Latest / Building Better Cities / Building Codes Are Political. We Just Don't Talk About Them. (with Ed Mendoza)

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Building Codes Are Political. We Just Don't Talk About Them. (with Ed Mendoza) · Building Better Cities

• speaker-0: Land use and zoning fights happen in almost every city across the country. The debate around who gets to build, what, where, and for whom is loud, it's political, and it's very, very public. But there's a second rule book that governs almost every building you've ever walked into, and almost nobody talks about it. How wide is that doorway? How many staircases does this building have? How much light has to reach a window? These aren't aesthetic choices. Or developer's preference, their law. They're the building code and they're baked into every structure around you. But here's what's interesting. The zoning debate is about what we build and for whom. The building code is supposed to be about how we build it. But as our guest makes it very clear today, it turns out that the how has a quiet way of dictating the what and the whom. And that makes it just as political, just as consequential. And just as in need of reform. Edmund Dozza has been working in the space of building code reform for over a decade. As a past planner and a demographer, and now as policy manager for California Yimby and the Metropolitan Abundance Project, he's joining us today to talk about the unglamorous but incredibly important question of why good buildings are so hard to build. Today we're going to dive deep into the silent rule book, The Building Code, and discuss. What it is, who it serves, and how it can be rewritten. I'm Kate Gasparo, and this is Building Better Cities. I have been talking with a lot of people about regulations and zoning in the space of mostly urban infill development. And at the periphery of these conversations, people talk about building code. And it seems like such this amorphous thing. Like, is there one building code? Are there a lot of building codes? So can you just building code 101 with me at a very basic level? What are building codes? Who writes them and why do they even exist? speaker-1: I think the simplest way to explain building codes is that they are the rule book for what a building has to do before we let people like live, work, sleep, or gather inside them. They set the minimum standards for safety, health, accessibility. They do fire protection, energy performance, pretty much everything for a building. I would argue that building code or just codes are. Probably one of the quiet achievements of modern life. speaker-0: You say like quiet achievement. I like the way that you're wording that. Whose achievement? Like who who put this together? Whose grand idea was it that we'd have building codes? speaker-1: I feel like most countries in the world have a building code in general, but the way that ⁓ like I guess the process of writing and creating and adopting the code is is different. I think the US does it a little bit different. I think most people would think of the building code as a government document because once it's adopted, it has force of law. But ⁓ in the US, typically the first draft of that code. Does not come from the government. It usually comes from a model code ⁓ written through ⁓ private nonprofit ⁓ code bodies or standard organizations. And these are groups with ⁓ private interests and members that write up and update the code. And then once they write that, then it's like states, ⁓ cities and electeds adopt those codes, ⁓ sometimes with amendments, and then that's what gets turned into. Whoa. speaker-0: I could understand that buildings are safe and they're maybe energy efficient because of these codes. And can you sort of talk through how much codes are about safety versus standardization versus liability protection? Because at the end of the day, they're enforceable by law. And so somebody is liable if something goes wrong. So maybe you can talk about each of those different factors when it comes to building codes. speaker-1: Yes, I think the honest answer would be it's all those three things. ⁓ At its best, I think the building code is a safety document. It's saying, hey, you know, before we let people occupy a building, there are certain minimum things that a building has to do, has to stand up, has to resist the fire, etc. it's also an instruction manual. It tells architects, engineers, builders, inspectors, here here's a common playbook. You know, here's a standard way of of adopting things. And then the last piece, it's liability protection. ⁓ and I think this is like the space where things could get a little bit more complicated. A lot of rules stay in the code, ⁓ not only because someone has proven like time and time again that that part of the code is necessary, but because nobody wants to be the person who removed a safety requirement and then later something terrible happens. Feel like even if a rule is excessive or there's another way to provide the same level level of safety, ⁓ the politics of changing code are very, very unforgiving. ⁓ if you add a safety rule, ⁓ you're you're being cautious. If you remove it