
Silicon Valley Techies Fight to Save a Popular but Illegal Haven - bluehat
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/technology/techies-fight-to-save-hacker-dojo-a-popular-silicon-valley-work-space.html?_r=1
======
ChuckMcM
Sigh, its not an 'illegal' haven it just isn't up to code. Which,
unfortunately, you cannot sign a waiver that says I won't hold anyone
responsible for me burning up in a fire here. And the Mtn View is kind of well
known for being unhelpful in these regards.

~~~
amcintyre
I tried scanning the article to find out what made it illegal, and was fairly
disappointed to find that (once again) I'd been lured by a sensationalist
headline.

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah, the headline did make it sound like hackers were protecting The Pirate
Bay headquarters or something... we should be able to downvote bad titles :)

~~~
neurotech1
Except the title is straight from the NY Times! I'm shocked they could publish
a biased, misleading story.

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

------
ramanujan
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/384590180/an-events-
spac...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/384590180/an-events-space-and-a-
design-studio-for-hacker-doj?ref=live)

^ Chip in here if you are inclined to support fellow hackers. They need to
raise $250,000:

    
    
      “If they can’t comply, they can’t use the building as 
      they want to,” said Anthony Ghiossi, the chief building 
      official for the city.
    
      Hacker Dojo opened without a permit, Mr. Ghiossi pointed 
      out. It is currently prohibited from hosting events that 
      draw more than 49 people in any one room, he said. That 
      means no large classes or overly enthusiastic happy hours, 
      which are a regular feature on Friday nights.
    
      Ellis Berns, the city’s assistant community development 
      director, was eager to point out that Mountain View, which 
      is home to tech giants like Google, did not wish to evict 
      Hacker Dojo. “We try to be as supportive as we can,” he 
      said. “Businesses spin out of there. We are not at all 
      interested in them closing down.”
    
      But retrofitting the space will cost upward of $250,000, 
      according to the Dojo’s estimate. It has so far raised 
      $173,000, including donations from its neighbor, Google.
    

This is as clean an example as you can get of regulations blocking innovation;
a $250k fee just to get started, from the building that gave rise to Pinterest
and Pebble. Compare and contrast to pg on "The Power of the Marginal":

    
    
      That's one of California's hidden advantages: the mild 
      climate means there's lots of marginal space. In cold 
      places that margin gets trimmed off. There's a sharper 
      line between outside and inside, and only projects that 
      are officially sanctioned—by organizations, or parents, or 
      wives, or at least by oneself—get proper indoor space. 
      That raises the activation energy for new ideas. You can't 
      just tinker. You have to justify.
    

In my opinion, in addition to donating, you should exercise your rights as a
citizen and give these officials a piece of the public's mind. Their emails
are below. It is very unusual for local officials like Ellis Berns and Anthony
Ghiossi to actually have their bad decisions checked by bad publicity, but
it's absolutely necessary in this case.

    
    
      [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/marginal.html
      [2] anthony.ghiossi@mountainview.gov
      [3] ellis.berns@mountainview.gov

~~~
varelse
What I'm not seeing in these articles about this place is any sense of
responsibility by Hacker Dojo's owners for not doing the due diligence to know
what they were getting into in the first place. I don't consider well-
intentioned cluelessness a barrier to innovation but your mileage may vary.

Ellis Berns doesn't sound like a villain to me but rather just a guy in a
tough situation. If the town of Mountain View doesn't enforce their codes
here, and if something like the fire in the video posted here were to occur,
they'd get their keesters sued out of their pants and rightly so.

That said, it's not even a drop in the bucket of Silicon Valley's vast wealth
to fix this so if it's worth saving, I suspect it will be saved.

~~~
ramanujan
All regulation from the TSA to the local building officials is optimized to
sound like a good idea. Who could be against health or safety? And that then
becomes the thin end of the wedge, as the requirements and fees spiral from
there.

1\. Sprinklers and fire exits? Arguably necessary.

2\. ADA compliant bathrooms and wheelchair ramps? Not part of a reasonable
MVP[1]. What if every website "had to" be readable in Braille and multiple
tongues on day one, before one had the revenue to pay for that sort of thing?

3\. As for "building permits", they are just a tax by the local government[2],
like red light cameras:

    
    
      In his opposition, Inks said the permit would 
      "incentivize" code enforcement officers to go out and find 
      major violations to bring in revenue. He added that city 
      officials already get paid a salary. 
    
