00:00Baileytoday on the podcast we're gonna be discussing some of the key topics that are mentioned in this recent New York Times bestselling book. It's called Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. Now you may have seen about it in the news, however, we're gonna be keeping this conversation very apolitical, and mainly we're gonna be talking about different zoning and development and anti-growth construction type policies.
As they pertain to the architecture and construction industry. So that's a topic for today. Sean, I know you have a couple of key things you've highlighted from the first, third or so of the book. So why don't you just start us off.
00:41Sean CanningThanks Bailey. Yeah, so the first
00:43BaileyI.
00:43Sean Canningguess I wanna mention to anybody who's listening to this is, I think the first third of the book was more relevance to the stuff we do as architects. The second two thirds of the book kind of gets more into science and technology, which is also an interesting read. But the first third was a lot more relevant and I found it more about exactly the stuff I do on a day-to-day basis. So one of the things is, you know. Coming to California, I'm 42 years old, so I was born in 1983. I always had this idea that California was this like very progressive state where new ideas were brought to the table and kind of like the best idea wins. reading the book kind of sets. The stage and gives me a little bit of perspective. And as it turns out, it's not always the way California operates. Sometimes when I'm trying to permit one of my projects, I feel like, you know, am I the crazy one here? Like, why is this so difficult? Why is there such a hard time?
Why is the building department being so restrictive with the minutiae that they ask for? And when I read this book here, I was like, oh, this actually goes back quite a while. And you know, as somebody who's 42 to get that context it was very interesting. So I think one of the ways we can set the stage is the chapter.
particularly the part about high speed rail, because I think it brings everything into perspective. So basically at one point in history, Americans led the world in railroad construction. we'd built 1800 miles. In a period of six years. And in abundance, they say now six years is the period of time it takes to realize we have to delay our current high speed rail 10 more years. So it takes six years just to do the studies to realize you have to delay the project. And years ago, or a hundred, so years ago, we built the entire Intercontinental railroad system in six years. So that's kind of wild. I mean, we. Built the Empire State Building in 12 months. It's hard to get a permit to build a small addition in that time right now. So we built 1800 miles in six years. In the 1960s, Japan built their first high speed rail. Now, in 1982, a year before I was born, Jerry Brown commissioned a study to see what the costs of high-speed rail in California would be. Fast forward all the way to 1996. state of California forms the high speed rail authority, and in 2008, the year I graduated college, they approved a plan to build the first segment by 2020. Now, here we are doing this podcast in 2025. We have no high speed rail, so we've already missed the date established in 2008. We've missed this date already by five years. So Jerry Brown was reelected and he decides to make high-speed rail, his signature project, and there's support by Obama.
There's funds to do this project. The environment was perfect to finally get high-speed rail in the United States and get the California high-speed rail project done. unfortunately, It's delayed. And then ultimately, Newsom is elected, who basically puts the brakes on the project. Now where we are today of course Newsom is still the governor here, and the project is still moving forward. It's been so slow. The project has been so delayed that we're now building high speed rail without the funds to complete the project. ultimately when the project is going to be built, the rail will be in a location that is less than ideal, so we'll have less efficiency on the rail. And that's just because. through environmental impact reports and through other testing, you need to move the location out of the denser areas where the rail would be best utilized. So it's very interesting. Now in the same time, China built over 23,000 miles of high-speed rail. And there's a big difference between the way we build here in California and then the way they build in China. In China, they don't have to ask for permission, so they can just use eminent domain and build the rail anywhere they want. And in California we're bogged down by. an infinite amount of community groups before you get approval to build something. So we're basically on the opposite end of the spectrum of China. Now, I'm not saying China's great, but obviously there's a problem in California, so somewhere in the middle would be probably the most reasonable spot to land. That kind of gives an example of. What type of issues we deal with in California when we're trying to permit something.