or simplify one, you you can be accused of of essentially gambling with people's lives. ⁓ so I think that the code has a ⁓ a ratchet effect in that sense. I feel like it tends to typically move in one direction. ⁓ it's additive. A requirement gets added after a fire or a lawsuit, technological change. But it's very, very hard to go back later and ask, you know, did this rule actually work? Is it still needed? can we scale back a little bit? Or is there like a cheaper, simpler way to ⁓ achieve the same safety goal? I think that this is. probably the the main difference of of where building codes are differ from from land use reform. I think in land use you're you're very used to creating a something called beachheads. Like you take a rule that may be blocking housing, you reform it a little bit, you see what happens, you keep adjusting it, you see what happens. building codes do not work like that at all. They're very, very hard. I don't know. I keep on repeating myself, but I think it's really speaker-0: That makes a lot of sense because the more I've been talking with experts in the space, especially around deregulation for zoning or for other sorts of land use laws, deregulation of the building code doesn't actually seem to be something that is possible the way that you're s you're walking us through it right now, ⁓ because there is such liability tied into the safety and standardization of how we build our buildings. Is that fair to say? speaker-1: Absolutely. And so like when we look into reforming it, we the the question is never how do we deregulate it? Or it should never be how do we how do we deregulate it? It should always be based on a on looking at through like a life safety lens. You know, how do we create alternative ways that may be more efficient or more more cost effective or just better for for livability while still retaining the same amount? Of ⁓ I guess safety freshold. speaker-0: Because, you know, as somebody who lives in a large apartment building, I can see every day how the building code affects the way I live. Like I see the sprinkler systems and I see how much they're spaced apart. I see that there's exits in very strategic places. There's staircases in very strategic places. What are some of the elements of the building code that might not be as visible, but might be driving up cost or complexity for developers as they have to work through? the development process. speaker-1: Think the strange thing about building codes is that most people like never see them, but they live inside the consequences of them every day. You can experience it as ⁓ you know, the type of apartment that you live in that you afford. You experience it through the hallways that you walk down, the number of windows in your house, whether a building has a courtyard, whether the elevator works, whether your unit gets fresh air, or your neighborhood is either full of You know, smaller human-scale buildings or very institutional large ones. I would say that in the United States, there's a really stark difference between I would call the small code or the residential code that typically only applies to single family homes or duplexes, versus the big code, aka the commercial code that applies to everything else. ⁓ when you submit plans for building with residential code, they're not as long. ⁓ when you're trying to get something approved, you don't you know you don't get like a litany of inspectors, you typically only get one inspector. You're not as as intense as as a commercial code, and that does have like real, I guess, consequences in our built environment. So much so that like I've seen developers utilize the residential code on buildings that should be apartment buildings built under commercial code. speaker-0: Okay, so we're talking about the difference between the building code and the residential code and how that leads to unintended c consequences. I wanna understand what other sorts of building code elements also have led to unintended consequences. And maybe if you could expand on a few of those items and we can go into one of them in more detail. speaker-1: Unintended consequences for building code. I think maybe elevators are a good example. ⁓ a lot of elevators or like increased elevator rules sound reasonable. Or just sounds reasonable in general, right? ⁓ you know, bigger elevators, you know, sound more accessible, ⁓ more protection around elevator shafts, sound safer, ⁓ a bunch of new technological components sound good. But when you stack these things together, ⁓ they they typically result ⁓ in pretty bad unintended consequences. ⁓ so much so that, you know, you typically have developers opting to not build elevators at all or building what do you call it, smaller apartment buildings that that that don't that don't include elevators or that they just don't build the the the elevator. you know, to begin with. so like a fact that I always throw around is elevators are estimated to be three to five times more expensive here in the US than in Europe. Wow. And ⁓ very few buildings under twenty four units ⁓ typically build elevators, which is really bad. ⁓ and so the consequences are really real. ⁓ that leaves behind