The Regulatory Power of the ICC

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Yimbi stands for building as much housing as is humanly possible, reforming stupid zoning laws, outdated building codes, Yimi hates minimum lot sizes, setback zoning, mandatory parking requirements, rent control, anything that makes building new things more expensive . Yimi thinks that when it comes to cities , America peaked around nineteen ten , and we should just roll back the zoning clock a hundred years. Yimbi walks through one of those absurdly picturesque New England villages or some breezy southern California peach town. And by the way, Yimbi only ever walks or maybe cycles . Yimbi never drives and asks where the multifamily apartment buildings . My social media feed is basically just other Yimbi's shout out to Alicia courty,ard urbanist from Chicago who post something about how building European style courtyard apartment buildings will save the American Republic every day . And I am so down for every one of those tweets. Yimbi stands at the intersection of righteous indignation and nerdiness , a street corner where I have lived my entire adult life . I am Yimbi . Hear me roar So deep into this ever expanding series on mistakes , I ask myself what would Yimbi's idea of a mistake be? What error, what miscalculation would most enrage the universe of Yimbi , and upon consultations with my Yimbi comrades , I found it . A single line on a building code proposal filled out by a fire inspector in Glendale, Arizona named Gregory A Victor . Concerning , wait for it . Elevators . This is the story of the great American elevat or tragedy . Yeah, I could not find a high income country that had fewer elevators per capita than the United States. Meet one of the crown princes of Yambi, my new best friend, Stephen Smith, Director of the Center for Building in North America. He will guide us through the tangled history leading up to Mr. Victor's Massive Air . Greece has about half the elevators that the United States does, which is pretty surprising since Greece has a population of around ten million in the U. S. is, I don't know, three hundred forty million. Incredible. That's incredible. Yeah, I mean yeah, I mean, a lot of a lot of people in Greece live in a little four story four unit apartment building with a tiny little elevator . This is Revisionist History, my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood . Some of you may be thinking, I'm not seriously going to listen to half an hour on elevators, am I? And my answer to you is Oh yes, you are. And at the end, you will turn to your loved ones and you will say, I too am now Yumbi. Hear me roar . What do your friends say about your elevator? Oh and talk about building codes to friends. It's a good way to not have friends, you know? Wait a minute you cannot be serious. You don't you don't have long conversations with elevators with your friends? Of course I do. I dri ves them nuts about it. Elevators, you know, sometimes they'll ask a question about something and get a little fun fact for them, but it's not a good way to keep friends to talk about elevators. Steven, I am that exception. Should I ever be a party with at you friends . Should there be at a party with you ? You have cart blanche to trap me in a corner and talk about elevators for travel end. I'm going to talk about something way more because we're going to talk about like handrails or windows or you know pushing it be yond elevators . My producer is laughing in the background . The modern elevator is an American invention. The earliest elevators were made in the mid nineteenth century by Elisha Otis of Ramont , whose startup Otis Elevators remains one of the world's largest elevator companies. Otis installed the world's first commercial elevator in the Ho Buildart ing on the corner of Broadway and Broom Street, in Manhattan's Soho, which still stands. The vertical city in New York that grew up around the Hoart Building was made possible by Otis' invention , but at some point, between then and now , the era of American elevator dominance began to sputter. If you were an ordinary working American who lives in a split level out in the suburbs and works in an office park maybe you didn't notice . But you know who did Yimbi noticed, in particular, Stephen Smith . This goes back a few years just after Smith had started a small Yimbi think tank, center for building in North America. He'd been a journalist, then real estate. But his true passion he realized lay elsewhere , building codes . I mean, academia doesn't study building codes. The more prestigious you are as an academic architect , you know, the more esoteric you're getting and, you know, degrowth theory and , you know , things that are kind of divorced from the actual practice of putting one brick on another and nail in a piece of wood . So academia didn't cover it . I don't know, who else was going to get into it and you don't really get into construction because you love reading and writing. So there's just not a whole lot written about it . So I decided to do it myself. He raised money, set up shop, and right away something caught his eye. There was some, it was a post on back when it was called Twitter. It was still good for this kind of thing. That went viral with some developer who had built a little three story twelve unit apartment building in Minneapolis and was sort of bragging about, you know, it