Also another important thing to point out is every year a project is delayed. The project increases in costs by the amount of inflation, which is generally 3% per year. And when we have high inflation, it can go up 5%. So just to pull all this back to where we are today. If it takes a year to get a permit for something, by the time you get that permit, you're gonna pay 3% more for construction. if it takes five years to get a permit for a larger project, you're going to pay significantly more for that construction due to all the inflation that occurred in those five year periods. So there is kind of an urgency to get permits. faster than we're currently getting them permitted. In fact, I recently read that the permitting stage of a project is referred to by developers as the value of death because there's an indefinite amount of time and that increases risk and cost on a project. So Bailey, do you see how high speed rail, how the California high speed rail projects particularly kind of summarizes the regulation challenges we're dealing with today?
06:22BaileyI do. Yes, and it's definitely something we've talked about a lot on these podcast discussions in terms of permitting, overregulation, that sort of thing. I think it's important to note that the proposed, at least the initial proposal, is that the high speed rail system would take. Two hours to go from LA to San Francisco and vice versa.
So that would be pretty awesome. 'cause I'm sure it's like probably about an eight or 10 hour drive at the moment. And I think it's worth noting also, the book uses the example of France as well, so it talks about France and Japan having high speed rail as well as China. But I think the French example is good because.
It shows that you could be a Western style democracy and still be able to do this. And also I feel like it's well known that like the French are known for strikes and like not the most efficient, or at least not the most like, you know, strenuous work weeks and all that type of stuff. It's a bit more relaxed, the work culture.
And I also did take the high speed rail when I was in France from Paris to the south of France. And I think it goes like 150 miles per hour or something like that. It's pretty cool. Way better than flying. So I think that shows a good example of how this could be done. But also it's very important because
California geographically would be the best spot in the country to have the high speed rail other than like the East coast, the northeast.
And, but it also shows that it's a very much a state problem. 'cause people would think about, you know, the federal government not being able to do this efficiently, but even on the state level where it should be easier. Obviously they've been doing this for, they've been considering this for longer than I've been alive and there's no high speed rail, so.
07:59Sean CanningSo if the governor wants the high speed rail and the president wants the HighSpeed rail and the majority of the population wants the high speed rail, why can't we build the high speed? Drill. And I think to summarize it, we get bogged down in documentation rather than building. So our work resources have shifted from actually doing the work to preparing documents to do the work or documenting the work that's being done.
Of course you have all thesedifferent groups that will protest the project and then you end up in litigation that becomes permitting and litigation becomes huge obstructions for these types of projects.
The high rail is not a project that I work on as an architect doing residential work, but I wanted to use that to kind of set the stage and explain why it can be so difficult to get something built. And that trickles all the way down building a custom home, an a DU, and even an addition for your home if it takes a year. To permit that addition. You're paying 3% more to build that addition. It shouldn't take a year to permit a project.
So I guess this brings us to zoning, and this is kind of a deep conversation. So I want to go a little bit slow with this, but I have some bullet points listed here. A lot of this comes from chapter one of the book, so this was some stuff that I was unaware of. Zoning was implemented in the early 19 hundreds and the advent of zoning is actually Los Angeles, and I thought it would've been New York City, but it turns out, according to the book, that zoning actually started here in California So zoning at its most basic is a great idea. I think most people would also argue, it's still very important. Zoning is what makes people building factories. Build the factories further away from people building homes. And usually that's a good idea. proper zoning, you could also create city centers that allow for more density. And then on the outskirts of those, you could create lower density.
And then on the outskirts or certain areas of the city, you can designate industrial uses. And in other areas, you can designate more rural areas. But I think one of the things I keep coming back to is like, the ideas are good, but the implementation ends up being bad or maybe abused. one of the things that happened once zoning was created after World War II was you had zoning as a form of anti-growth. So the way you would do this is you could require a large minimum size for a lot. So let's say a minimum lot size has to be 10,000 square feet rather than 3,500 square feet. Well, what you've done is increased all of the prices of the large lots, and now you prevent lower income people from moving into those vacant lots. So lower income people cannot get into home ownership or land ownership, and they. Perpetually become stuck in, rental status. So that's something that still goes on today.
There's still lot sizes that are larger than they need to be to build homes. So we have people without homes and sometimes the code says, Hey, we cannot make this lot any smaller, which creates an affordability issue.
