My pen name is Dan Boone

In my view, our County would be a good test county to sue over the Uniform Building Code.

First, a bit of background.

The Uniform Building Code and its various International Building Code cousins propose to prevent dangerous buildings. No one wants unethical contractors building dangerous buildings, and the Code is intended to prevent that, and it doesn’t. The best example is the World Trade Center which wasn’t supposed to collapse like it did. The Empire State Building was hit by a B-25 bomber, which created a hole 20 feet high, exploding the fuel tanks, but the ESB still stands tall. Look at a manufactured home in your neighborhood; they are literally glued together, and no one knows how long they’ll last. There are houses in my neighborhood that are over a hundred years old, and know what? They don’t meet the Uniform Building Code in a lot of ways. The UBC is only sort-of intended to prevent rip off contractors and dangerous buildings.

What the UBC really does do is cover the county’s patoot in court; you can’t sue Building and Planning as long as they were following Code. A lot of county codes even include a section denying responsibility. If they don’t have responsibility, why should we give them eight thousand bucks? The Code also saves them money, because instead of hiring building inspectors who can look at something and know if it is safe, they can hire a guy who only looks at labels. If the label on the wood stove, board, or truss says it will work, that’s all the inspector needs to know. The Code makes insurance companies happy because it releases contractors from liability. Construction material manufacturers love it because it means you can ONLY build with their products.

So, it’s good for politicians and insurance companies and very good for 3M. Unfortunately, it’s bad for you and I.

First off, the UBC is the main reason a poor person can’t have a home. By the time you’ve paid off the liability for the county, a home is out of sight. A lot of people cut out the guy in your neighborhood who builds houses and have one hauled in to save money, but the County, the insurance guys, and 3M all still get paid.

That a poor person, even one who owns land, can’t build a home means that something very important has happened, a right, promised by our Constitution as being granted by God has been stolen from us by bureaucrats. Where does "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" say we have to cover the county’s butt?

Second off, the UBC encourages what Malvena Reynolds called "ticky tacky" houses (and they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same). The key word here is UNIVERSAL. One size fits all! If you want to build an alternative way, you probably can’t. Around the world there are houses constructed with century old techniques that have lasted for generations, and you couldn’t build any of them in our county. Even the "ger" or "yert", which is a semi-permanent house used where the weather is often severe, couldn’t be inhabited here.

Third, the Code forces Cousin Wilbur, who lives in his grand-dad’s cabin to obey the same codes as a contractor building a hundred house subdivision. An idiot’s view sees this as a good idea, because: 1. It’s "fair" to have everybody obey the same law; and 2. Because someday Cousin Wilbur’s house will be surrounded by houses, and they should look the same. It’s an idiot’s view, because nothing about Cousin Wilbur’s life is like a city person’s life, and freedom is supposed to be a personal thing, not a "one size fits all" thing. Anatole France is quoted as saying, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread." The UBC is that kind of majestic law.

Without the UBC, wouldn’t we suffer the kinds of catastrophes other countries have where thousands die in earthquakes and floods? No! First off, many of those people in poor countries die in modern buildings made with poor materials; people in traditional structures in those places survive more often. Secondly, we haven’t had a really big earthquake to test the technology we’ve been sold. I witnessed an earthquake on the coast that, like a tornado, would pick one house and leave a nearly identical neighbor house standing. Some things, like shock absorbing ties to the foundation, seem to help, but the Code doesn’t recognize many types, so you couldn’t use them.

Besides, no one says we have to allow people to build like idiots. Contractors, and certainly those who build large office and residential buildings, should be controlled. Refusing the UBC isn’t the same as saying we all want to get drunk and grab a hammer. It’s saying some way has to be found to control the quality of buildings without robbing the owner-builder and especially the owner-builder-resident of the right to use property as they see fit. No one should want their sewage polluting their property and particularly not their neighbors. Some things, like streambeds, fall into the public concern even if one particular section is on private land because they contribute to the properties around them. No one is advocating land owners should be allowed to destroy a watershed (as mines and timber companies have done in the past.

But, there needs to be a demonstrable and significant nuisance before the county can move. Instead, the law favors the county, and the code even attempts to give building officials the powers of "police"; a re-reading of the term "police powers" enjoyed by local governments. It still needs to be tested in court whether the code can empower building officials as cops: there might be a good start on a lawsuit there.

Neither should the UBC govern such things as esthetics in residential homes. The county isn’t a nanny, if you don’t like you neighbor’s house, put up a fence or look at something else. Even at that task, the code fails, since it doesn’t stop people from building a condo to block your view of the lake, it just insists on ticky-tacky.

Finally, (and here is the amazing part of the idea) yes, some people might be killed in substandard housing. Guess what! People are killed from having no housing all the time! Plenty of people die every year from being homeless. Lots of people pay more than they have to in rent, because they can’t afford to build a home. It isn’t the government’s job, nor authority, to keep idiots from killing themselves and maybe a few gullible kin. The idea that the government can protect us all from ourselves is terrible, it rips the sinews out of our God given liberty. We shouldn’t have to follow some bureaucrat’s idea of what is good for us.

I say, as a people, we should throw the UBC back at the supervisors, and our state legislators, too, and tell them, "come up with a better way to both protect our right to live as we want to or need to, and prevent unscrupulous contractors from building claptraps." The code needs to be opened to tiers, so people can afford to build their own house, however crappy, and live in it, without spending $20,000 just in engineer’s fees, using reclaimed wood and an affordable foundation. The finished home could be given a certificate. It would indicate the degree to which the County feels the home, barn or garage meets the code. A building with a full certificate would be easier to sell and insure. A home that the county felt was a danger could be posted. If living in a dangerous house is the best option a person has, in a free country, they should be able to.

Our County might be the best place to start.