was pretty affordable. And he was kind of listing , he was talking about the simplicity of the project. You know, it was like doesn't have any parking, great . Doesn't have an elevator. And kicked up sort of like a firestorm on Twitter. Elevator went about disabled, you know, guess disabled people can just go and die, whatever. And I remember thinking like, well, three story building in America. I mean, they never have elevators. That's not that unusual. But at the time, I happened to be in France, and I was thinking, well, wait a minute, a new three story building in France generally does have an elevator . So why is that? And I asked my friend who was the architect how much is an elevator cost in Italy for a three story building and he was like, I don't know twenty, thirty thousand euros. And I said, Well, there must be some misunderstanding. There's no way an elevator costs twenty or thirty thousand euros in Italy. That doesn't make any sense. That's a small fraction , you know, in the US, that would be, I don't know, one hundred, twenty, one hundred fifty thousand dollars. Why on earth would an elevator be five times the cost in America as it is in Europe? He went back home, moved apartments, and suddenly the question was all he could think about. So you live in Brooklyn ? I live in Brooklyn. I live in a five story building. There are two units on each floor. It's on a very small lot. It's on a lot that's roughly the footprint of the building is about twelve hundred square feet and there are five stories, seven apartments over a very popular vintage store. What floor are you wide ? I'm on the third floor and in Europe, it would have been hard to stick an elevator in the building, but you could have done it. I've seen floor plans from France, especially. They're very good at sticking a little spiral staircase in a very small elevator. You could have gotten an elevator in the building. There is no way in hell you could have gotten an elevator in the building with anything even conceivably close to our current rules . But in France they would have done it in France, this building would have an elevator, I belie ve. And for Steven , this was a problem . And with the result that when you had a period of your life, as I read in the elevator report, where you were effectively disabled ? Yes , I had some mysterious virus in twenty seventeen turned out to be the sort of long COVID like illness, obviously not from COVID because it was twenty seventeen . And yeah, I had, I still do have a disease called POTS where you stand up and your heart rate goes w aild lot, of fatigue, probably an autoimmune disease that has not really been understood very well yet . And yeah, it was difficult . You know, there were definitely days where what happens is when you exert yourself , you pay for it physically in kind of intense ways. You have sort of brain fog and extreme fatigue, you know, I might sleep twelve, thirteen hours the day . And so yeah, there were days when like I think it would have been nice to go for a walk and I didn't because I was on the third floor. Yeah . In one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the wealthiest city in the premier country in the world , there is a brand new apartment building that is effectively off limits, segregated from anyone who is not fit enough to walk up multiple flights of stairs . And why ? Because the United States has somehow given up on the widespread adoption of a technology that it invented one hundred and fifty years ago . But you're building no old person could ever move into your building. I think I'm the oldest person who lives in the building. How old are you ? thirty seven . I mean this is I think I'm the oldest. See what this is the whole this whole thing is just nuts . Yes , it is nuts . Smith spent two years trying to answer the question of why Americans gave up on the elevator. The result entitled Elevators is maybe the most comprehensive and I'm not just saying this because I'm yimbi .ascin Fating exploration of a topic that I'm guessing few of you have ever thought about. A hundred and twenty two pages, beginning with a sentence right out of some nineteenth century novel in late In late twenty twenty, tired of my old Brooklyn apartment, historic and charming, but loud and full of maintenance hassles , I put my co op unit on the market and set out to buy a new condo . Get a jump on next summer with Verbos early booking deals. Don't wait to claim your dream summer spot, whether that includes a good p orch swing or a poolside lounger. When you book early, you get the best places at the best prices . But back to poolside loungers. With Verbo, you don't have to reserve any loungers. They're all yours. In fact, the whole private home is yours . Book with early booking deals, and you can lounge around all summer long however you please. Book with Verbo If you love podcasts, you already know how to fit great stories into your busy day. So why not do the same thing with books? Everand is an affordable audiobook and eBook subscription that goes wherever you go. Your commute, your workout, your grocery run. No rearranging your schedule, no carving out reading time. Just hit play. For limited time, new members get two free books when they start a free trial. Go to Everand. com slash listen to claim yours. That's EVER AND slash listen . Building operations are changing. Rising energy cost, hybrid workplaces, low