Quote Originally Posted by BikingLady View Post
I really do not understand why say the old buildings downtown have to have so much done to them to upgrade to today's standards so the homeless can rent rooms. A room with a bath on each floor seems like a far better option then the street. One old building in town I read is 3 floors of little rooms as during the 1900 era that was all travelers needed to sleep at night. Nope it would a Million dollars to bring to code. SO the buildings rot.
Welcome to the tyranny that is the Local Building Code.

LBC is a sludge of zoning and regulations designed to protect everything -- at the expense of people. It also (in many places) is used as a weapon in class warfare.

I'll guess those old buildings do not have three-wire (grounded) electrical service and that the service they have is inadequate for modern it-all-plugs-in life. It is likely there is asbestos in pipe insulation, flooring materials, insulation, etc., and that not remediating that during a remodel would open up developers and perhaps even the municipaility to all kinds of lawsuits, so it has to go. Door openings may be too narrow for wheelchairs and walkers; window openings may be too low to protect curious toddlers. Code now likely requires smoke detectors and carbon-monoxide detectors, some of which likely need to be wired together for the sake of notification in multiple-occupancy housing. There likely needs to be a certain amount of parking space available off-street depending on how many people live in a room or apartment -- and the neighbors aren't going to be happy with it in the form of a surface lot. I'm sure there are rules about how many people (especially unrelated people) can live in a room or apartment. The list goes on.

LBC and zoning are why "granny flats" can't be added to many properties -- but neither can rusty old campers and motorhomes bigger than the houses to which they connect. They're why we can't enlarge sidewalks for humans and human activity -- because if we narrow the street at all, the fire department can't get their biggest piece of equipment down the street along with required clearance around parked vehicles.

Not to say building code and zoning are entirely bad. But there are so many stakeholders, many wielding legal authority over aspects of them, and so many of the rules are geared (intentionally or unintentionally) to keeping out poorer "less-desirable" people and protecting the investments of existing landowners.