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0 pointsbluGill2y ago0 comments

A large part of differences between towns is pure corruption! Material strength is physical facts. Water runs down hill. Many other such things. Many towns are in one of a couple national form based codes plans where if you follow the rules as laid out there is no need for approval as the engineering was already done for any generic house. If your town/state is not, or is but provides extras on top it is corruption: either the industry is trying to create a local monopoly via legal means; or your town board is trying to increase their power. Either way it is only making housing more expensive without serving any public good.

Not all houses need to meet the form based codes. If you want to do something different then you need a professional engineer to stamp and approve the plans - once stamped the town needs no more input.

Apartments and commercial buildings start to get more complex (but even then many meet form based codes as it is cheaper than calculating out all the stresses). However again professional engineer needs to approve the plans not the town.

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hnbad2y ago

My reference in this case is Germany, not the US, so the processes are a bit different but the point stands: it's difficult to use the exact same plans for two different houses in different places, let alone if you want to make any modifications as those may have knock-on effects you're not aware of. To be fair, a lot of those were not in the architect's plans in our case.

But you're right that you can basically get a permit for nearly anything if your pockets are deep enough and the restrictions are often arbitrary. That's why I mentioned fast-tracking: the area we built in had fairly strict requirements compared to houses only a few blocks away and any deviation would have required a costly and lengthy approval process (measured in months rather than weeks) so staying within the requirements was primarily a financial decision.

bluGillOP2y ago

> lengthy approval process

This is corruption. The process of approval should not be lengthy of costly.

FinnKuhn2y ago

It is arguably the opposite of corruption. Everyone is treated the same and everything is checked in order. The option to pay for a faster approval would be corruption. This is just government offices being chronically understaffed.

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