Buildings Permits 1 - the Who, the Why and the How.

Building permits:

Credit - Gary Erickson Architect - July 2, 2017.

For the common good, and the health of my business, I'm going to try here to exlain the common building permit with as much brevity and humor as possible, without triggering anybody on Steemit. Not going to be easy, but I'd be your best shot at it. Here goes it. The breakdown.

Three types of questions about building permits: the Who, the Why and the How.

The Who is easy, the Why is messy, and the How is complicated. It may take 2 blogs to do it.

TITLE: The Who Question

Who may have to know about building permits?

If you are:

An owner of land and buildings (a house or store)
A buyer of land and buildings (same house or store)
A tenant with a renovation to land and buildings (I'm renting the house or store)

If you are any one of these people, this will be of vital importance to you.

It will be a legal requirement to obtain a building permit for most construction.
Exceptions will be interior finishes, cabinetry and millwork not containing plumbing, a platform not attached to your structure and under two feet from grade, or a building under 10 m2, typically a garden shed not containing sanitary plumbing. Zoning requirements for exterior landscaping will still govern your landscape improvements, but may not need a building permit.
So that is pretty well most of what we could call architecture, mechanical engineering or structural engineering.
The municipality may not need a permit as it is the government, and they make the rules.

TITLE: The Why Question

Many complex why questions arise around the municipal building permit. Two dominate:

Q1. Why do I have to get one?

The short answer is it's the law.
Your compliance is taken for granted if you are resident in the state, as with most things legal.
You know the government is going to have a legal process to ensure your compliance, a fine, a court order or a lien on your land, with punishing collection and legal fees.
What you may not know is that your fire insurance may not be any good without your property being "legal" as it is called.
Your insurance policy likely has a clause demanding all construction has a building permit from the authority having jurisdiction. As the owner you are the only person responsible for this. If you bought it that way, doesn't matter. Its yours, illegal construction problems and all. A claim for even a small fire and vital life safety can be many millions. You want the insurer to pay, or you will likely be bankrupt.
You may find some relief from your title insurance company through your lawyer for the purchase of illegal construction.
Don't feel hard done by, as this is the way it is in most of the developed world, with differences in the amount of regulation of construction.
So far these are very searchable answers, although it is surprising how few people really understand their liabilities to the government. Your construction project may be one of the few times you have come in direct contact, besides updating the tags on your vehicle.
Your government may not feel it is their role to inform you of your duty in all of this building permit business.
Your lawyer and architect, if you have one, is there for that, but you would have to know to ask the question.
The government regulates, inspects and enforces, not necessarily educates.

That is why this blog is necessary.

The long answer to the Why question references the messy history of political philosophy.

Common offhand client questions: "Why do I have to obey laws? Why is it the governments business what I do with my property? While I'm at it, I never said I'd be paying property taxes anyway, did I? I may not like what your doing with my money! Can you make it so I dont have to pay GST? Hey eveybody does it. "

Such libertarian anarchist type questions are popular in Steemit, home of crypto revolutionaries.

Q2. Why should I bother?

The duty of a citizen to obey the law is complex. Besides "you better, or else", a weak answer, there have been many philosophers who have debated this point for thousands of years. I'll cut a few lines out for you, as it is unbloggable.

Rousseau. The Social Contract. Preservation of the State. Book 3. 1762.

Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau

The setup: "This is the social compact; for civil association is the most voluntary of all acts. Every man being born free and his own master, no one, under any pretext whatsoever, can make any man subject without his consent."

Why you: "When the state is instituted, residence constitutes consent; to dwell within its territory is to submit to the sovereign."

The next setup: "Apart from this primitive contract, the vote of the majority always binds all the rest. .. but it is asked how a man can be both free and forced to conform to wills that are not his own. How are the opponents at once free and subject to its laws they have not agreed to?"

Rousseau feels we consent to being governed by voting. Voting establishes the general will toward the common good. This preserves the state, the giver of security against life's needs. Remember voting? Yea maybe you skipped it last time.

The problem with the setup: "Good laws lead to the making of better ones; bad ones bring about worse. As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.