11:15Baileyit's very interesting. There's an argument, actually I think it was a lawsuit over some zoning here in Southeast San Diego. That's the neighborhood that I live in. there was a footnote in the code that said that Lots in this neighborhood could subdivide or would have a lower minimum lot size than the same zoning in other neighborhoods. when I looked at this footnote, I was like, oh, that's great, because now lots can be smaller, people can pay less for lots. You can end up with more dense housing. But the neighborhood of Southeast San Diego sued the city saying that their lots should be just as large as. The other lots in the same zone. So when I look at that, and I see it as an advantage, the community sees it as a racist policy. So the community is actually working against themselves. where you would think smaller lots would be preferred. So that was just a little footnote I wanted to throw in there. Okay. So then the book breaks down these two neighborhoods Lakewood, California Petaluma, California. been to either one of these neighborhoods, so I wasn't aware of the history of them, but I guess after World War ii, Lakewood, California becomes a place where They're welcoming and it kind of flourishes. But on the other end of the spectrum, Petaluma, California implements a growth rate cap by limiting permits. So they're saying, Hey, we'll only approve X amount of permits every year, and then that neighborhood cannot grow. So prices increase in Petaluma, California. This has become, I think a major force to maintain high property values. From basically the 1970s on, I think Rancho Santa Fe is also probably a really good example of this. they have very large lot sizes and that makes all of the property very high and they're not going to allow subdivisions. So people with lower incomes cannot move into these neighborhoods, and it maintains ultimately a high property cost. So just to bring it back. To me, Bailey, I'm from Paramus, New Jersey in Bergen County, and in one of our last shows we talked about how I was basically priced out of the county because I could not find a home or an apartment in Bergen County. When I was in my twenties trying to move out of my parents' home, I just always realized that, hey, I'd never be able to live in Paramus, but.
13:33Sean Canningin the 1970s, Bergen County made it illegal to build apartments. So you fast forward to like 2005 when I'm trying to move outta my parents' home. That's 35 years after the policy and there's no apartments for me to move to. So ultimately I ended up moving to Patterson, New Jersey for a brief period before I moved out here to California. So. It's just very interesting how these policies have a like long-term effect on the community, but also on the people who live in that community and ultimately my family ended up moving, we all ended up moving out of Bergen County. My brother moved down to Central New Jersey, so my parents wanted to be closer to them, so they had to move outta Bergen County I couldn't afford Bergen County, so I moved outta Bergen County. So we all ended up moving out of our hometown, due to a policy, a zoning policy that was implemented in 1970. So it's, it's also other code restrictions, like requiring a minimum amount of parking before you can build a home. if you can't fit maybe two or three or four parking spaces, whatever the code says, the minimum is, you'd be disqualified to build the home. so that's another way people can maintain the high property value and, by obstructive codes and obstructive zoning. Okay, so the next one is one that really puts everything in perspective for me.
And that's CQA, that's California's Environmental Quality Act. So CQA comes up quite a bit. Generally it's for larger projects. the way it works is CQA, you could be required to provide an environmental impact report. An environmental impact report is a long. written report. it's not really an architectural type thing. It's something you would hire a professional to do outside of me, and you'd have to provide this report and then the report would be reviewed. And ultimately the community, the city, the state could determine if the project was going to create a hazard to the environment. this began in the seventies. So just like everything else, like the concept is great. we don't want projects that are negative to the environment. We want projects that generally are like neutral or positive to the environments. But again, the implementation is where it fails because these environmental impact reports can then be used to prevent projects from being built or delay projects. We have projects right now in the city of San Diego, like larger projects that are delayed five years, six years as they continue to produce these environmental impact reports over and over again at the expense of the developer until ultimately the that be are. Satisfied with the way the report looks. So CQA while. It would be a good idea. On paper ultimately became one of the most restrictive factors for development in California. the case study that they use in the book is the Mammoth Lake condo project. heard of this project before. When I read it in the book, I was like, oh, this gives so much perspective. Basically, this was a private project. The developer was planning to build a series of condos and. The community sued the developer citing that they needed to meet CQA requirements and the developer said, I don't have to meet requirements 'cause this is a private project and CQA only applies to public projects. it was initially thrown out of court at the lower level, but then ultimately it went up to the Supreme Court in the state the Supreme Court. Ruled, and this is a quote from the book, any development of acquiring public permits is inherently a public project. So from that point on, CQA became the precedent that would apply to every project. they said in the book, anytime two, two by fours are put together, it becomes a public project. since now CQA through the Supreme Court ruling applies to any project in the state of California, it can be used perpetually by NIMBY organizations to block and delay projects through environmental impact reports. So that's a, that's one of the major issues we have right now in California, particularly for larger projects. I am happy to say there's been some movement in rolling back CQA but it seems like it's, it's still an uphill battle.
