Before you could get a building permit, however, you had to be
approved by the Zoning Authority. And Zoning—citing FEMA
regulations—would force you to bring the house "up to code," which
in many cases meant elevating the house by several feet. Now,
elevating your house is very expensive and time consuming—not
because of the actual raising, which takes just a day or two, but
because of the required permits.
Kafka would have liked the zoning folks. There also is a limit on
how high in the sky your house can be. That calculation seems to be
a state secret, but it can easily happen that raising your house
violates the height requirement. Which means that you can't raise
the house that you must raise if you want to repair it. Got
that?
Roger
Kimball: This Metamorphosis Will Require a Permit
Somehow, I get the feeling that we've reached peak government.
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