In theory, building inspections at each stage of construction should find omissions and other non conformance while it's economic to fix them. I do acknowledge that building inspections have a lot of issues, one of which is different inspector, different rules, and a later stage inspector may have you redo something the earlier stage inspector said was fine (sometimes, even with the same inspector!), but the idea is there. I've heard that locally, a lot of inspections are done by video conference now, and contractors find that goes a lot faster and more direct. Not sure if that'll stay post-covid.

It's also difficult to know what's on the inside of built houses (which is why inspection is supposed to happy during construction, not after). Commercial buildings often have both plans and as-built drawings; but residential buildings don't, and when you get on-site and the plan doesn't match the house, you really don't know what's in the walls. Some sort of government driven new code compliance inspection for existing housing stock seems really expensive. Even public use buildings take a long time to get code compliance updates, such as retrofits on unreinforced masonry buildings in many places, and there's both more risk and more enforcement power for public use buildings.

No, not even remotely the same.

The old house was up-to-code, and considered safe for habitation, when it was built. Your new house was not.

Very importantly, if you renovate an old house, regulations may require you to update the house to modern building code standards for plumbing, electricity, etc.

Yes that's the scam. Magically the houses are not held to the same code. Got mine, fuck everybody else.

No, houses are held up to the code that applied when they were built, because those codes were generally accepted as safe at the time.

Old houses are held up to the new code when they are renovated, because updating old houses to the new code frequently requires rebuilding substantial portions of the house to comply with new requirements. It's not about "fuck everyone else." It's about recognizing that the extensive work that would be required to comply with substantially safer modern codes is best done when substantial construction work is already planned to be performed.

Commercial buildings are held to up to new codes whenever ownership, or tenancy, changes hands.

>because updating old houses to the new code frequently requires rebuilding substantial portions of the house to comply with new requirements

OK but if I build a new house to the old code then I also will need substantial work to rebuild it to bring it into compliance. So I could use the same logic I shouldn't have to. Safe enough for them, safe enough for me.

>No, houses are held up to the code that applied when they were built,

Again, that's the scam. I'll build my house to one code and then vote to make the code harsher for the next guy to up my property value. If it's impossible to build a new house as economically as mine, mine's now worth more than it would have been.

Let's go and tear down houses when code is updated and see how quick we can make everyone homeless.

It's not reasonable to build with GFCI outlets in the bathrooms in 1956. It's not reasonable to build without them in 2023.

Most places have a very limited enforcement appetite for existing construction. If it was safe and current when built, it's fine enough. Exceptions include adding smoke and carbon monoxide detectors --- but they're not that expensive to buy or install; and sometimes you can't get a home insured if it had certain electrical panels with poor safety records, and knob and tube wiring is sometimes frowned upon (but really, it's not that bad if it hasn't been altered; just a lot of houses where they added too much load on the existing knob and tube and overloaded wiring is never good). That doesn't mean you should build that way today. Somethings that were standard aren't even available anymore; nobody makes orangeburg pipe since the 1970s, so you've got to use something better.

The building inspector can't see all the people you're making homeless right now by creating ever more expensive building codes. The permitting office doesn't see the good food people can't buy their children because they're spending more on their mortgage. The code enforcement officer doesn't see the person who ended up missing finding cancer early because their gas tank was empty and they couldn't book a doctor's appointment after increased inspecting and architectural requirements. People just see "bad thing happened in house because bad codes, spend more money that gets ripped away from other things that make us safe."

And that's part of the trickery involved here. People say "look that one guy died in that house so we need to require stricter code here." They're not noticing the freezing homeless people that died because housing become $X dollars more expensive and they lost the musical chairs game. Sure the homeless guy wasn't going to buy a brand new house, but through the substitution effect across a wide swath of society eventually down the chain it does filter down to everyone ultimately affecting their access to housing.

The ability for voters, already homed, to just change up the codes on everyone while not having their own homes subjected creates a cruel moral hazard and socially bifurcating effect. The guy that gets in early comes in and gets his, then says fuck you, you have to play by different rules.

I'm not saying the houses should be torn down. I'm saying any updates should put situation where homeowner voters are subject to their own medicine. I don't think they'll choose to tear down the houses. No they might decide after all "hey good enough for me, good enough for you."

As for "can't build with X thing they did/didn't have before." Well you can update the codes to allow both the old and new method for something. That would satisfy conditions for both standing and new construction without uniform enforcement causing old houses to be demolished.

It's clear that you don't understand how building codes work, or even how they're intended to work.

They're not about protecting property values for existing homeowners, and that's a truly bizarre, nonsensical interpretation.

Building codes are about making new construction safer, because the cheapest time to make new buildings safer is when they are built. And we built them to the latest safety standards because the modern code reflects new dangers which may not have been relevant when older buildings were built.

If you really can't get that, then it's clear that your issues with building codes are more about ideology than anything to do with reasoned thought.

Well, yeah, isn't that just enforcing the codes? If you didn't have to go back and fix it, you could build as many sloppy houses as you want and the codes would be meaningless.

I would only apply such standard if it passes the symmetry principle with currently legal houses which is the context in which above mentioned about the not being worth bulldozing/fixing if they met the old codes. I.e. if the problem was legal for the construction of a currently inhabited house then the same logic about not being worth it to start over applies to the new house as the old house. Therefore it couldn't possibly devolve into codes being meaningless but rather worst case devolve into creating a baseline of allowing older codes which apparently are safe enough we haven't kicked their owners out. In effect it would create equality in home ownership rather than a standard where you can build a house and then vote to make it harder for the next guy to artificially raise your property values. If something is truly too unsafe to exist the rules should be applied uniformly rather than giving privileged immunities to early entrants.

Your argument collapses to "forget improvement, let me externalize", and we as a society have strong reasons to provide a glide path towards reducing those externalities for old construction (which we do through updates during renovations, rebates, etc.) while disallowing them for new.

The argument of existing homeowners is "forget improving my own house, let me externalize costs to others to raise my own property values."

We as a society have strong reasons to provide a glide path towards reducing that moral hazard created by old entrants.