Over the past 15 years, North Carolina lawmakers have rejected limits on construction on steep slopes, which might have reduced the number of homes lost to landslides; blocked a rule requiring homes to be elevated above the height of an expected flood; weakened protections for wetlands, increasing the risk of dangerous storm water runoff; and slowed the adoption of updated building codes, making it harder for the state to qualify for federal climate-resilience grants.
Those decisions reflect the influence of North Carolina’s home building industry, which has consistently fought rules forcing its members to construct homes to higher, more expensive standards, according to Kim Wooten, an engineer who serves on the North Carolina Building Code Council, the group that sets home building requirements for the state.
“The home builders association has fought every bill that has come before the General Assembly to try to improve life safety,” said Ms. Wooten, who works for Facilities Strategies Group, a company that specializes in building engineering. She said that state lawmakers, many of whom are themselves home builders or have received campaign contributions from the industry, “vote for bills that line their pocketbooks and make home building cheaper.”
Housing is cardboarded enough of late. You get good windows and great insulation even as your walls/foundations crack within the first 5 years. (Popped into the private group for the new subdivision down the way at the edge of town…the pics and complaints are not pretty. Oh. And the land they built on. The construction people had to redo an entire road between houses with people already in them because water cracked that road and bubbled up through it.). This is going to be a regulations battle going forward. I don’t think we want less regulation on these cardboard subdivision houses.
Repubs are going to scream that DEMs are preventing houses from being built by keeping current regulations in place. While DEMs are like ya, safety, find another way. Run on the problem, don’t find solutions.
I am keen to hear about this federal land thing the VP candidates touched on.