When homes collapse, best course is court

April 16, 1995

We didn't need Nostradamus to predict this one:

After 2 1/2 years of so-called investigation, the Dade State Attorney's Office has found nobody to prosecute for the shabby construction of the Country Walk subdivision, blown to twigs by Hurricane Andrew.

Residents are disheartened but not stunned, given the state's record in ducking these cases.

Lennar Homes similarly was let off the hook for its crackerbox construction. Now it's Arvida/JMB Partners and the Walt Disney Co., which owned Country Walk when much of the subdivision was built.

Goofy, Pluto and the other construction supervisors are yukking it up today.

Who can forget Country Walk, Land of the Flying Gables—trusses without braces, braces without nails, corners without brackets. Of 184 homes, 147 were deemed uninhabitable after Andrew.

Initially, Arvida blamed Mother Nature, the standard alibi following the hurricane. Yet independent reviews of the destruction in South Dade cited shoddy work, dumb designs, substandard materials and lax code enforcement.

Still, nobody is going to jail. The State Attorney's Office says it cannot prove criminal wrongdoing at Country Walk, though the term "insufficient evidence" seems hollow to those who were knee-deep in it on Aug. 24, 1992.

The companies probably lost no sleep worrying about an indictment. What really grabbed their attention were the lawsuits.

These days it's fashionable to rail about runaway litigation. A key conservative plank is "tort reform," meant to discourage private citizens from suing big companies.

Yet that was the only remedy for customers of Lennar and Arvida who were wiped out by the hurricane. Suing was the only way to get compensation, and settlements provided that.

Insurance companies are also in court with Arvida and Disney over the Country Walk debacle. This is good if it discourages flimsy house building. The larger the cash penalty, the greater the incentive for companies to be more diligent next time.

Eventually, corner-cutting developers will sit down with a calculator and figure out that Andrew was bad for the bottom line. While it's great to sell scads of houses, it's not good business when scads of customers and their insurance companies sue your pants off.

Homeowners were left with few options. The building industry obviously didn't police itself, while government failed at every step in its obligation to protect consumers from such a preventable tragedy.

Plied by campaign donations from developers, Dade politicians made scarcely a peep as the South Florida Building Code was watered down. Even then it wasn't well-enforced. And those who violated or corrupted it seldom got punished.

So that left the civil courts as the only forum where Arvida, Lennar and the others could be held accountable.

The State Attorney's Office admitted as much. In explaining why it took so long to complete the Country Walk probe, the lead investigator said he was "waiting to see if the civil litigation revealed any smoking guns."

Good thing they don't handle murder cases that way.

For home buyers, the lesson is simple but cynical. If you're looking for a safely built house or condominium, expect no trustworthy safeguards from the state or county. And expect no action when gross abuses come to light.

The way to avoid heartache in the next hurricane is to avoid living in cheesy cardboard subdivisions. Judging by the houses that endured Andrew's worst winds, good builders are out there. The trick is finding them.

Start with the ones who aren't tied up in court.

Novel approach: We build it, we approve it

May 11, 1997

This week's Bureaucracy-Buster Prize goes to Carlos Valdes, chief building inspector for Dade County.

For five years Valdes moonlighted as a roofer and repairman, pulling 31 construction permits from the same agency for which he worked. Twice he inspected his own jobs, and gave final approval on both of them.

At first glance, this seems to be an outrageous conflict of interest, particularly if you're a competing contractor.

And for a building department pilloried after Hurricane Andrew for lax enforcement, it might seem slightly … well, irregular for an inspector to be approving his own construction work.

But from Valdes' perspective, you could make the case that he was merely trying to streamline a cumbersome bureaucratic process.

Call it Carlos' One-Stop Roofing—the guy who lays your shingles also inspects the job. For customers in a hurry, it was a nifty arrangement:

Valdes: I'm all done with your roof, Mrs. Smith.

Customer: Fantastic, Carlos … oh, but now I'll have to wait weeks for those chowderheads at the building department to come out for an inspection.

Valdes: No, you won't, Mrs. Smith. See, I'm also a building inspector! Let me climb up there right now and check it out.

Customer (elated): Oh, Carlos, you think of everything!

Imagine the relief of home builders and owners, who no longer had to fret about their roofs passing muster. Suddenly it was a done deal.

If Valdes didn't personally do the inspecting, his co-workers did. According to county records, fellow inspectors once flunked a Valdes roof—then Valdes himself signed off on the final papers, saying the problem was fixed.

Quick and efficient. Isn't that what we all want from local government?

Unfortunately, there's some silly rule against Dade building inspectors part-timing as builders. Valdes has been suspended with pay while an investigation is conducted. That's the price of being an innovator.

Anyone who's tried to get a house built or repaired in South Florida since the big hurricane knows how exasperating it can be. Often there are long delays between inspections, because building departments are so short-staffed and overworked.

The Valdes approach was a marvel of simplicity: We build it, we approve it.

It's the sort of idea that would appeal to some Metro-Dade commissioners, who seem primed to cave in to industry pressure and roll back post-Andrew reforms.

Heck, go for broke. Why not deputize all contractors as county building inspectors?

You'd save lots of time and paperwork. You'd save wear-and-tear on county vehicles. And you'd save a fortune on ladders, because builders usually provide their own.

Last, but not least, you'd eliminate the corruption problem. Under the Valdes system, there'd be little reason for unseemly cash payoffs.

Honest builders would do honest inspections. As for the crooked builders, whom would they bribe—themselves? That seems unlikely, even in Miami.

To be sure, a one-stop permit-and-inspection program would have drawbacks. A careless contractor probably isn't the best qualified to say whether his construction methods are sturdy or not.

But look on the flip side. After the next hurricane hits, we'll know precisely who's competent and who isn't. Builders won't be able to blame inspectors, and inspectors won't be able to blame builders … because they'll be one and the same.

It'll be so darn simple that maybe, just maybe, the state attorney might be able to indict some of them.