seniors, people with mobility limitations, you know, pets with strollers, people carrying groceries. I don't know. If you get injured, you know, you're you're you're out of luck if you live on the third floor. I don't know. There's a lot to talk about. speaker-0: When are elevators needed in buildings? For somebody who is not familiar with ADA laws, why is there a question about if an elevator is needed for a twenty-four unit building? That seems perfectly reasonable to speaker-1: Right. So to answer that as easy as possible, I believe that elevators should be included in all buildings, ⁓ regardless of the size of said building. ⁓ whenever I travel to Latin America or visit family in Europe, like even two story buildings have elevators. It's a very common thing. Yeah. Very or you see a lot of ⁓ elevator retrofits where you have a building that was say built, I don't know, in eighteen ninety. Or whenever they'll have, you know, build an elevator just stuck onto it that works and is accessible and makes the whole building accessible. We don't see that here in the United States. Again, because elevators tend to be, you know, three to five times more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. and, you know, the the the reasons for this. Should I go talk about the reasons? speaker-0: Yeah, let's do it. speaker-1: And the reason for this is a simple analogy that that I I you know I thought about and I think it's it's really relevant and that is the McDonald's ice cream machine problem. Do you know about this? You know whenever you go to McDonald's they say, you know, you asked for an ice cream cone and they're like, Well, machine ain't working, right? Do you know why the machine isn't working? speaker-0: Tell me more. 'Cause there's only one guy that needs one part that's so hard to source that he cannot make it work. That's my assumption. speaker-1: There's only one company or there was one company. I think they changed it now, but for a really long time there's only one company that had the rights to repair the ice cream machine. And you know, if you want to just jump in line or whatever, you had to pay a little extra fee. And I think it's very, very similar to to how elevators work in in the US as well. For the rest of the world, there's like a broader global market. ⁓ if your elevator breaks, ⁓ you could use ⁓ like more standardized kits. ⁓ you could have someone who's competent and who's licensed to install and service your elevator. And, you know, you have trained technicians who who are not locked into, you know, a single company. Or if they are, the the terms are much, much shorter. in the US, the system is way more closed. And because so much of money comes from, or I guess revenue comes from a po post installation service. ⁓ there's no there's no strong incentive to make the ⁓ the system simpler or cheaper or or more open. ⁓ I think the number was about seventy percent of the elevator industry revenue comes from post installation service. And so that's that's speaker-0: So you're saying like ⁓ the elevator costs three to five times more than it does in other parts of the world here in North America. Yeah. And that's just for the installation or that's the life cycle cost of this elevator? speaker-1: I cycle them costs way higher. speaker-0: It's way higher than the three to five times. Yep. Wow. Okay. speaker-1: Yeah. Our elevators are extremely expensive in in North America. speaker-0: And yeah, it seems like an industry problem, but not necessarily a building code problem. So help me connect the two. speaker-1: So we have to remember the industry is private, right? And the people who draft the building codes usually come from private interests. Best way to to show what's going on in in in the US is compared to the rest of the world, that typically works off of I would say normative EU standards, which is just a fancy term of saying a global system of elevators that, you know, if you get certified here, it more or less works at, you know, in most places. In the US, we have hyper fragmentation. each state will adopt a different edition of the elevator code. And each state might modify that addition or add to that edition of the elevator code. And it's very common for jurisdictions to also add in their local modifications. And so when, you know, let's say your your elevator breaks down and and You know, you need a new part. Well, the part that you need may be very, very, very specific to the you know elevator code that is attached to your elevator model. And elevator companies are very aware of that and they don't mind charging a premium for these parts. So you could kind of see how in a macro sense, you know, if you have thousands of different types of parts that are from place to place to place that, you know, elevator companies they may be They're like, Fine, you know, we'll produce it. We'll charge you extra. But ⁓ you know, you know, here you go. speaker-0: It seems and correct me if I'm wrong, that in the United States, each state has their own building code. And the building code is multiple codes that come together, of which one could be an elevator code. And that elevator code is created in part with private stakeholders