generations-long monopoly on land ("ownership", as much as any human can claim that a piece of the earth belongs to them and them alone) enables basically unlimited rent-seeking priced at whatever the market will bear. http://m.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/What-San-Francisco-didn-t-learn-from-the-06-quake-2520018.php http://m.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/What-San-Francisco... goes into what happens to building codes after e.g. an earthquake. TL;DR not much, and I'm sure SF will get absolutely wrecked in the next "big one", people will die because stuff is old and not up to code, there will be public outcry for safer buildings, developers will lobby against it and basically do anything they can to continue to slap apartments up as cheaply as possible while charging $3000/mo for a 500sqft studio, and they'll build even-more-expensive yet not much safer buildings in the ruins. Then repeat.

stolio 12y ago
There's definitely some legacy family land holdings, but I don't know how much that effects the market. I would like to know, but I suspect that as you touched on they're making money off rents, maybe lending. What I was getting at are the houses that are bought and the mortgage goes into a CMO[0] or a CDO[1] because the new owner really had no business buying a house in the first place but they're "getting into real-estate" and the bank found a way to get paid for writing really questionable loans. Why are people without money even in the real estate market? (See the 2008 financial collapse for more details.) And that's just the worst of it, there's still the more legitimate case where people move their wealth into real estate because it's a good medium-term investment. I can't fault anybody for that, but I do believe it raises prices for everybody. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_mortgage_obligation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_mortgage_obligat... [1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation
obstinate 12y ago
> developers will lobby against it Eh. I don't believe this is true. For example, in the Great San Francisco earthquake, something like 90% of the damage was caused by fires. Most of these fires were and are caused by unsecured water heaters, rigid gas connections, etc. There are now building codes that improve on these issues -- all water heaters are now strapped, gas connections are flexible, etc. Among other protections that I know of, shear walls are mandated in certain cases, engineering reviews are done, houses are bolted to foundations at more regular intervals, the proportion of various walls that are windows is more limited, etc. Yes, regulations were slackened in 1906, but 1. Earthquakes between 1906 and now show that regulations DO tighten over time. If developers are trying to lobby against these, they are failing. (More likely, the property owners paying the developers are the ones who would lobby. It benefits the contractor to charge for more work.) 2. Even if we didn't have historical evidence to discount your position, the resources available to the people of that time and the people of our current time are not remotely comparable. Our capabilities for manufacturing and building are dramatically more vast. More on the evolution of these codes, which further contradicts your view that developers have been able to prevent their strengthening: http://quake06.stanford.edu/centennial/tour/stop10.html http://quake06.stanford.edu/centennial/tour/stop10.html

yummyfajitas 12y ago

Safety related building codes are not the issue. It's disingenuous to bring them up. If they were the problem, then you'd have little difficulty building up Mountain View to SF level densities, or SF up to Hoboken (a suburb of NY) level densities. All you'd need to do is copy the safety features for already existing larger buildings (which currently meet safety codes) and build them everywhere.

stolio 12y ago
> If they were the problem, then you'd have little difficulty building up Mountain View to SF level densities, or SF up to Hoboken (a suburb of NY) level densities. You just said that if building codes were removed there would be "little difficulty" in doubling the density of San Francisco or tripling the population density of Mountain View? What? Like there's no logistical issues involved of doubling or tripling the capacities of roads and utilities, figuring out where the trash is going to go, where the water's going to come from, etc. Like there's no reason a city might reasonably decide against unlimited growth. This is so far removed from reality I don't even know where to start. At the bare minimum, if you're going to call me disingenuous at least make a case of why.
- dsymonds 12y ago
  You said "It's a bit juvenile to blame building codes without also admitting why we have them: they save lives."; namely, for safety reasons. yummyfajitas pointed out that safety has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Your follow-up post here now raises a bunch of reasonable issues, but none of them are safety-related.
  - stolio 12y ago
    Pushing infrastructure to the point of failure is most certainly a safety issue. It's a huge safety issue.