occupancy and aging infrastructure are forcing owners and agencies to rethink how buildings operate. Join the building people for a free four part webinar series from facilities to intelligence, the future of AI buildings. Learn how building owners and agencies are using data, AI and smart technology to improve efficiency, reduce cost and optimize space. Reserve your spot today at theing BuildPeople. com That's The BuildingPeople. com The Building People where we make buildings smarter . Some of the reasons why American elevators are so expensive are not surprising. Chapter four of Smith's Magnum Opus is entitled Labor . Labor is the elephant in the room of the elevator industry, he writes, The workforce that builds and maintains elevators is small and specialized and highly unionized , and nowhere are those things more true than in the United States . The most cost effective way to build an elevator is to assemble the whole thing in a factory , then ship it to the building site and drop it in with a crane . That's what they do in Europe . But in the United States, the elevator union insists on assembling the elevators themselves , so everything is assembled in the factory, shipped to the building site , then disassembled and put back together in the cramped confines of the elevator shaft . Where it's really bad is the sort of sister industry of the elevators, which is the escalators. I mean, an escalator truly is almost fully assembled in a factory abroad and then craned on to site. And in North America, you tak'enve it apart. There was this, I found a sort of newsletter from the IUEC, the North American Union, where the guy who runs it or one of another general president or something is sort of bragging to his membership, you know, he's trying to promote his leadership. And he says, you know, you don't know how hard it is to convince an arbitrator you got to take apart this escalator. At that point, we were interrupted . I apologize. Somebody's ringing my door cam. Okay, I don't know whether that package was for me but they're going to leave in the lobby because I don't have an elevator in my building . Where were we? This is like my kids with their with their magatiles or their Lego , like they at the end of the day , they take whatever they built and they smoosh it . And then they rebuild it the next day. Yes , exactly like my kids with their mag tiles. There are parts of the elevator I've seen settlement agreements or lawsuits . You know, most of the stuff happens behind closed doors or literally in a tight shaft. And you don't get a lot of insight into it. But you see it in court cases and set intlement agreements that should not be posted online, but are sometimes . And there's this one I don't know arbitration case or legal case. I don't know what it was where they're saying something like, you know, it's common practice for us to take something apart and put it all together, but you need to prove that you took it apart. So otherwise, what's to say you didn't just hang out playing on your cell phone in the shaft? And so the practice is for you to sign your name on the part. So if you take it apart, the manager can see you really took it apart. Now, as crazy as this is, it doesn't really answer the question. Yes, the elevator unions are stronger in the US than Europe. Elevator technicians get paid more. American elevator workers insist on doing dumb things like taking apart already built elevators like small children with their magentiles. But none of these things explain why an American elevat or would be five times more expensive than its European counterpart . There has to be an even more important reason . And oh yes, there is . European cabins are roughly half let's say for a new six story apartment building with a couple of units per floor, the cabin size in Europe is about half the size, really the whole rest of the world is about half the size that it is in the U. S. and Canada. And that's because number one, they don't require space for I mean, it's for accessibility, but exactly what it is is never really written down, but probably something like a turning radius for a wheelchair. The European one will accommodate a wheelchair, and in fact that's what it's designed for, but you'll probably have to either back in or back out one or the other. In Europe, Steven Smith's building would have an elevator because Europeans are willing to live with pint sized elevators. In America, we aren't . Which seems to make good sense, right? Because what if you had a heart attack and you're on a stretcher? You'd want your exit from your fifth floor apartment to be as speedy and efficient as possible . Except that in insisting that elevators be really large , for those very rare occasions when a large elevator would be really convenient , you make the elevator so bulky that it can't fit in a lot of smaller buildings and so expensive that no one trying to build affordable housing has the means to put an elevator in their building . With the result that if you're in a wheelchair, you simply can't live in Stephen Smith's building. And if you have a heart attack on the fifth floor, the medics are going to have to drag you down five flights of stairs. Have you ever heard the expression The perfect is the enemy of the good , this is American elevator policy . This is like saying, Too many people are dying in car accidents. Let's mandate that everyone has to drive to