      "To be clear ... this is about raising money," he said, 
      adding that similar permits and fees in other cities have 
      led to "further noncompliance" and the "collapse" of code 
      enforcement efforts, which led to the necessity of giving 
      property owners an "amnesty" period.
    
      Inks pointed out that small businesses were already being 
      hit with fines for "petty" violations, such as a $500 fine 
      on the Milk Pail Market for selling pumpkins in the   
      parking lot.  
    

In other words: give these guys an inch and they'll take a mile, asserting
their author-it-ay the whole way. It always starts with something reasonable
sounding (fire codes) and then moves to incentivizing the government for
uncovering more violations and more fines. And it's very hard to figure out
all the violations ahead of time [3]:

    
    
      As we wrote earlier, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) 
      is continuing its program of in-depth investigations of 
      hotels to determine whether they comply with the Americans 
      with Disabilities Act or ADA. The investigations are 
      called "sweeps" because they target all hotels in a given 
      geographic area. There is also some basis to believe that 
      the sweeps may now also focus on certain industries such 
      as hotels, restaurants and other places of public 
      accommodation.
    
      ...
    
      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.
    

Like all regulation, the ADA stuff is optimized to sound like a good idea. Who
could be against providing access for the disabled? Then you realize the
Department of Justice is spending scarce resources conducting sweeps on
business owners, and that the total cost for a large ADA upgrade can easily be
millions of dollars per facility. Just one example [4]:

    
    
      Owners and managers of swimming pools at hotels, city 
      recreation centers and public parks are scrambling to 
      install mechanical chair lifts to comply with new federal 
      requirements that all public pools be accessible to 
      disabled swimmers.
    
      Some hotels fear the cost of the equipment or fines for 
      noncompliance could put them out of busines
    
      The law doesn’t affect private clubs or pools owned by 
      neighborhood associations that aren’t open to the public.
      It’s a massive and expensive undertaking. The Association 
      of Pool and Spa Professionals says its research shows that 
      between 235,000 and 310,000 pools require the upgrade. 
      Manufacturers estimate the lifts run $3,500 to $6,500, and 
      installation can double those costs. Altogether, owners 
      could face combined costs exceeding $1 billion.
    

A billion here, a billion there...soon you're talking real money. Anyway, this
sort of thing is a big part of the reason that Bay Area housing prices are so
high. And it all starts with taking regulators at their word that they are out
to protect your health and safety.

POSTSCRIPT: There's at least one obvious alternative to rule by unelected
regulators. We already have reviews of everything else under the sun on
Google, Amazon, Yelp, Zagat, Consumer Reports, and the like. Some of these
reviewers we trust with life and death decisions, like Consumer Reports' car
safety ratings. So just do the same for those codes that are truly crucial
(e.g. fire codes), by allowing different certification authorities to compete.
Maybe you start by expanding the domain of the Palo Alto and Mountain View
fire departments such that they overlap, and a certification from either is
sufficient to do business such that you get some competition into the mix.
With just a little bit of choice, you'll suddenly see much more reasonable and
_cost-conscious_ behavior from regulators.

    
    
      [1] I know it's "the law". But there are unjust laws.
      [2] http://www.mv-voice.com/news/show_story.php?id=2260
      [3] http://hotellaw.jmbm.com/2010/06/ada_defense_lawyer_implications.html
      [4] http://www.heraldnews.com/news/x596769962/New-ADA-access-rules-may-scuttle-swimming-at-some-hotels

~~~
FireBeyond
"1. Sprinklers and fire exits? Arguably necessary."

"Arguably"? No, they're absolutely necessary. It's a multi-tenant building.
Why should my property and livelihood be threatened by your inability (or lack
of desire) to follow the fire code?

"2. ADA compliant bathrooms and wheelchair ramps? Not part of a reasonable
MVP[1]."

A reasonable MVP should include the ability for a social, interactive space to
be inclusive. And sorry, it's not the same as a startup deciding what features
to include in their initial launch (which arguably happened a long time ago -
this, now, is when the details need to be nailed down). Oh, and the ADA is
Federal Law, precisely because of businesses and such that felt that
discriminating against a subset of the populace was an "acceptable" omission
(for their "MVP" or otherwise).

"3. As for "building permits", they are just a tax by the local government"

That they are. Building permits are a method of more fairly distributing the
cost of amenities and public services. You have ongoing property taxes for
maintenance and upkeep, but a development may trigger a review - is water,
power, sewage, traffic control, parking, adequate? Such reviews cost money.
I'm confused though, how you then chose to quote an out-of-context example
about "some" (unnamed) cities choosing to root out code violations - something
not entirely the same, and actually largely designed to find people who have
chosen to skirt their community obligations by not using the permit process.

For the record? I'm absolutely for the Hacker Dojo and wish more existed
around here (and / or that I had the time / ability to found one).

