Before you could get a building permit, however, you had to be approved by the Zoning Authority. And Zoning—citing FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) 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 [1]”
Somehow, I get the feeling that we've reached peak government.
[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014241278873240817045782377225768897