kiwifails doesn't understand that laws change over time as he derails a "forum announcements" thread.
He clearly doesn't understand what he's been told, and his recollection doesn't make any sense. Generally in America, zoning laws stop you from building too dense. Usually, in suburbia at least, these laws are meant to preserve lawns and other kinds of green space and to stop single family houses from being replaced by multi-family housing and small apartment buildings. The driving force behind these laws are NIMBYs, or people who believe in the concept of "not in my back yard", who reject high density housing and commercial use of formerly residential land. These laws almost always get more and more restructive over time, as the NIMBYs think up more and more shit they don't want in their neighborhood, often to the point where you can't even build reasonabe structures anymore. If this sounds familiar to homeowners' associations, that's because it's often these very same people behind those abominations.
More than likely, the local law states that kiwifails can't build a structure closer than a certain distance to a property line, and this was probably characterized by the AHJ as "you can't build too close to your neighbor". There are usually all kinds of stipulations on what you can build and where you can build it. The size of a new structure is limited by required offsets from existing structures and property lines, among other things. Often you can't replace a structure with one of the same size, or indeed, at all, because the laws have changed significantly. Sometimes you can get a variance, which is a one time exception to the laws that allow you to legally build something that would otherwise be illegal under these laws. If you can't, you are SOL as kiwifails apparently thinks he is.
Usually the zoning laws don't stop you from reparing or rehabilitating an existing structure though. Other laws may require you to bring anything you touch up to code though. For example, if you have to completely replace the roof structure because eg. a tree fell on your garage, you have to build the new roof to current year standards, including things like wind resistance and snow load rating.
Oh and, what's this guy's deal with cats? He's quite obsessed with them. I've never seen this particular behavior in dudes before, only women. The way he talks about certain things reminds me of how some wives talk about shit they overheard from their husbands. They talk like they know what they're talking about, but they're usually pretty clueless and just parroting what they heard. It does make me wonder if kiwifails is actually a girl, perhaps a pedophilic lesbian.
He clearly doesn't understand what he's been told, and his recollection doesn't make any sense. Generally in America, zoning laws stop you from building too dense. Usually, in suburbia at least, these laws are meant to preserve lawns and other kinds of green space and to stop single family houses from being replaced by multi-family housing and small apartment buildings. The driving force behind these laws are NIMBYs, or people who believe in the concept of "not in my back yard", who reject high density housing and commercial use of formerly residential land. These laws almost always get more and more restructive over time, as the NIMBYs think up more and more shit they don't want in their neighborhood, often to the point where you can't even build reasonabe structures anymore. If this sounds familiar to homeowners' associations, that's because it's often these very same people behind those abominations.
More than likely, the local law states that kiwifails can't build a structure closer than a certain distance to a property line, and this was probably characterized by the AHJ as "you can't build too close to your neighbor". There are usually all kinds of stipulations on what you can build and where you can build it. The size of a new structure is limited by required offsets from existing structures and property lines, among other things. Often you can't replace a structure with one of the same size, or indeed, at all, because the laws have changed significantly. Sometimes you can get a variance, which is a one time exception to the laws that allow you to legally build something that would otherwise be illegal under these laws. If you can't, you are SOL as kiwifails apparently thinks he is.
Usually the zoning laws don't stop you from reparing or rehabilitating an existing structure though. Other laws may require you to bring anything you touch up to code though. For example, if you have to completely replace the roof structure because eg. a tree fell on your garage, you have to build the new roof to current year standards, including things like wind resistance and snow load rating.
Oh and, what's this guy's deal with cats? He's quite obsessed with them. I've never seen this particular behavior in dudes before, only women. The way he talks about certain things reminds me of how some wives talk about shit they overheard from their husbands. They talk like they know what they're talking about, but they're usually pretty clueless and just parroting what they heard. It does make me wonder if kiwifails is actually a girl, perhaps a pedophilic lesbian.