~~~
ekianjo
To my mind, regulators could effectively issue recommendations but that should
be where their power stops. If you do not want to have sprinklers and fire
exits, it should be your responsibility, and your responsibility as a person
entering that building to understand the risks of being there - and refuse to
enter/stay inside if you think the lack of sprinklers/fire exits is posing you
a serious concern.

And you mentioned it is a multi-tenant building - then why has this issue not
been a major problem until now with the other tenants?

Same with wheelchair ramps and all. This is part of the "inclusive" madness
nowadays, where you have to satisfy all human beings on Earth and make sure
you do not discriminate anyone. Life is about choices, and choice is a nice
word for discrimination. If the hacker dojo does not want to include
wheelchair ramps and all, they are losing out on talented handicapped members
who could benefit the whole community. And that's they choice/their problem.
It's not up to the State to say what choices they should make. And when you
start like that, then you should also have doors with indications for blind
people, and bumps of the floor for blind people to follow when they walk and
so on. It never ends when you start considering "EVERYONE ON EARTH" as a
potential client/customer of your space.

And "Federal Law" does not justify anything. Before the official Law
authorized Slavery and other monstrous things, the "Law" does not make
anything right in moral terms.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
No, you need the codes. The world is not just you. If your building starts
blazing, it's not going to just stop. Those people called firemen have to go
and stop it, put themselves at greater risk by saving your rickety building
before it destroys the buildings of others that did bother to follow codes.
Now the firemen have to go, the ER gets full, etc all because you didn't think
much of the regulations. Now, we the tax-payors have to foot the bill and the
firemen potential male unnecessary sacrifice, etc. You can't pawn off safety
as assumed risk because society has to deal with the repercussions (you can
get out paying by just going bankrupt or shooting yourself, whatever but we
still have to pay).

