Are you for real?

Just when you thought local government couldn't become any more of an unresponsive monstrosity, comes the story of Stephen Bainbridge via this morning’s LAObserved. The poor guy wanted to build an addition to his house but was informed by the Department of Building and Safety that his house does not exist.

I was speechless until it occurred to me to ask why, if our house doesn't exist, we have to pay property taxes and so on. The answer? "That's another department."

Naturally.

Back to being speechless. I then recovered enough to ask what we had to do to have the existence of our house established, which I thought would be a simple process - after all, you can see it on Google Earth.

But, Google Earth would fool no one at LADBS.

I was told we would first have to have a hearing to determine whether the street that runs in front of our house is a public street or private road. Given the backlog, it would be about a year before that process could be completed. Then we'd have to have another hearing to establish the existence of our house.

Good luck Stephen. If it’s any consolation, I was told my entire street doesn’t exist when I called 3-1-1 last week for graffiti removal. Google says it does. Hate to say it, but that whole Google world domination thing is looking better and better.

P.S. Stephen, just build the damn family room. Permits are so twentieth century—and besides, government has more important things to worry about—like fighting the Global War on McDonald’s—than to care if your house collapses like an Indonesian mud hut.