The Houston Chronicle, inadvertently, brought up an interesting point about "local ordinances" or (codes) and how people tend to support them, until they don't.
The first story was a headline story on chron.com complete with recent Houston City Code violations. These ranged in scope from failure to maintain "minimum standards" to "junked vehicles" to "dangerous buildings" or items that were just considered a "nuisance".
While the idea behind codes is a good one, after all, you don't want to live next to someone who does not maintain their houses, the Devil, as "they" say, lies in the details, especially when those details start to branch into the absurd. For example....
Texas Man Arrested for Not Mowing His Yard. Dylan Braddour, Houston Chronicle.
Neighbor's Sue Terry Black's Over Excessive Barbecue Smoke in Austin. Heather Leighton. Houston Chronicle
Dallas Officials Remove Blue Police Support Ribbons due to Code Violations in Dallas. Dylan Braddour. Houston Chronicle.
We're used to seeing a host of horror stories about homeowners stuck in HOA Hell, where disagreements over supposed "code violations" lead to house liens, and even evictions, houses sold at auction and people suing for relief. The standard response from 'others' (those not involved in the mess) is that the homeowners purchased the home with eyes wide open, that they knew what they were signing on for and deserve everything they get.
There's rarely any mention of an HOA potentially making ridiculous requests, but it happens more frequently than people think. It happens in the cities as well, where ordinances are enforced through zero tolerance methods similar to what you find in today's schools. For the most part, we're OK with this, provided the codes don't impugn something that we like.
When the shoe is on the other foot though, if our favorite hangout is threatened because of a violation of the noise ordinance, or if a barbecue restaurant is in trouble because they create barbecue smoke, we suddenly become enraged. To quote Douglas Addams: Something! must be done.
Too often that Something! is to either pass another ordinance or, in many cases, a specifically targeted exemption. These solutions either a.) make the Codes so unwieldy as to be unintelligible, or b.) turn the codes into a de-facto rule-book for what types of business we want to see. It then punishes those we don't by picking the feared 'winners and losers' not by what the market will bear, but by what people THINK they want the market to be.
That last distinction is fairly important. Because why we all think we understand and know what the market wants (we're the market right?) the truth is we don't. This is due to the fact that we are all, individually, just one small slice of the market as a whole. Putting your entire household in the same bucket is often impossible since each family member potentially wants to see different things.
None of this should be read to mean that codes outlining acceptable minimum standards for home or building maintenance should be abolished. Quite the contrary. It should be required that people keep their homes in working order, their grass mowed and their automobiles from collecting rust in the front yard.
What we need to work to avoid is the idea that the Codes in question can insulate us from everything we find offensive while ensuring those things we don't are allowed. Too often our call to city government when offended is to demand an ordinance be written that outlaws the offending item. City Council, eager to be reelected and happy to assume more power, is often too happy to do this. Rare is the municipal official who looks at a controversy and says "You know what? I think the laws we have on the books are sufficient." Were that more would do that.
Then there's old political trick of telling the affronted to just go pound sand. In our current age of being continually aggrieved, it wouldn't hurt us any to be told that occasionally. Especially when, in the case of the barbecue smoke, we're not really being harmed in any way. Looking at that example you can clearly see just how damaging a knee-jerk municipal politician can be. One solution proposed? To require every barbecue establishment in Austin to install smoke-scrubbers that can run in cost up to $20,000.
It would benefit most communities in Texas to take a hard look at their community codes and begin executing a shave with Occam's Razor. Work to remove the needlessly complex and complicated from the code and focus on the basics. Of course, this will mean taking away some power from local government and that's probably too much to ask.
Another method would be for the citizenry to just stop and think a minute before clamoring for relief from the local municipalities. Sadly, we currently live in a society that thrives in victimhood, to the detriment of coherent problem solving.
In other words: We're probably just a little bit screwed.
So the next time you wonder why some things you used to do you can't anymore or why all of the nice things are going away, take a look at your city code, and the elected officials and citizens who asked for it. What to do after that is entirely up to you.