Now, I think for Hacker Dojo, there potentially is a bit of unfairness going
on but this is about a larger point.

~~~
ekianjo
I dont agree with your point. You fail to understand several things. I believe
that when you have a building you need to be insured on your property, right ?
Then, the lack of proper fire safety devices in your building should raise the
risk on your property, and therefore raise significantly the cost of your
building insurance. Should your building burn in flames and spread around,
damaging a few other buildings around, your insurance would cover the costs
(just like your car insurance covers the costs when you injure a 3rd party in
an accident). On top of that, the surrounding property owners could sue you
for financial reparations for lost opportunities (business, rent, etc...) for
which you would have to pay.

In the end, anyway, the insurance contract would cover most of the damage
costs. That's why insurance systems exist and are usually mandatory. And the
free market should reflect the cost of having no fire protection in your
property. Net, you would not need to have regulations to enforce that, the
costs themselves would probably entice you to get at least minimum fire
protection, based on the insurances recommendations.

Seriously, most people seem to be believe that regulations have existed
forever and that civilization was born with it. On the contrary, the amount of
regulations we deal with nowadays is a very recent thing in History, and most
people lived before with other systems in place to ensure their safety without
the need of Big-Ass Governments.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Not to be mean but I don't think you have any idea whst you're talking about.
Lawsuit is your answer? Really? So you damage my priority, now I have to get a
lawyer to sue you. You file bankruptcy or kill yourself, I'm now left holding
the bag.

Insurance? Really, insurance? If you don't like building codes, who says
you're going to get insurance?

What if you start getting behind on your bills? Now I'm left holding the bag
again.

Your argument is a strawman. No one says governments have always existed and
civilization could nor have existed without them. That's stupid, why say that?
It's a fact that things were much more dangerous and more likely to be fatal
before regulations that enforce minimum safety standards. So yeah,
civilization would exist, it would just be more dangerous. What a silly
argument.

Also, if what you said was true about this magical insurance compliance then
there wouldn't be any buildings in active use that don't conform to minimum
safety because we have this free market with perfect actors that pay their
bills or some such nonesense.

Now, the second thing, how is your magic lawsuit/insurance fix going to bring
back the dead? Or do they have to stay dead due to your rickety building
because that's one thing the magic free market can't do.

Come on this is hard to take seriously, and yet I'm accused of not
understanding the issues.

------
DanielBMarkham
<rant>So the guys in the dojo could _build their own airplane_ , go out in the
desert, and fly it and kill themselves. The world is happy with them. They
could learn to SCUBA dive. Heli-ski. Become a wild animal tamer. But they
can't sit around in the evenings and create things that change the world in a
particular building because it doesn't meet code and therefor might be
dangerous.

Better than that, they _could_ use the facilities even in a state of
disrepair, and they did for a long time. It's only now that it has been
inspected that suddenly it becomes dangerous.

I think the city has an obligation here to prevent people from getting hurt --
unknowingly. You shouldn't walk into an unsafe building without knowing it.
But once you put a big red sign up on the door, as long as there is no danger
to surrounding buildings or people, leave the guys alone.

To top it off, we have this quote: "We try to be as supportive as we
can...Businesses spin out of there. We are not at all interested in them
closing down"

Bullshit. This is the classic Nuremberg defense: we're only following the
system. Politicians are voted into office to make decisions, and they could
have a wavier created in an hour if the right strings were pulled. This is
just a matter of hackers not having a strong local political voice. (I do not
like the system being broken in a way such that squeaky activists get special
treatment, but it is what it is) Hell, the city should be paying itself for
the building to be brought up to code. There shouldn't even be a question
about it being a problem for the coders to solve on their own. What the hell
kind of priorities do they have out there? They have a place successfully
spinning off startups and they're fucking around with it? Other cities would
kill for something like that.

I just find it amazing that the parks and streets in the Bay Area are full of
people living a catch-as-catch-can existence. There's rampant drug use,
violent crimes, and so on. Perhaps if we were concentrating on public safety
and helping the most number of people, instead of working in silos, we would
be doing other, more important things?</rant>

------
rdl
In the case of Hacker Dojo, it has big warehouse-style roll-up doors. If the
issue were fire safety and egress, an interim policy of only allowing events
>49 people when the roller doors are raised seems reasonable.

$250k isn't a huge amount of money, so I don't think there's a huge risk of
them getting shut down. Especially given that the space itself is inherently
handicap accessible, I don't think ADA bathrooms should be a pressing
requirement. Yes, they should have them, but it's not sufficient to deter
handicapped people from attending, and it doesn't hurt the value of the space
to the majority of non-handicapped attendees.

------
nateabele
This is rent-seeking, plain and simple. As municipalities slide ever closer
toward insolvency, expect to see these spurious regulations enforced and
enacted, ostensibly fronted by bleeding-heart do-gooders, but with the express
intent to extort as much money as possible from productive individuals.

~~~
lilsunnybee
Yeah no. Rent-seeking would be asking $250,000 just for the permit to run
their hacker-space. The city is only requiring that their public space be safe
and accessible, not telling them the contractors they should hire and where
they are required to spend their money. Heck if the dojo members were
dedicated and diligent enough they could do most of the work themselves,
probably for a lot less than the estimates they've received.

Frankly i don't see where any of this outrage is coming from. They've already
raised most of what they need from private donations. It seems unlikely they
will actually be shut down. If they were somehow unable to raise the few tens
of thousands more they needed to get up to code, it would be due to the greed
and stinginess of the well-off so-called pro-business types in the bay area.
If tech investors cared a fraction as much about promoting startups and the
economy as a whole as getting equity and a solid return on their investment,
fund-raising for this sort of thing would be ridiculously easy.

Alas most all wealthy individuals are stingy as hell; they might give you $100
if you kiss their feet and carve their name in stone. Otherwise go back to
your ghetto and quit bothering them.

~~~
bluehat
A significant chunk of the $250K does go into permits. Also, we have done all
of the work ourselves that we are legally permitted to, the remaining work has
to be done by a licensed contractor (by law).

------
neurotech1
Sensational headlines make it sound like they are the silicon valley mafia or
something. I have never seen a more BS article in NY times.

Hacker Dojo is one of the most respected hacker spaces on the planet. They try
and do things as legally and 'up to code' as they can with the resources they
have.

------
volaski
I first hated this sensationalist headline, but on second thought think it's
the best title ever. It achieved what it's supposed to do--get attention.

------
dinkumthinkum
I think this just bureaucracy run amok. It's something from an 80s movie.
Regulations have their place and I don't want to get into any discussion about
"big government" but I think this is a bit too far for something that has
become such a community icon. Also, I find it odd if they are already at
$173K, I would think there would be several alums or those sympathetic that
could shell out a measly $80K, that's a rounding error for many successful
programmers in SV.

Also, I agree with others that the headline was ridiculous. By this standard,
many people's middle class homes are "illegal" for one reason or another.
However, one positive of the sensationalist headline is it might make people
pay more attention and possibly donate.

