County Code Enforcement
I actually listened to part of the Civil Liberties Monitoring Project meeting regarding code enforcement that was held in Garberville yesterday. Turned on the radio in the garage about the middle of Estelle Fennell's comments and listened to most of what transpired until the meeting ended.
From the sounds of the comments and audience response, sounds like there's a bunch of closet libertarians in Southern Humboldt.
Enough has been said about the meeting on both Eric and Heraldo's blogs. I'll just make a short comment on the issue of county codes vs. civil liberties itself. My comments, the result of this partial comment made by an anonymous poster on the Times- Standard web site from a few days ago:
"it is not within your civil liberties to build and live in sub-standard, un-permitted structures..."
So, he thinks that civil rights don't include going out and living in the woods and building and living in whatever kind of home you want, assuming it's your property? Ok, then how about it being a human right?
I'm not sure just how far we should go with building codes in unincorporated areas of the county, assuming we should have building codes at all. I do think the kind of structure people live in should be the the concern of the people living in it, and their concern alone.
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Leaving aside code enforcement, but along that same line, maybe this will make surveillance of areas such as Southern Humboldt a little easier. Feel safer now?As always, if asked to login in to the Sacbee web site, you can use humboldtlib for the username and blogspot for the password.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 7:57 AM
15 comments
15 Comments:
"it is not within your civil liberties to build and live in sub-standard, un-permitted structures..."
people often fall into the trap of assuming that an unpermitted structure is not up to code. in the above sentence the writer assumes that all unpermitted houses are "sub-standard". why in the world would he/she make that assumption? has he/she not seen permitted buildings that are sub-standard? take a trip into eureka or mckinleyville or cutten sometime, there are plenty there....
Good point. I'd never really thought of his comment from that angle.
Then again, I think it's pretty much a human right for people to live in a sub- standard building if they chose to, especially if it's out in the middle of nowhere where it shouldn't be anybody else's business what they live in.
fred,
i agree. its not the government's job to tell people how to live. its the peoples job to tell the government how to live....
heres the problem: "sub-standard" is an objective term. in a neighborhood of mansions, my house would surely be considered sub-standard...and i sure wouldnt want the goverment to make me build a mansion to fit in with my neighbors...
When it comes to building homes that use fire for heat, I think it is important to be sure the fire won't set the structure afire, burning any little kids who happen to live there.
Some of the people who set out into the wilderness to build a home don't know how to build a safe home. Getting permits helps guide them away from big mistakes that can hurt other people as well as themselves.
But, of course, I did read Walden and do admire Henry David Thoreau.
I just think there are more of us living closer together, and some of us with less knowledge about how to build a safe home in the wilderness than we did 175 years ago.
There is also the issue of whether the system of sewage waste impacts water systems.
Fred, would you apply caveat emptor to a buyer of the home?
Cavaet emptor should always apply.
As far as sewage, that could be dealt with whether a house is required to have a permit, or not. If someone is crapping in a bucket and dumping the stuff in a creek, that's pollution, whether or not they have a permit.
5:09 wrote, "When it comes to building homes that use fire for heat, I think it is important to be sure the fire won't set the structure afire, burning any little kids who happen to live there.".
I don't know that that has anything to do with the permit process. It might be used as an excuse, by some, as to why government approval is needed, but it seems pretty much a red herring.
It doesn't seem to me that there's been a big problem with people building their own houses, without a permit, that result in house fires from improper construction.
Only cases like that I can recall, in the recent past, are indoor marijuana grows where improper wiring or grow lamps cause fires. I don't see how permits would have anything to do with those cases.
What about when my sewage leaks onto your property? Or when my substandard electrical wiring starts a fire that spreads to your property?
By the way, any problems with the slaughter house I'm planning to install soon? The smell won't really be that bad.
Sewage leaks can be dealt with without a permit system. They already are.
Fires can be a problem in permitted or un-permitted dwellings.
If you're living 10 miles down a dirt road, west of Garberville, why should I care if you build a slaughterhouse there.
I think it's a front by the Bush regime to find all the innocent Pot growers and so they use words such as Code violations in order to snoop around So. Humboldt's neighborhoods .
Butting into people's privacy was sadly enough started by the Bush regime .
9:05 very happy to hear about the slaughter house. We need one badly. By the way it won't be long before a wood stove will be aganist the code. Blue days/green days are a reality in many places. What if I want to run my sink drain into a bucket to feed the hogs? Works for me ,the hogs,and the kids. Why the f*#k should the county or a neighbor care? Many of the so called examples for "codes" are over blown at best. There are very good laws about cause and effect used every day in American courts. The old saying," if you take care of your own buisness you won't have time to take care of mine" seems to be at the root of this. Real issues are not being glossed over in this county. The current code enforcement assukts are politically motivated, It stinks.
Your right and Bush was paid 10 million dollars by Amhaueser - Bush . Another 13 million by Pfisner Drugs . Marijuana would eliminate hundreds of drugs and Alcohol sales would slide further downhill if weed became the drug of choice . Medical ? YOU BET !
It's all about money & politics but , if you think it's bad now....if McCain gets in the marijuana raiding will get much worse . The ole' fart made his millions off of berr sales .
That, my friend, is Annheuser-Putsch and Pilsner Drugs.
Learn how to spell....Don't you DeBackian grammer !
C'mon !!! It's called , DeBackerian
grammer . Get it straight .
To the extent that code enforcement protects the health of the community, I support it; I don't want my neighbors' septic waste in my drinking water, nor do I want the fire in their house to burn down mine.
To the extent that it is used to create cash flow for for the construction industries, banking industries, and the court system, I'm adamantly opposed. It seems apparent that the "code enforcements" here in Humboldt recently have had the purpose of allowing law enforcement to look for drug operations under the auspices of the much easier to get code enforcement warrant.
I also believe that there is interest in fining "violators" and requiring expensive upgrades to either force them to put cash into the construction industry, or lose their land so somebody else can develop it, a sort of back-door eminent domain for the sake of business.
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