the store in a tank. Problem solved, right? Well, that problem solved, but now you have a million other bigger problems, like massively congested highways, torn up roads, no parking , and most of all, since a tank costs fifty million dollars , only super rich people would be able to drive to the store . In the spirit of trying to make the world a fairer place , we've made the world in this one dimension and a much less fair place . I would say so , yes . You know, if you're sort of elderly, maybe you'll go into cardiac arrest and it would be helpful to have an elevator that can accommodate a fully stretched flat stretch er so someone can continue to do chest compressions on you while you go down. But most people will never be in that situation or frankly if they are, they'll die anyway. The out of hospital cardiac arrest survival rate is very low . But pretty much everyone gets to a point or at least if you're lucky in life where you can't really use the stairs, but you could, you know, stand with a walker in a small elevator . So yeah, we really look for these edge cases, try to solve them and then kind of throw our hands up when people don't have elevators at all. And say, well, it's just greedy developer or whatever. And just kind of ignore the underlying economics of the situation, which was that if you make the elevator three to four times expensive, you get a lot fewer elevators . Trying to get to perfect when good is good enough is a mistake , and the road to mega elevators was lined with a hundred mistakes made over many years , but the one that really provoked my MBIR was the mistake detailed on page fifty of Stephen Smith's elevators . Section three dot three dot two committed in the he ed purlsessuit of prof ection by a certain Gregory A. Victor , fire inspector of Glendale, Arizona Where you shop for books matters. When you buy from bookshop. org you support more than twenty seven hundred independent bookstores across the country, helping local shops continue to serve their communities and inspire a love of reading. From powerful histories and best selling novels to the perfect gift for any reader, bookshop dot org has something for everyone and now you can save. Use code iHart to get ten percent off your next order at bookshop. org That's bookshop org where every purchase supports local bookstores. Discover the villas at Shenando ah Valley, Westminster Canterbury, Northern Virginia's finest life plan community. Picture this. Your new home features open floor plans, soaring ceilings, designer finishes, and your own private patio. 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You have to adhere to a set of common standards , and those standards are found in a very big book written and maintained and updated by a nonprofit called the International Code Council, based in Washington DC in one of those bland office buildings not far from the capital . Anytime you see an international award in the United States related to construction, it's a lie. It's the US building code, but it's called the International Building Code, the IVC. It has international aspirations. Everywhere in the country used to have its own building code more or less and then they've sort of become homog enized, harmonized over time . And so now there's a national code called the International Building Code, which forms the basis and really the vast majority of every code. If you walk down a street and hate the way modern buildings look, or you don't understand why corridors in the hallway of your apartment building are so long . Then you have a problem with the International Code Council. The ICC is one of those shadowy groups that no one has ever heard about that writes the rules of the modern world . And the document that they have so grandiosely named the International Building Code is, crucially, not set in stone . Interested parties can propose amendments. Those amendments can be voted on by a special committee or by the general members of the ICC. The International Building Code is not like the Constitution of the United States , which was last amended in nineteen ninety two based on a proposal first made in seventeen eighty nine. You need a war or a couple of centuries to change the U. S. Constitution . Not so, the International Building Code , it is a living document . And one of those people who set out to take advantage of this fact was Gregory A Victor of the Glendale Fire Department . Greg Victor had white blonde hair , moustache, aviator glasses. He grew up in the Phoenix area, served in the Air Force as an electrician at Binhoa Air Force Base during the Vietnam War, came home and became a fire inspector for the Glendale Arizona Fire Department retiring as the city's fire marshal in two thousand seven . Quote, he was the driving force behind the fire safety codes that are used in Glendale today, his obitu ary reads. On a national level, he was instrumental in passing fire code to assure firefighters' safety in skyscrapers after nine eleven. Let me just say that we of the Yimbi movement have no beef with Greg Victor personally . He served his country, his community, his profession. I am quite sure he was a fine and upstanding man , but he wanted perfection and he didn't understand that perfection comes with what is sometimes an unbearable cost . So this guy let's just so we have a we have someone who cares who is passionate about elevators . Yeah. He proposes he says