17:42BaileyAll right, so I think you've done a very good job of breaking down the key problems when it comes to development in the state.
17:48Sean CanningMm-hmm.
17:49BaileyWhat do you think potentially though could be some solutions, just some ideas perhaps that you have?
It would seem to me, 'cause I read the, you know, the chapter you're talking about, it would seem to me that, I mean, the problem really, it seems to be that you just have so much regulation that's constantly added upon decades and decades, but then no one ever really takes a look back to question whether anything needs to be removed or edited.
So it just constantly compounds. To where you get it to almost like a state of paralysis where the code would be now. So I'm not really sure what you would do about that. I guess perhaps you would need to have like a commission to review everything. I know people have said in the past that maybe every 10 years or so they should look at all the regulations added in the past 10 years, and they need to at least vote to renew them.
What are some ideas you have? Because I'm not even sure what could be done, because the book talks about how. That societies will be in a build stage as the United States was in like the post World War II era, but then it kind of gets to a, I don't exactly remember the term we used, but kind of like a, like a maintenance type stage.
What's, what's the word?
18:59Sean Canninglike, I think they called
19:00BaileyI think?
19:00Sean Canninga litigation stage.
19:01BaileyYeah. Well it also talks about how a lot of lawyers have used various different. Laws that were passed to then kind of slow down development, even though that wasn't the purpose of the laws in the first place. So what do you think are some potential solutions that could be done?
19:16Sean CanningYeah. Well, I think we've reached a point where we're a little overregulated. I'll give you some examples of that too as we, as we figure this out. so one thing is like every time a new code is proposed and added to the. the codes that we read and I'm, I'm, we have California Residential Code, California building Code. We have all the municipal codes, California Energy Code, California Plumbing Code, California Electrical Code, California existing building code. I mean, if I stacked all the codes up, they would reach the ceiling in my office here. But nobody is ever taking sections out of the code. They're just adding it. had purchased a code book as a gift for my structural engineer from the year he was born in like I think 1979. And it's this big, and now the code stacks all the way to the ceiling. So that's how much it's expanded. But you know, I was watching this podcast pod Save America. dunno if I mentioned this to you. They were interviewing Scott Wiener, the representative in California who championed SB seven nine and they had a representative of Los Angeles. Los Angeles was against SB seven nine, and the representative in Los Angeles was saying that what she wants to see is every new apartment that gets built to have. An in-unit washer, dryer, and exterior space. But I think we're at the point right now where we actually want like a lower level of housing because maybe I'm getting too deep in the woods here, but every time a developer has to provide an in-unit washer dryer, the developer is not absorbing the cost of the washer dryer. The developer's passing that $1,500 cost onto the tenant who's renting the unit. And it could be in, you know it could look like an extra $20 a month or an extra $50 a month. But, you know, make no mistake about it, the developer is not absorbing this cost. tenant or the homeowner or the condo owner or whatever type of unit it is, is absorbing the, the cost. So one thing we did here in California was we had the new code requires solar panels to be installed on any new dwelling unit. And in certain cases you also have to install solar panels on on your accessory dwelling units, depending on the size and, and the climate zone and a couple other factors. So the cost of these solar panels. Increases the cost of every new unit, which becomes an obstruction to building new units. So some developers will do the math they'll say, you know what? It's not worth building these units. And other developers will say, okay, I have to do this. I can fit that cost into, the pro forma and I can pass that cost on to the, to the future tenant. so I think the solution is to reduce. Regulation so we can build more of the lower level of housing. So there was one more thing I wanted to mention here. At some point the state of California banned boarding homes. Basically they determined that like boarding homes. Kind of foster a lower, a lower level of society. the state just banned boarding homes, now the people who would've lived in the boarding homes are forced to buy the next level up. Of, of housing. Or rent. So if you ban boarding homes, the next level of housing would probably be a small home at at the time. And if you can't afford that, but you could afford the boarding home, then what do you do?