~~~
rprasad
Or, you know, they could have just made sure the building was up to code
first, like _every other business, organization, and individual_.

Being a startup does not give them carte blanche to ignore basic laws of
society, especially not laws which address actual safety concerns. [Of
relevance to Hacker Dojo: see pretty much every mass casualty club/nightclub
tragedy of the past decade, in which dozens died in each instance due to code
violations.]

More importantly: if someone had gotten hurt or died in Hacker Dojo as a
result of a code violation, all of their officers would be facing criminal
negligence charges.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
It's hard to argue that point. I'm under the assumption that they didn't know
what it would turn into when they started. They definitely were taking on
certain liability.

------
T_S_
Nice article by NYTimes. Too bad about the linkbait headline, but, hey, they
have to sell clicks too. At Hacker Dojo, we're working hard to raise the money
so everyone can just get back to writing code, safely egressing etc.

------
imgabe
I'm assuming Hacker Dojo does not actually own the building and is leasing the
space. Why isn't the building owner being held at least partially accountable
for bringing the space up to code? I'm guessing it wasn't detailed in their
lease, but how long is the lease for? Is there a possibility of breaking it
and finding a building that does meet the requirements for how they want to
use it?

Also, in most jurisdictions I've worked in, requirements to bring bathrooms up
to ADA are not triggered unless you're already doing renovations over a
certain amount in the building. Maybe here it's because the use type of the
space is changing, though.

~~~
bluehat
They busted us less than a week after signing a 3 year lease.

In California, there are no protections when you do a commercial lease to make
sure the space is legal for you to use. The tenant is responsible for making
the space usable.

------
xfhai
It was a glass factory, so why not ask permission to exist as a factory. Maybe
there would be lesser requirements. Hackerspace is not really an office.

~~~
bluehat
The concern is that we teach classes, which people don't do in a glass
factory.

------
adastra
When I saw the headline I thought _data_ haven. Hilariously over-hyped
headline. What is the NY Times coming to these days?

------
lhnn
Let me end this conversation before it begins:

"Why should the government tell me I need this many exits, or that I need a
wheelchair ramp if no-one needs it?"

"Because you're too short-sighted to see how important those things are. The
government is watching out for you and those unfortunate enough to know you."

~~~
DannyBee
It's hard not to feed a troll, so ....

1\. Fire sprinklers were added to the IRC and IBC due to their ability to
prevent fires (surprise!), in light of the fact that costs have come down
significantly, and they can now make them look "not ugly".

Fires aren't just going to damage your building, they'll damage the stuff you
don't own as well.

2\. The number and placement of fire exits is usually based on the distance
one has to travel from any given occupied space, and the occupancy of the
building. This distance is determined based on real numbers like how far you
are likely to get before smoke inhalation kills you.

Letting the probably non-existent free market sort this out by "the people who
didn't die" learning to only frequent places that have sufficient fire exits
seems like a bad strategy.

3\. You probably don't remember the wonderful days before the ADA, when there
weren't many wheelchair ramps, and people with wheelchairs were basically told
to "suck it" everywhere they went (including, in some cases, government
buildings).

~~~
saurik
To verify, you realize that the person you are responding to, whom I believe
you have called a "troll", seems to quite clearly understand this, right? The
first quote is "what a lot of people are saying", and the second quote is "the
obvious response to that".

------
teffen
Typical big government telling people how to live their lives.

> No sprinklers.

> No handicap access.

On second thought...

~~~
lambdasquirrel
Have you been to the dojo? Most of the life happens on the first floor. Also,
most of the parties happen where there's a giant garage door. It's not like
the second floor is lacking in ways down and out of the building. It's also a
converted warehouse, not much to light up. Would sprinklers be nice? Sure. But
the place is not exactly a disaster waiting to happen.

