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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

If building codes took externalities into account, housing prices would go down.

Boarding houses filled a need, but modern safety codes say every bedroom needs a window. I bet people would rather have a roof over their heads, without a window, than sleep outdoors.

Want to do work on your house in Seattle? Touch the roofline and you'll need obscene amounts of rework and basically a band new roof. There is a serious shortage of space, so let's make increasing the # of bedrooms in the city as expensive as possible!

We need regulation, but regulations need to be created balancing out real world needs.

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Safety codes aren't the reason housing is expensive.

Land use is. NIMBY policies that ban multi-family tenancies are. Lack of SROs is. Lawn and parking requirements are.

The kind of housing we need can be built to code. But it can't be built when political stakeholders actively work against it.

Safety codes are not insignificant, though. One of my colleagues is spending 20K to get his house "up to code" because the upgrades he wants to make would end the grandfather clauses for things like having a three pronged dryer outlet instead of a four pronged one and needing an exterior disconnect switch for his electricity. The house is fine as-is, it's no deathtrap but the cumulative cost of compliance changes is substantial and the actual safety gain is minimal in comparison.

For those who don't know, the city requires a switch on the exterior that cuts power to the whole house. It is meant for first responders but the problem is that you can't lock the box (so literally anyone can cut the power to your house at anytime, think of thieves and vandals) and the electric company actually has the ability to remotely cut the power already. The Fire department can call this request in on the dispatch, so the point of the physical switch is primarily moot. But the requirement still exists and it must be paid for.

I'm not defending NIMBYs but I don't want to dismiss what the GP is talking about. Compliance costs are significant and especially so for non-new construction.

Can't be locked you say? What about alarmed? How about safety glass (or better) a clear cut spot to break past a screwed down edge of a barrier board with a fire axe?

He could look into adding some kind of aftermarket alarm but it would have to be on its own power supply.

A number of places, including my state, have made blanket changes to zoning that allow multifamily housing where it was previously not allowed. In a short time we should have the answer.

Here's another idea:

Mandate only ADA accessibility for the first floor of a residential building.

Before someone says that is a terrible idea, I'd like to point out the majority of housing stock in Manhattan is just that.

California has an accessory dwelling unit law that if fully realized could take single family homes built on a big lot and give them the ability to have multiple adu units on them... https://additionalhomes.com/adu-law-regulations/

I largely agree with you, but it does tend to be a little bit more complicated than that. Highly restrictive zoning laws are a tremendous problem, but if you want to change them you typically have to address infrastructure as well. If you wanted to do some urban intensification in an area, you’d likely have to build more water, power, waste water and telephony infrastructure first. If you wanted your new higher density urban environment to provide a decent quality of life, you’d then likely have to address increased demand for roads, public transport, schools, hospitals, etc…

I'm sorry but every bedroom DOES need a window. Packing people into as many small artificially lit rooms as we can fit on a lot is not a great idea.

I think we need to be very careful about relaxing safety guidelines.

> I'm sorry but every bedroom DOES need a window. Packing people into as many small artificially lit rooms as we can fit on a lot is not a great idea.

There's a middle ground here. Boarding houses were often just little hostels for having a safe place to sleep and keep your stuff with the expectation that you do most of your living outside, in worksites or parks or public houses (a.k.a. pubs). It's not really inhumane if you don't assume a lifestyle that is lived in the bedroom.

It's important to keep people homeless to save them from not having windows.

Well it's the burning to death with no means of egress that is mostly the concern. Homelessness is probably better than being burnt alive in a fire that removes your escape avenue.

It’s a relative trade off though. People living in tents will still die to fires but also are going to be exposed to other risks that are likely way less prevalent in a windowless home.

The risk under consideration must be minimized at any cost, including costs much greater than the maximum possible benefit.

Modern fire codes are good enough that I’d be shocked if a code compliant new building with no windows is less safe than a pre-1960s building with windows.

Modern fire safety standards are worlds above what they used to be when the requirement for windows went into building codes.

