In 2006 in Anderson, Missouri…just a few miles away from the county where I live that has no building codes or licensed contractors…there was a nursing home that caught fire and burned to the ground. The fire started from a faulty electrical system in the attic.
11 innocent people died in their sleep.
The state conducted the usual “study” to determine how to ensure that such future tragedies can be avoided.
One of the several recommendations was almost too obvious to record…that is the recommendation that an annual inspection be done of all state nursing homes by a “qualified electrician”.
Since our state has no building codes and has no licensing requirements for electricians (or plumbers, HVAC techs, or builders)…the state could not come to a definition of exactly what is a “qualified electrician”.
Accordingly…and much to the shame of the Missouri legislature…residents of over 6,000 nursing home facilities are going to sleep tonight in facilities that have never been inspected by a qualified electrician.
There is no doubt in my mind that…had it been a motel filled with members of the Missouri Association of Realtors that caught fire and burned 11 of their members to death, they would not be using their political clout to fight building codes and contractor licenses.
So, let me get this straight. Out of one side of his mouth Mr. Bushart decries the “legislative shamefulness” of his state for bowing to special interests like the real estate folks, and not requiring building codes or licenses for contractors, but out of the other side he declares that “licensing solves nothing” and that anyone who advocates it must be guilty of trying to eliminate their competition or profit from licensing.
Either Mr. Bushart is schizophrenic or he’s a hypocrite; it’s very hard, for me at least, to decide which it is. On the one hand, he seems pretty loopy but on the other hand there’s occasonally a spark of reason hidden in some of his diatribes.
Nutty Clerk? Two-faced Clerk? Nutty Clerk? Two-Faced Clerk?..It’s so hard to decide.
Agents in RE offices are starting to do “home checks” for prospective buyers. Repairmen and contractors are offering to also perform these “home checks” for free. RE agents will not realize that when something goes wrong, they will be the ones to be sued, since they are the ones instigating these “free home evaluations”.
The RE agents want us out, so we do not kill their deals. They want newbie inspectors out there to control, and not us veterans. Why RE agents want this to badly is beyond me. And, why lawmakers do not see it that way. So many attorneys are involved in these laws here in Kansas, that the committee members, board members, even the governor do not know what is going on, or what to do about these un-needed and useless laws that really do not benefit anyone. I myself cannot be a member of this new registration board, or be a part of these laws due to the one regulation that the board has developed. I have been advised not to join due to the fact that at any time, any board member can come to my home and demand any form, document, or record for any reason, since I would have signed up to abide by these “rules and regulations”.
I hope with our reponses, my work with Senators and NBC news, feedback with Dan Bowers, that we can get SB 329 reworded slightly and get this thing out of here.
PARKVILLE, Mo. – Teen homelessness is a growing problem in the metro. Drug, alcohol and physical abuse typically destroys the commitment necessary to parent a child, but now another offender is putting teens on the streets: h[FONT=Microsoft Sans Serif][size=2]ome foreclosures.[/size][/FONT]
Judy Lindsey, Javonna Turner, and Janelle Paster are all 18 years old and learning the hard way to regroup after being left homeless by their own families.
“She didn’t want me anymore. That’s the worst feeling any kid could have, your parent don’t want you anymore,” said Janelle Paster.
This is a story Rachel Francis has heard too many times. Francis is a youth services manager for Synergy, an emergency shelter for people between the ages of 12 and 18.
Francils believes home foreclosures have opened the door to abandonment.
“I’ve had some 18-year-olds come to us and say, ‘My parents can’t afford to have me here anymore, they’re struggling on their own’. Some families are becoming homeless,” said Francis.
Janelle Paster can’t blame a foreclosure for the hand she was dealt.
“My mom just kind of told me I couldn’t live with her anymore. I stopped living with her when I was 15,” said Paster.
She moved into Synergy’s Transitional Housing Program last August.
“I love it. It’s really helped out a lot,” said Paster.
Synergy provides the apartment, but requires Paster to work and save money. At the end of the 21-month program, Paster will leave with a savings account and valuable life skills.
For every teen that’s admitted to Synergy, one is turned away. The current shelter only has 12 beds.
In October, Synergy will move into a new facility, which includes a house for 24 homeless youth.
And lawmakers here in Kansas are spending time and energy to write and instigate home inspection laws. Their time and my tax dollars could be best spent elsewhere.
I don’t find inconsistency in Jim’s position on licensing. His comments about builders being unlicensed are to remind all that other disciplines should be well ahead of inspectors in the “need to be licensed” line.
I understand how difficult it must be for a mental midget such as yourself to struggle with something relevant.
You pushed licensing in your state to control the number of new inspectors entering it. Once you could no longer bluff unsuspecting people into believing they needed to be licensed SPIs with E&O insurance to inspect a house, you needed to invent another means of thinning the herd.
But in Missouri, the builders and realtors have pooled their funds and infrastructure to keep building codes and licensed contractors out of the state. This decision has cost lives. In 80% of Missouri counties where there are no building codes or AHJs, the home inspector is the only person to “tattle” on them…thus, the desire to control him through legislation.
