Silicon Valley Techies Fight to Save a Popular but Illegal Haven

http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207

  The city also began pressing for more codes to be met. 
  Weekly rattled off what appear to be significant costs: 
  $150,000 to make three bathrooms compliant with the 
  American Disabilities Act, $130,000 for fire sprinklers, 
  and potentially thousands more in building permit fees and 
  other improvements. 

  "They want us to commit to a traffic study, build concrete 
  walls around the dumpster and have the landlord re-slope 
  the driveways," Weekly said. 

  City staff said that it hasn't been determined whether the 
  building has adequate exits and parking. 

  City officials say code enforcement officers saw the Dojo 
  advertising events online that would exceed the Dojo's 49-
  person occupancy limit for a building without fire 
  sprinklers.

As I said, it always starts with things optimized for optics like fire alarms (who could be against that?), but the moment you start digging you get the requirements for "traffic studies" and "concrete-enclosed dumpsters".

----

ORIGINAL POST:

Well, I think we're at a basic philosophical impasse here. I'd argue that you probably have never dealt with the details of the regulatory process, and that if you did, you might feel differently; regulations are by their nature safety or security theater, optimized for optics. Most of the startups who've encountered specific regulations (Uber, AirBnB, Square, among them) tend to be much more skeptical of their wisdom than the public at large.

But, even more deeply, we don't want to live in the same societies.

You don't want to live in a place where crazy hackers can pack 50 people into an area zoned for 49, or have a building without a wheelchair-accessible bathroom. Stated in a less flip way, you don't want to be on the hook for the risks taken by others, and you want to force them to comply with certain cultural mores that you consider the basics of civilized society.

By contrast, I don't want to live in a place where other people can impose irrational regulations without concern for practicality, cost, or consequences. I don't want to live in a place where other people aren't content with making their own places wheelchair-accessible, but want to impose their own ethical code on me as well, via fines and DOJ sweeps, among other mechanisms.

Ultimately a lot of this boils down to population density and the extent to which someone can choose risk freely on their own. I'm very skeptical about the necessity of the ADA and cynical about the regulators enforcing the building permits process; you are not. I believe that government should be focused more on preventing actual crimes than doing sweeps for ADA violators; you may believe the lack of said accommodations to be discrimination, and therefore a reasonable priority for the federal government. So I think we'll have to just agree to disagree here.

I did not realise that. Wow, the NY times is really turning into a tabloid these days...

With all due respect, I don't believe it ignores it; see for example this snippet:

  In my experience, even the best design professionals   
  typically have an inadequate knowledge of all of the 
  accessibility standards. And local building official 
  approvals provide no protection against accessibility 
  violations.

If you've worked on large construction projects, you'll find that municipalities vary greatly in what they decide to enforce and how they decide to enforce it. It's not always predictable up front, and in this case as in many others, it changes over time [1]:

  The Dojo, which is used as an office and collaborative 
  space by 300 programmers who pay a $100 monthly fee, has 
  been open since late 2009. Until last fall, Dojo board 
  members say city officials had been relatively permissive 
  as the Dojo operated without building permits in an 
  industrial garage space, and was welcomed by some 
  officials as a sort of incubator for tech start-ups. 

The key to avoiding regulation is to avoid attention from city government:

  "We had a small celebration, but it wasn't a big, crazy 
  celebration" Weekly said. "That kind of pushed them over 
  the line. They were starting to see us as a commercial 
  event space." 

  ..  

  The city also began pressing for more codes to be met. 
  Weekly rattled off what appear to be significant costs: 
  $150,000 to make three bathrooms compliant with the 
  American Disabilities Act, $130,000 for fire sprinklers, 
  and potentially thousands more in building permit fees and 
  other improvements. 

  The Dojo also lacks a required fire alarm, which could 
  cost $15,000. Without one, city officials say they'll seek 
  the closure of the Dojo by the end of the month.

  "They want us to commit to a traffic study, build concrete 
  walls around the dumpster and have the landlord re-slope 
  the driveways," Weekly said. 

  City staff said that it hasn't been determined whether the 
  building has adequate exits and parking. 

  City officials say code enforcement officers saw the Dojo 
  advertising events online that would exceed the Dojo's 49-
  person occupancy limit for a building without fire 
  sprinklers.

And this is all imposed with no regard for costs:

  The Dojo has had to cancel numerous money-raising events 
  and classes that easily attract more than 49 people. "Our 
  membership is down considerably" without the classes, said 
  Weekly. "We lost dozens of members. We had classes on 
  machine learning and Android programming."

  Also cancelled was a job fair in which employers and job 
  seekers switch roles: programmers sit at tables presenting 
  their work to potential employers who make the rounds. 

  "We've gotten dozens of people hired from these," Weekly 
  said. The event brings in up to 150 people and "raises a 
  good chunk of change. But we can't run it this year and 
  these people can't get hired."

Again, it always starts with reasonable sounding stuff (fire alarms) and then you start getting Mountain View asking you to burn money on traffic studies and building walls around the dumpster.

  Weekly said the Dojo has enough money -- $15,000 -- to put in fire alarms.

  "We just wish they would take into account the reality of 
  the situation," he said. "What I don't think they realize 
  is this is a volunteer-run nonprofit. We don't have 
  millions of dollars coming out of our ears because we are 
  affiliated with numerous computer-related things."

[1] http://mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=5207

Yes, the Dojo got thwacked by the common practice that every city government in California has at least which is that when you sign a new lease you have to bring the space up to the current code. This problem is compounded by the fact that 'the code' keeps changing, in part because of new issues (like earthquake knowledge gained from new earthquakes) and in part because they don't feel they have enough money (an example of that is that the 'blue' color required for outlining handicapped spaces changed slightly which required folks to repaint existing striping).

A more accurate headline would be 'Haven struggles to stay open while updating to latest codes', having just gone through the process of securing new facilities for our company one of the things in the lease was a requirement that the landlord turn over the space already compliant with the latest codes. Remember this story if you are out leasing space (if you're subleasing you get a pass though, so sometimes that makes it a better deal)

Not being up to code makes it illegal to occupy the building. I'm not quite sure why the NY Times would leave something like that out; it's possible that code violations are more prevalent in NY and thus the import need not be explained.