I'm not saying it is nice, but I am saying that flop houses and boarding houses filled a need in society that, for many people, is currently being met by living outdoors in tents instead.

This response is exactly what the op is pointing out - reflexive assertion that something is 'required' without balancing it against the broader picture.

Having spent my final year of university in a single-glazed private hall of residence on the top of a Welsh hill overlooking the Irish Sea, the lack of insulation (due in part to it being single glazed) was much much worse than if it had been bricked up and I’d been limited to artificial light.

Yes, I would’ve missed some spectacular murmurations and a fireworks show in the valley, but it was really cold and the heating wasn’t enough to overcome that.

You could've put a piece of foam insulation in that window. Remove it when you want the view or need to escape a fire. There are a lot of compromises between bricks and single pane glass.

The only reason I could’ve done that then is because I was ridiculously tight with money. All the other tenants didn’t have enough money to spend on even that little — the rent there was structured as a Sam Vimes’ Boots trap, and that principle applies to a lot of things at the low end.

I’m not sure that window would’ve been particularly good as a fire escape in any event — as I recall only the top opened, so I’d have had to smash it and climb through broken glass and then jump one story down onto soil now covered in broken glass.

Rethink. A few layers of free cardboard would be about the same as foam.

That Columbus’ Egg might’ve been useful 16 years ago. But given it didn’t occur to me at the time, I suspect it also won’t occur to most who actually need it — people who are in actual poverty and not just cheapskates like I was.

How does windowless imply packing people? You can pack people into a tiny windowed room. Or you can have a spacious windowless room that a single person occupies.

You're right, I think I got mixed up reading two different comments. That was an unfair assumption.

I still think a windows should be a requirement for bedrooms regardless of size. Natural sunlight is important for sleep regulation.

I'd love a room without a window. I have a giant blackout curtain permanently drawn in my bedroom right now, but light and street noise still get in. I live high enough up that jumping out the window during an emergency would just result in my death plus there are plenty of other windows in my apartment.

Is it a 'window' or an independent egress route? I am 100% for building code requiring the literal safety feature. Though I kind of like the idea of my sleeping room deep inside of a cave of solitude. Possibly with one uncommonly used route that has to be entirely lined with non-flammable materials only.

You need tort reform first to remove liability from builders, owners, and governments once a fire kills a few people in a building with rooms that have no egress and lawsuits start flying.

If people die in a fire because they can't exit the building quickly and safely, that's a problem and someone should be liable for their negligence.

People not dying should be the priority.

>"People not dying should be the priority."

It already is, but like all things the costs and benefits must be weighed. You can prevent 100% of electrical fires by prohibiting buildings from having power.

You can prevent people from dying in a house fire by just not having any homes either.

Relaxing safety requirements is not the solution to housing crisis. At best it will just increase the divide. We're going to be packing people like sardines into the cheapest (and consequently most dangerous) "housing" we could build, while people who can afford the luxury live in homes built to modern safety standards.

These regulations aren't created just for fun, they're created because people died. Let's not take a step backwards.

>"These regulations aren't created just for fun, they're created because people died. Let's not take a step backwards."

Of course, and I realize that, I think we all do. The question, though, is at what point is a regulation more expensive than it is practical? It sounds heartless but some regulations don't seem worth the expense of how many lives it is designed to save. One of the reasons why the 4 prong outlet is required for dryers is because someone was changing the inner light bulb in the dryer and killed themselves because they didn't shut off power to the circuit. The regulation is meant to help prevent this in the future, but one has to wonder just how many people are actually being saved by this update. Especially when you personally have to shell out something like $750 to update your three prong outlet.

You can also prevent people from dying in a house by making the house too expensive that it's unaffordable for them.

Right now shelters are so unsafe many people choose to sleep on the streets instead.

I'm not saying roll building codes back 100 years. I am saying that cities are experiencing an extraordinary problem and we may need to start rethinking some of our fundamentals and sacred cows if we are going to solve these problems.

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