City zoning / un-permitted house remodeling “free-for-all” holiday: one day per year (A.K.A. “The Purge: Real Estate Edition”)

Background:

Many cities have restrictive zoning requirements that, perhaps justifiably, prevent certain types of construction (for example, building a pesticide manufacturing plant next to an elementary school).

Some restrictions are a bit more arbitrary: many “homeowners associations” (HOAs) enforce extremely specific details about the exact shades of beige that a garage door can be painted, whether venetian blinds are allowed in windows, etc.

The Issue:

Even if a change to a house is relatively non-controversial (e.g. adding an extra bedroom in the back), the permitting process for making a change to a house “officially” blessed can be time consuming and expensive. For example, a person who wants to add an extra room to a house in San Francisco should either plan early (https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+permitting+process+slow) or resort to bribery (https://www.google.com/search?q=sf+permitting+process+bribery+fbi), so that the person’s grandchildren might one day enjoy that extra room (Figure 1).

Fig. 1: In this house, the blue part is “blessed” by the local government, while the red addition is an unpermitted add-on. (Note that this is totally unrelated to whether or not the addition meets the relevant building codes.)

Proposal:

In order to cut through red tape and expedite the construction of affordable housing, let’s solve this issue in a simple fashion: one day per year, there will be a special “construction amnesty” day. On this day, any yet-undetected unpermitted construction may be officially declared by the builder or owner, after which it will be officially approved by the city as long as it meets basic structural-stability building codes (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: It might be difficult to hide the construction of an observatory (left) or mine cart roller coaster (right), but if a homeowner manages to do so until the Construction Amnesty holiday, then their questionable housing add-on will be approved.

Conclusion:

People are generally very change-averse, and homeowners might complain when a pirate-themed ferris wheel opens up right next door to the senior citizens’ home, but the benefits should greatly outweigh the drawbacks. For example, by allowing a slaughterhouse to be built right next to a middle school, it opens up the opportunity for after-school jobs for students who don’t have a driver’s license.

PROS: Increases the number of construction jobs, increases the amount of housing available in a city, and reduces the motivation to bribe city officials.

CONS: Really no downsides at all to this one!