You just end up being a perpetual renter. The solution here for homeless is generally like they have these safe camping grounds where it's like a parking lot and they build like a wood platform and they let them camp in a tent. But there something between that and a fully permitted dwelling unit with solar panels and in unit washer and dryers? You know, isn't there something kind of in the middle there, like. Couldn't we build something that would be like a 50 square foot permitted unit with insulation, but no heating and no cooling in San Diego where you could open your windows most of the day. So I think maybe that's the solution. also think there's. So much code now that the people who are writing the new code and the city councils that are approving the new code, don't understand the implications of what the new code means when it interacts with all the other codes that are already there. I think you'd have to be such an expert in code construction. In the permitting process in finance to fully, holistically understand what adding one new code does to the entirety of the project.
23:45BaileyYeah, well, I don't know. Maybe that would be a job for ai because people have talked about how AI could be used to like radically streamline government, and this would be one of those use cases where there's just so much data and no one really knows how it all works, quite honestly, that that could be an interesting use case.
But I know you said you wanted to, or you have a couple projects that you think are relevant to this discussion. So why don't you walk us through those.
24:10Sean CanningYeah, so.
I wanna just kind of bring this back to San Diego. So I have a client right now, she owns a home in Southeast San Diego. I'll keep it pretty vague. the home she owns. she got the home at a good deal because it was kind of a little bit more east than you normally would go. it's on a pretty good slope. Like the whole lot is sloped and the lot size is probably like 7,000 square feet. So big lot, but you can't build on most of the lot because of the slope. And the home is positioned all the way up at the top of the slope where the street is in 2024, we had these really hard rains and they resulted in a lot of floods. her home has a concrete patio and a retaining wall on the back of the home. And during the flood, the damage from the water basically delaminated the retaining wall from the back of the home. So the retaining wall and the patio falling down the slope and her home is now at risk Of following the retaining wall down the slope. So there's two parts of the project. Part one is she wants to build a new retaining wall replace the concrete patio save her home from collapsing down this slope, part two of the project. She wants to carve outher house two floors. She wants to make the bottom floor A-J-A-D-U, so that her son and his family have a place to live independent of her.
Right now. They share the home her son. It's difficult to afford property here. So multi-generational living is becoming more and more common, and they want to create that condition so that the two generations of the family can live in the home. And essentially the whole thing is like a gift from my client to her son and his family. So everything seems to be like very reasonable to do. You could even argue that there's a urgency to replace this retaining wall, to preserve the house, or, you know, prevent the house from being damaged. So to do this, we have to get a project survey. now that costs about $5,000 and we need the survey so we can understand where the property lines are. Even though we're not proposing any additions, but we need to, the city has a requirement now to submit a survey, adds $5,000 to the project. One of the important things on the survey is that it has contour lines. Those are the squiggly lines which indicate like change of elevation and a professional Surveyor or civil engineer are the only people who could really like provide this survey. With the contour lines, we can understand the change of elevation of height. Then we have the retaining wall and the patio engineered by a structural engineer, we submit the drawings to the city. And The city's comment comes back and it says, you need a water pollution control plan they're willing to approve this project. And a water pollution control plan is a 75 page document. it's not a floor plan, so don't let the name confuse you. It's a 75 page report that is completed by a civil engineer. probably a civil engineer would be the most common person to produce this report and ultimately you submit it to the city. the city then will approve, they'll check off that box, and then you're one step closer to the permit. And the water pollution control plan is supposed to remain on site and the contractor is supposed to read this. Now, a contractor, I've never met a contractor who will read a 75 page report about water pollution. So I want to ask the city, what is the thing that triggers. This report, maybe it's not work, maybe I can omit the thing or dial the project back to a point where the report is not needed. The report costs $3,000, so this adds $3,000 plus the time it takes to do the report to the cost of this project, which is, you know, becoming more and more urgent to complete the project. So I emailed the plan reviewer and she gets mad at me because she says, I'm trying to skirt the code and I'm not trying to skirt the code. I'm trying to be informed on what triggers this so I can provide that information to my client and we can make the best decision for the project. ultimately, I ask her to schedule a meeting. We schedule a meeting. It takes two weeks to set up the meeting because of. availability and I just explained to them, you know, on the higher end, a custom home, the storm water pollution control plan. Doesn't affect that higher end project. But on the other end of the spectrum, a client that has a fixed budget, sometimes it's better to avoid the report and dial back the scope. So I'm only trying to figure out what the threshold is. So she says, okay, to understand the threshold you need to review the Storm water manual. In the city of San Diego, this is a 780 page document. Somebody thought it would be a good idea to put together 780 pages to explain how to manage stormwater. I mean, that in itself speaks to the incredible level of regulation that we have in the state. who's got time to read 780 pages? And my only question is what's the threshold? So. I explain everything. I explain the hardship that the client's experiencing the plan reviewer says, okay, well what is triggering?