at the table who are trying to push their singular or maybe a ⁓ multitude, but much smaller than the public's speaker-1: Industry driven. speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Industry driven perspective when it comes to a elevator in this case. Is that is that fair to say right. Okay, okay, cool. So that makes a lot of sense in my mind. And so now that we're thinking about how bespoke and prescriptive the California Building Code is as an example, as it pertains to elevators, what are some of the speaker-1: Absolutely. Yeah, I've kind of come to understand the building code world through the lens of abundance and through my lens of, you know, wanting more housing, better infrastructure in a way that kind of addresses the like the the mediacy and like, you know, we're we're we're not in a good spot. So we have to address this, you know, pretty quickly. A the two routes address this, right? The first route is the formal code change and amendment process. And that still matters. It's it's not, you know, something that I'm saying, ⁓ you know, you should sk skip over it. ⁓ in the US, you are going to be dealing with private organizations like the International Code Council or the NFPA, which is technically or or or de facto not really international, but we'll talk about that later or at some other point. But anyways, ⁓ the International Code Council, you know, describes its process as as open to the public. So anyone could technically submit a code code change proposal or a public comment. And anyone attending a a hearing can testify and there are different committees where you have to consider different views on on cost impacts and and ⁓ like any decision is made through a ⁓ consensus process. speaker-0: I guess a consensus of whom? Could we could we talk about that really quick? Like who is this consensus made up of? speaker-1: The consensus will most likely be of technical experts. So think about manufacturers, installers, insurers, inspectors, distributors, regulatory agencies, ⁓ labor. I would say it's it's mostly, you know, technically qualified people. What we are kind of doing is we're trying to open up a second route, ⁓ outside of the code world. where we build politics and a message and a movement before a code hearing. This is becoming a norm, especially when when the reform is is deeply structural or or to a lot of people controversial because, you know, you can't just show up at a code hearing and say, you know, elevators are too expensive. You know, you have to show why are they expensive, who's harmed, you know, what are other places doing? What are the safety outcomes that we're trying to get? And ⁓ And what are what are the organizations or the stakeholders or the people being affected affected by this? And I work for Metropolitan Abundance Project in California YMB. I think that's where we come in. Our role is not to pretend that we're elevator engineers, but instead it's a role to attempt to help translate a ⁓ a technical problem into a ⁓ public policy problem. And so what we do is we'll work with organizations that have subject matter expertise. And ⁓ so we'll talk with fire engineers, ⁓ fire officials, ⁓ life and safety officials, ⁓ inspectors, people within the industry, et cetera. And what we do in my organization is we'll we'll draft model legislation and ⁓ share it with ⁓ with advocates and technical reviewers. We all like refine language and we'll try to form a ⁓ a very strong, robust, you know, empirically backed ⁓ product that that has a strong coalition around it. Hmm. speaker-0: That's interesting. You've talked a little bit about the coalition that is being built of industry experts, life and safety experts, fire officials. What other types of individuals, entities do you bring to the table to help build that coalition as a public policy solution? speaker-1: I mean, building codes are affect everybody, right? And they affect us in like deeply profound ways, right? I always I keep on going back to elevators, but this could be, you know, any major ⁓ code reform. But for for elevators, we're reaching out to the senior advocacy community. ⁓ because these are people that are truly affected by us not having an abundance of elevators. my goal Is not to take expertise out of the process. Obviously that would be a mistake. But my goal would be to widen the definition of of what is expertise. I'm a firm believer that safety matters, engineering matters, but so does accessibility. You know, so does affordability. So does whether, you know, families can live in in a home that that you're building. and so, you know. paradigm of who dictates and who writes, you know, ⁓ the code is something that we're invoking on. speaker-0: Hmm. Whenever I think about sort of the evolution of how the building code has become more stringent. And we've talked ⁓ a lot about elevators today and comparing this prescriptive approach to like a performance-based approach. and if I'm thinking about Europe and the way that, as you put it, A lot of buildings are able to be retrofitted, much older buildings than we have here in the United States with elevators to make them more accessible. And at the same time, those elevators