Now, take that back to the eight or nine guys who read your blog and have them explain it to you.
You can kind of look at builders and inspectors as stages of an assembly line. If your product has problems, rather than think there is some deficiency at the inspection stage (end of the assembly line), it would be more efficient to look upstream at the stage that created those deficiencies.
Not really, but I am struggling with this one…nutty clerk, two-faced clear, nutty clerk, two-faced clerk…can’t decide which is more relavent.
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You pushed licensing in your state to control the number of new inspectors entering it.
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Really, got any proof of that?
Jeez, it must be so frustrating to be so wrong almost all the time. Can you show one instance of where I ever tried to bluff anyone into believing they need to be a licensed SPI with E&O insurance to inspect a house. I doubt it, since I’m not a licensed SPI and haven’t carried E&O for nearly a decade; I prefer to self-insure. However, if you pull your head out of your fourth point of contact long enough, you might be able to find where I’ve said plenty against the whole SPI and E & O thing over the years. You probably wouldn’t want to do that though; those things (facts) always seem to get in the way of your agenda.
So, what you’re saying is that you’ve done a lousy job of stating your case in Missouri and they are still getting away with it. It might be that double-standard of yours that’s eroding your credibility with folks in your state. No? Maybe if you spent a little less time dithering in the affairs of other states and spent a little more time concentrating on your own state…?
Nah, they’ll just tell me not to pick on the poor deluded troll from Missouri or he’s liable to go home and beat his dog.
I’ll agree to a point, but it does you no good to have quality control guys that don’t know at least as much about the process as the guys on the assembly line.
So many home builders, so many repairmen, so many contractors, all not licensed. But, inspectors will have to be, because of the laws that are passed by lawmakers who accept payments to their campaign coffers from these “special interest groups”. Board members in every state do not work for free. They, and their attorneys, write laws, rules, and regulations to govern us over them.
The home inspection industry is limited in life, and the feds are coming. Just read the Cap and Trade pages that require pre-sale efficency inspections of homes. Our industry as we know it, will be gone shortly unless inspectors like James, myself, and a few others stand up for their futures. Those who favor licensing are blind to the cold hard facts. Work under a state license, you work for the government.
At this point its no longer any deep secret. In the late 90’s (1997-1999) the NAR established maybe 10-15 long range political or legislative goals for themselves.
Getting home inspectors UNDER CONTROL or “legislated” EVERYWHERE in the USA was part of those long-term goals. Besides getting the HI’s under control it did 2 other very important things:
Helps SHIFT liability off RE Agents, contractors, sellers OR others in the transaction if something goes wrong, and 2) Running loose in the backyard - cats are hard to manage / BUT, if you can get the cats into a 8’x5’ bathroom its much easier to manage them; train them to do things the RIGHT way; or use your political clout and $$$$$$ to get the rules governing them changed (Like mandatory E&O in Texas when they’d had the BIG state recovery fund sucessfully in place for years).
After NAR started the process, the states picked it up from there. As Gary and Jim have pointed out in previous POSTS - There was NO CONSUMER outcry for getting home inspectors licensed OR regulated in Kansas or Missouri. Quite the OPPOSITE. In checking with the BBB, consumer groups like HADD, the state AG’s offices and in studies like the OHIO state home inspector survey and in research by investigative reporters like Paul Wenske at the KC Star / It turned out that the home inspectors in Kansas and Missouri were NOT PERFECT - BUT had almost NO RECORDED complaints in either state / If memory serves me correctly there were about 7 complaints over a 4 year period with these groups (BBB, HADD, AG’s Office, etc) / WHILE there were HUNDREDS of complaints against others like contractors, RE Agents, etc.
BOTTOM LINE - the state Realtor Groups (KAR & MAR) keep throwing $$$$ and votes at legislators to make an unneccessary piece of legislation go through.
Then come the special interest groups like attorneys, people that make their SOLE living doing training, and in each of these 2 states ONE particular association of HI’s.
It can be argued that in licensed states that track such activity that the complaints against Realtors may be 75x or more than the number of complaints against inspectors. While any defined group of people will have a certain number of less than stellar performers there is no evidence to suggest that home inspectors are any less capable than any other group. Indeed, if the complaint ratio is any indicator then perhaps the shoe is on the other foot. One such study showed 1,663 complaints against 120,000 Brokers/Realtors/Agents in one state in 2008 versus 20 complaints against 3,000 home inspectors. That means that about 1.4% of Realtors will have a complaint lodged against them in any given year compared to only 0.67% of home inspectors. Therefore, Realtors are twice as likely to have a formal complaint lodged against them than an inspector.
This is why, thus far in every state that has inflicted home inspection licensing on its citizens, there has not been a single law that was consumer driven. The consumers are not complaining…the salesmen are.
In Missouri, the dishonest salesmen (not all of them are) has the best of all worlds, for in 80% of the state there are no code violations. Every system in every house is totally subjective, since there are no standards and no inspectors to enforce them. It may not be “perfect” but it does not “violate” anything.