BUILD A HOUSE THE WAY I WANT

[Robert_Flowers]

Found this on homesteadingtoday though yall would like it  
its mostly about farming but here's the part on houses
Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

JOEL SALATIN / Acres v.33, n.9, Sept 2003 1sep03

BUILD A HOUSE THE WAY I WANT
You would think that if I cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber, and build the house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It's illegal to build a house less than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn't matter if I'm a hermit or the father of 20. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet.

Our son got married last year and wanted to build a small cottage on the farm, which he now oversees for the most part. Our new saying is, "He runs the farm, and I just run around." The plan was to do what Mom and Dad did for Teresa and I — trade houses when children come. That way our empty nest downsizes, and the young people can upsize in the main family farmhouse. Sounds reasonable and environmentally sensitive to me. But no, his little honeymoon cottage — or our retirement shack — had to be a 900-square-foot Taj Mahal. A state-of-the-art accredited composting toilet to avoid the need for a septic system and sewer leach field was denied.

When the hillside leach field would not meet agronomic standards and we had to install it in the floodplain, I asked the health department bureaucrat why. He said that essentially the only approvable leach fields now are alongside creeks and streams, because they are the only sites that offer dark-enough colored soils. Sounds like real environmental steward-ship, doesn't it?

Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government's business? Bureaucrats bend over back-wards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it's time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.

This is the links to the homesteadingtoday fourm and to  Acres U.S.A. that had the original
http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=174217

http://www.acresusa.com/toolbox/rep...atin_Sept03.pdf

Thanks to Farminghandyman for posting this.
robert

[glenn-k]

Thanks Robert.  Control is the key.  Taxation is the number one priority and without the ability to make you feel they have complete power over you there is no reason for their being.  Common sense does not enter into it.

Our town sewer plant sits on the creek - 50 feet away.  We have major spills each year it seems yet somehow that is legal.  Last one was estimated at 10000 gallons but the plant operator doesn't know if it made it to the creek or not.  Excuse me.....   it is the only thing lower than the plant.  Hopefully the beaver colony will process it before they release it into the creek.

[Robert_Flowers]

Glenn

Taxation is the number one priority/Common sense does not enter into it.

Boy are you right
That is the real reason the state don't want owner builders who would build smaller houses can't get enough tax money from a small house they want $500,000.00 house not a $50,000.00 who cares if only two people live in a house you still need 4 bedrooms 2 1/2 baths and don't forgot the 3 car garage!

Twiggs county is a poor county you would thank that it would do everything it could to bring in more houses big or little but they just make it harder i guess when you get in pubic office your IQ drops by 99%

[Erin]

Hopefully the beaver colony will process it before they release it into the creek.

Beavers are useful (they recently dammed a creek that runs through one of our pastures and made a nice little pond), but I'm not entirely sure they're that useful.  

So far as legality vs. illegality; move to rural Nebraska or South or North Dakota...  The few areas that have zoning regs have really loose ones.  And we could use the population growth!  [smiley=laugh.gif]

[glenn-k]

All I can see is the cold winter, Erin. :-/

When you want to see why gov. does things --- Follow The Money --- and the quest of otherwise many marginally employable people to have power over the masses.  We call them welfare recipients around here as it is another form of parasitic employment.

Not that I don't respect them and all they stand for.

[builderboy]

They'ed be better of financally taxing a small home than vacant land. Must be that 99% IQ drop!!