are cheaper to install and cheaper to maintain. I could see that somebody on the reverse side of this argument would be like, no, having stringent elevator code, elevator regulations has allowed us to have the safest buildings in the world. And I just don't know how to argue with them in terms of the numbers 'cause I don't see the European news all the time. I don't see these elevators failing all the time. Are they less quality elevators? Or can you speak to that? speaker-1: I mean I would I would point to the counterfactual. I would say, hey, look, type in LA Times, type in ⁓ elevators failing in ⁓ supportive housing, ⁓ elevators failing in old SRO ⁓ buildings, elevators you know not being maintained in older structures because the elevator is just too expensive to change. So like another thing that I think is really relevant in this conversation is the topic of power dynamics. I feel like people tend to defer to engineers and fire officials in a way that they do not always defer to other of I guess occupations, like a planner or an architect. And so especially in the United States, I feel like there's a cultural authority there. ⁓ you know, if an engineer says this is safer, you know, most people will be very hesitant to question it. ⁓ even when the question or the real question is, you know, like Like, is there a better way to achieve the safety or or if there are there trade-offs? Are there affordability trade-offs? You know, does this lower quality of life somehow? You know? Mm-hmm. an analogy I typically use for this is ⁓ I sometimes think about how about this ⁓ like what happened in America during our freeway era. you know, in the mid-20th century, we we delegated enormous power to ⁓ traffic engineers. To redesign cities around moving, essentially moving cars really, really quickly in and out of a city. And technically, they were really, really good at that narrow task. You know, there was entire handbooks, entire processes to determine, you know, this is how you get a car from point A to point B the fastest. And this is how you park a car once you are in the city. You know, these this office building needs X number of of parking spaces, whatever, right? Yeah. The broader question, you know, always is, you know, what did that do to the neighborhoods? What did that do to public health? What did that do to safety and pollution and community life and regional growth? You know, all that stuff was treated as secondary, right? And look at our cities today. We're we're in a way recovering from from that era. And I would say that we could draw a lot of similarities from that to to building code. speaker-0: Hmm. I like that analogy. I think it's really tangible to lot of the listeners that Building Down Cities has because we talk about these structural systems in which we've we've built our cities that now influence how we live on a daily basis. And the building code is a quiet way in which we are still living in those structures. So if we think about your theory of change, like how do we get to a better world ⁓ in which the building code helps us build more instead of prohibiting what could be built. Can you outline what the first step is? It it seems that creating this broader coalition of people who care about and have a broader set of expertise coming to the table. to talk through any of these reforms is critical to any next step. speaker-1: I've seen differences between zoning codes and land use, which for the for the ⁓ listener typically says, you know, where a building can go and how big the building can be and who gets to live in that building. So there's difference between that versus building codes. I feel like land use ⁓ typically gets fought in public. ⁓ And it's it's a hard fight and it's a lot of public debate. But usually the way that we found you know the solution for this is because it's so constrained, it's so tenuous, and it's so bitterly fought within within a local context. ⁓ typically, sadly, almost the way that we've solved it is from a top-down approach, from a state saying, Hey, look, guys. You know, I understand that, you know, we wanna keep things as they are and we wanna keep your nice neighborhoods, but we've added twenty thousand jobs in in your town, but only a hundred homes. There's a massive imbalance. You know, they're it's not sustainable. We're gonna you know, if nothing happens, your your town's gonna implode on itself. And so a lot of solutions have come from from the state saying, All right, you know. You build 20,000 homes for those 20,000 new jobs. You know, here's a outline of how you could do it. You could do it locally the way you want to, but but you have to do it. that is not true for building code at all. ⁓ from how I've experienced building code advocacy, the highest impact always or has been from the bottom up. I would say the the most effective change or most effective coalitions have have come from a local level telling their council member, Hey, you know, we want pretty buildings, we want nicer roads, we want more trees, we want these things to get it done. And ⁓ usually what what or kind of the strategy that we're doing is you know, we're we're aware of that and we're saying, Okay, you