For Rousseau, such laws, representative of the general will through voting, are the outward expression of a vital internal essence of the state, the hearts of the citizens;

It's all on you anyway: "..This forms the real constitution of the State, takes on every day new powers, when other laws decay or die out, restores them or takes their place, keeps a people in the ways in which it was meant to go, and insensibly replaces authority by the force of habit. I am speaking of morality, of custom, above all of public opinion; a power unknown to political thinkers, on which none the less success in everything else depends. With this the great legislator concerns himself in secret, though he seems to confine himself to particular regulations; for these are only the arc of the arch, while manners and morals, slower to arise, form in the end its immovable keystone...."

When the laws are poorly understood due to lack of familiarity, language or cultural difference, the hearts of its citizens may naturally differ in general will. The states laws need to be refreshed through the legislators art. This jurisprudence takes time and consultation. Theres a law gap, and its widening.

In Rousseau's time populations changed at a much slower rate than our technology infused hyper speed. The reach for globalization intensifies this bad connection between individual values and state legislation. Laws based on local custom may seem unfair or arbitrary, causing a collapse of trust.

At today's speeds of change, the heart of the people may be at odds with building laws, so slow to change. Citizens today may not feel expressed in their government.
Rousseau may conclude that the State's laws, without refreshment, may fail to provide its vital form.

The Great Example: The Toronto Basement Apartment Ticket

Credit - Gary Erickson Architect - Feb 15, 2015. Revit fantasy rendering of basment apartment walkout.

In no instance is the plight of the newcomer, and the laws of their city more in conflict than in the Toronto basement apartment controversy.
As people flood to the city from around the world, they strive to put a roof over their heads, for an affordable price. The pressure of their demand raises the rents. This can fall to the most underutilized heated interior space available, the Canadian house basement.
As Canada has wonderfull freezing temperatures in the winter, the house must sit on a four foot deep foundation. Ice heaves anyting into the air. It's a powerfull force that can break down a mountain. It cant get that deep, depending on location. I guess igloos are temporary, or go with the flow.
As cold air is bad under the house, these means concrete or block walls, not stilts. Since its invention the great Canadian basement has been a warm in the winter, cool on the summer, dark and damp place to live, mosty for spiders. Then came the demand for cheap housing in the city.

A client of mine received a building department ticket, or Order to Comply, or OTC by a city inspector.
This is the most common of infractions, and not anyones fault, just to be clear.
The owner had been renting out the basement of her house to multiple families in two illegally constructed apartments. Supposedly this was the custom back home.
My client certainly didn't want to know about surveys, parking, acoustic separation, fire escape windows, fire ratings, fire alarms, smoke alarms, or natural light and ventilation. The owner understandably didn't understand what they were, or why they would be needed.

My client just wanted a building permit to get rid of the ticket without sacrificing revenue. Thats the typical response, and rational looking at a mortgage payment every month.

I advised her it would be prudent to evict and demolish, and drawings and city fees would be too costly, but few are ready to do this without an attempt at a permit application. A set of drawngs of her whole house was ordered, to city standards.
I set a new young technologist on the challenge, and guided him appropriately. They shared a common language, which can help greatly. Thanks to him for helping out.

The owner may have felt they had been doing nothing wrong, or had been providing a vital service to local families.
In contrast to her opinion, the building laws made her crowded basement a dark, deadly fire trap, and the street parking congested. Neighbours were not happy and called in the inspector.

The common will was expressed.

The application was refused at zoning review, due to inadequate parking. One car per unit, on your property. No survey had been bought to qualify the parking spaces.

Worse, a second unit would cost $40,000 in park and development fees, called "applicable laws". This is how the city pays for local "impact costs". For someone charging low rent this was impossible to justify.
Basement permits typically add only one unit with no additional development fees and taxes.

As I haven't heard from her, I conclude she finally demolished her illegal basement apartments.
The common will was served, the State was refreshed and reinforced at the unfortunate owners expense, but the tenants were evicted. The States protection was only partial for them.
The gap between the law, and the common will was not reduced, but hardened. The state was stabilized but was still heading for rebellion, if homelessness is its result.
The States duty is to provide the basic needs of its people, and yet here we are.

From Goggle: http://globalnews.ca/news/3479348/new-data-reports-27-homeless-deaths-in-toronto-so-far-in-2017/

Next the How questions.