This is the stairs you've added off of the back of the retaining wall. So we've created this retaining wall, and then the lot slopes down from the retaining wall. So I created a three foot wide staircase that comes down so they can access the backyard. And she says, the only thing triggering this report is the stairs. And the reason the stairs are triggering the report is because my retaining wall basically is about four foot 10 feet of change of grade. It's like four foot, 10 feet down the hill, and the threshold is five feet. So when I added the stairs off the back of the retaining wall, that made the change of elevation like eight feet. if you go over five feet, it triggers this water pollution control plan, which is a requirement from the state, not just the city. The city has to implement it, but comes from the state. So then the decision is, okay, well if I eliminate these stairs, I avoid a $3,000 water pollution control plan. I can now go to my client and say, Hey, let's OMI the stairs.
We're gonna save the cost of the report, but you're not gonna have a way to access the backyard after this. Right? at least now I know where the threshold is, but I push the plan reviewer a little more to really understand what the threshold is. And this is where it gets kind of weird. So she says, if I was to. the stairs on the retaining wall so that the stairs never touch the ground. also would be exempt from the report. the way that they would have to engineer this to build those stairs would increase the cost of the stairs by three times. So I'm trying to figure out in my mind, like what sense does this make? It's a three foot staircase and that triggers a $3,000 report to make sure that the stormwater is handled well on the site. The site 200 feet down a hillside. Any water that falls on that stairs. just absorbed in the pervious grounds before it reaches the end of the property. So then I keep pushing the reviewer and I say, Hey, you know, it seems like a lot of people probably dial in their projects to four foot 11 and three quarter inch. Elevation change, and she agrees. And then she pulls up Google Earth and she shows me some examples that could be possibly exempt. And she shows a staircase that has a 10 foot change of elevation, it only has a footing on the top and a footing at the bottom. So I'm like, but I don't understand, based on the criteria you just explained to me, that would also trigger the report. And she said, yeah, but I could ask my supervisor for an exemption. So now all of a sudden there's this gray area. but ultimately, you know, to get this thing built for the benefit of the client, the city is saying, a, a three foot wide staircase requires page report. And that brings us back to the root of the problem.
31:50BaileyDefinitely.
Is there anything you want to say to begin to close out this conversation here? This was a pretty dense topic. what are some of the key takeaways you wanna leave people with here?
32:00Sean Canningas an architect, one of the things that I kind of like structure my business around is trying to identify what. These thresholds are that bump a project into another category. So the, what are the things that take a small project and make them a medium sized project?
Or what are the things that take a medium sized project and make them a much larger, more complicated project? And those things are actually hard to identify. those thresholds are really hard to identify because a lot of times the building departments, will look at us like we're trying to skirt regulation when we're really just trying to understand the threshold that the regulation creates so we can make a informed decision to go above or below. So I think in the future in the state of California, I think one thing that would be huge would be. Somebody being able to take a holistic look at all of the codes and the way they interact making an informed decision to remove some regulation that creates obstruction different projects, keeping in mind that the same code governs these larger projects. Like a custom home where the client has an infinite budget. The same code also governs the small homeowner who oftentimes is trying to do a project without an architect trying to do a project just to get a small unit built so we can have one more family live in the city. So somebody who could take a holistic look and start to pick out certain areas or carve out exemptions and then. Putting together some sort of document that would explain all of these thresholds so people can be more, wary going forward with their projects. I mean, I have 15 years of experience in the city and I've identified quite a lot of these thresholds, but there's still some of 'em that just sneak up on us,
33:43BaileyHmm.