know, if a local elected wants to then pursue, you know. prettier neighborhoods, what backing do they need? What type of technical documents and support do they need? What kind of publications from big universities or big institutions do they need to have that, you know, ⁓ feeling of of I'm doing the right thing and it actually is safe. And also the coalitions to say, you know, we're we're we're backing you a hundred percent, you know, and ⁓ you know, we're gonna challenge the status quo because they're they're immovable, you know. You're it's gonna be really, really hard to challenge an engineer. But, you know, if if you have a strong enough advocacy base, then it does become possible. speaker-0: It's so interesting to juxtapose these two parts of the the development barriers that we've been talking about broadly today. One on the land use regulation side and one on the building code side. It seems like in terms of land use, it's a lot more understood. And everyone themselves, because they live in land use, feels like they could be an expert on it. And that public process has become so hairy. And on the other side, the building code is so technical. And even though we live within the building code, it's hard for a lay person to understand the technical complexity of that. And it's been sort of gatekeeped by those industries that know them best. And I'm just not saying like, hey, let's let building code be debated like land use is debated, but there must be this happy medium between the way we're approaching both of these aspects, in which technical experts and groups that have expertise. in areas that are affected by that technicality can come together to better understand each other but also use data to drive a better performance based solution. speaker-1: Very well said, yes. speaker-0: Okay. I'm just I'm connecting the dots as we're going along today too. So I think this is kind of how I want to frame it up for listeners who might be in the car driving, might be at home doing dishes. Like this is sort of the two paradigms that we've been spending a lot of time on today, but also throughout the last few podcasts is like how can we think about the ways that individuals, industries, decision makers at the policy level can come together to affect change so that Neighborhoods have the resources to build what needs to be built. So I wanna open it up to you. And anything we didn't have a chance to touch on today, any last parting words, anything you want to go back on touch on again, I just want to like give you the floor. speaker-1: I I just want the listeners to to really understand how important building codes are, even though they may seem like a giant technical book. And you know, you read it and you're like, ⁓ my gosh, what what what do these numbers and letters mean? they really do shape how our cities function. I come from a planning background. ⁓ I used to work at the city of Los Angeles and the city of Culver City, and I remember being tasked. To draw up an affordable housing overlay zone. You know, my counsel said we want more affordable housing. And I found that, you know, the only way to build affordable housing in this in this city, in the neighborhood where they wanted the zone, was to be able to build, you know, more modestly sized apartment buildings, right? The five to twenty unit apartment. And I spent weeks looking at, you know, all the zoning changes, on the land use changes, everything. And I kept on, you know, hitting myself against this ginormous wall that did not allow these buildings to be built because of the limitations of the building code. And that's how I got initially that's how I got into single seriform about four years ago. It was like three of us. Saying, you know, how do we build more affordable housing? We can't do it. This is a necessary component in order to unlock this housing typology. Otherwise you cannot have affordable housing on single lots in this context. speaker-0: What I loved about today's conversation with Ed is that we got to zoom in and out from the incredibly nerdy but important topics that are focused on the building code. Because the building code isn't destiny, it's a document, one written by people, shaped by interest, and updated when there's enough pressure to build something and change it. The zoning reform took decades to get traction, and it's still a fight. And the building code reform is earlier in that arc. But as Ed laid out today, the levers exist. State legislatures, model code bodies, and cities willing to pilot something different. What we discussed today is all the technical substrate of rules that makes even the permitted thing. The thing we've allowed to build through our zoning and land use conversations extraordinarily hard to build. And you can't fix one without eventually fixing the other. So if this conversation sparks something within you, if you know someone who this will resonate with, please share. And let's make sure that the people who this impacts the most understand that even though this might be wonky, it really matters in our day-to-day lives. Because when people can understand it, then we can change it and together we can build better cities.