If someone was talking about putting in Conex Lego Home in a gated community next to McMansions, I'd be on the community board's side.HTRN wrote:It's more to do with aesthetics and property values - people don't want their nice half milion dollar house to have a view resembling a shipping port, and thus take a hit in value, considering what they just spent. So they raise a stink to the community board.Aesop wrote: Some of the NIMBYer counties hereabouts have already made sure to put in the building code, even for rural properties, that conexes "may not be used for human habitation". Creativity with disposable items like that evidently messes up their permitting process, and cuts off architect fees to their cronies.
These are regs for counties that are overwhelmingly rural, with 10-20 acre minimum lot size.
If they were about aesthetics, they'd just mandate a landscaping and view plan that'd pass a review.
What I'd build, you wouldn't even know was there at all without a drone when I got done, and the nearest neighbors are a long-distance rifle shot away.
A few berms and hedges, and they wouldn't even be within sight.
But if you don't put up an 1800 ft2 heating/cooling nightmare farmhouse that's an invitation to robbery, burglary, and what have you, and instead come up with a way to make comfortable shelter that's affordable and secure, they can't assrape an owner on assessed value for property taxes forever. They aren't even shy about that.
More than one person just puts in plans for a 2000-3000 ft2 monster house, with a detached garage incl. a guest apt., gets the okay to build, does the garage first, then says "Whoops, ran out of money. Sorry." And that's where they live, exactly as they intended all along, but if they'd tried to that up front, it would have been denied.
IMHO, if I'm building on property where I can't hit my neighbors' houses with a crossbow and a brisk tailwind, the only function of plan check is to ensure I'm not going to kill myself or others, or create a local health and safety disaster with whatever I do. Period.
Just for the helluvit, if someone wanted to put in a pond and build Thoreau's Walden cabin beside it, it'd be "too small" per code.
Never mind that I could knock it together in a month's spare time, and pay for it from the surplus of any two, with nothing but a small property loan over my head at any point in time that'd be less that what my truck payment was.
It's simply another form of nannyism where they've got precious little goddam business, but it's still illegal to gutshoot the bastards.
If I can't get the approvals I want where I want to retire, I'm going the other way:
I'm going to get a patch on the east side of Edwards AFB, right next to the sate highway, and build a life-size Millennium Falcon, full house inside, in plain view for miles horizontally and 0-50,000' vertically, just to let the shit-hot test pilots have something to gawk at that they can't fly, and coincidentally back up traffic on the highway for twenty miles 24/7 when I light it up with solar-powered lighting, and release compressed CO2 and fire up an arc spotlight every once in awhile to make it look like it's going to take off.
The Highway Patrol should love that.