33:43Sean Canninghard to get an answer. So I think ultimately the future of California, if we're going to. out of this like stagnant lockup of regulation and build faster and finally meet the housing goals. I think we have to look at a little bit of sensible deregulation.
33:59BaileyYeah, well, I agree with that. The problem I would say is that at this point, there's probably so much bureaucracy built up around all this that. It would be quite a painful bandaid to rip off. Like it would probably put the state in a recession when you just think about how many people are employed in the litigation paperwork permitting sectors that you're talking about.
But I also would say that at a certain point it becomes, all the regulation becomes self-defeating, not just in the sense of all the. Anti-growth policies and examples you've laid out. But also, and I was very surprised to see this on one of our recent videos here, which got over 20,000 views or something like that, that a lot of people in the comments were just saying like, yeah, that's why we don't permit stuff.
There are several comments like that, which I think is obviously very risky, which I would now recommend, but you can't deny that. That's just gonna be human nature. At a certain point, there's gonna be a segment of the population that decides to forego it entirely.
34:55Sean CanningThere's a tipping point for sure when somebody has a small project and the cost to get a permit. Becomes, you know, 25% of the project or 50% of the project people with lower income in lower income neighborhoods are going to avoid permits. So that's kind of the balance. The purpose of the building code is to increase safety, but when it becomes an obstruction, people skirt the code and then you end up with less safety. Here. let me give you one more example, Bailey. Here's where we are. This is a good example of where we are in California. Let's say I wanted to hire you to come mow my lawn. Throw a number that cost. you've seen my house here. I don't have a very big property.
How much would you charge me to come here and mow my lawn?
35:37BaileyWell, I know last time I was there it seemed pretty unmaintained, but hopefully you've fixed it up. But I mean. I don't know, $250.
35:46Sean CanningOkay, $250. Now, how much would you charge me to mow my lawn if I also required you to provide. 10 pages of documentation on the front end to make sure you had everything in place. you had to make sure that a report to show that no grass clippings ended up in my neighbor's yard. You had to make sure that you had a certain level of qualification.
And to do that, you had to put together an extensive resume to prove that. you also have to make sure that you provide all the documentations for insurance and everything. Now you got 10 pages on the front end. And then when you finish mowing the lawn, need a 20 page report that shows that you mowed it to the proper height and that you mowed it and disposed of all the material in the proper location. Now, that $250 job, how much would you now charge?
36:35BaileyWell, I hope this isn't really happening, but probably four to five times more, quite honestly.
36:39Sean CanningI,
36:39Baileythat's just 'cause I would be passing all the costs on to the client in this case.
36:44Sean CanningI would be absorbing those costs, right?
36:45BaileyYeah.
Right. as somebody who loves mowing lawns would be probably a little frustrated because now spending more time doing paperwork than mowing the lawn. Well, definitely, of course.
36:57Sean CanningSo this is an analogy for where we are right now with the type of regulation we have in the state.
37:03BaileyAll right. Well, I think that's a good place to leave it, but you are definitely, I mean, you may be the premier architect in San Diego when it comes to helping clients and customers overcome these permitting challenges. So just lay out a couple ways you can potentially help people if they're considering a project, like a full blown project engagement or even just a couple hours of.
Help and consulting for something they're planning to tackle mostly themselves.
37:27Sean CanningWell, I would say start at the website, 10 70 architecture.com. go to the Instagram to see our work at 1 0 7 0 architecture, and you can send me an email directly Sean, SEAN, at 1 0 7 0 architecture.com and ask me questions about your projects. I'm happy to help. Oh, one more thing, Bailey. We have a lead magnet coming out to identify some of these thresholds, and hopefully we'll have it out by the end of the month. Maybe we could put a link in the information here.
37:54BaileyYeah, well we already sent it out to the email list, but we'll get it publicly available soon, so Alright, check out the links below for all that information and we'll see you in the next one.
