The model residential code deletes, but never fast enough to shrink — two cycles measured, both ended larger

What was held

Nothing. This project has never held a position on the direction of code change over time. A search of the knowledge base for accretion, ratchet, or any claim that codes only grow returns no hits — the diagnosis has always argued that the regulatory environment is costly and fragmented, never that it is growing, and never with a number. The intuition was ambient and unmeasured, which is the condition this log exists to catch.

What was done

Counted the code's own deletion marks. The IRC's front matter states that an arrow in the margin flags where an entire section, paragraph, exception or table has been deleted since the previous edition, so the publisher self-reports removals and no cross-edition diff is required. The obstacle was access and then encoding. ICC's own site is a JavaScript shell that returns a Premium prompt with no code text; UpCodes is state-scoped and paywalled. Three publicly posted PDFs with real text layers carried the full editions — 2015, 2018 and 2021. The arrows then turned out not to be text at all: the legend's own illustration of the arrow extracts as an empty parenthesis, and in the body the mark is a ZapfDingbats glyph set at exactly 10pt and placed only in the outer margin. Detected on that signature and confirmed by rendering image crops in two editions rather than trusting a font name. Sections counted by heading pattern from the same extractions.

What came back

Deletion is real and small; growth is steady. 2015 carries 58 deletion indicators against 2,993 sections. 2018 carries 42 against 3,064 — a net gain of 71 sections over 2015. 2021 carries 78 against 3,182 — a net gain of 118 over 2018. Both measured revision cycles ended larger than they began, and the section count rose 6.3 percent in six years without reversing. The asymmetry is wider than the ratio suggests, because the arrow is a generous mark: it fires for a deleted list item or table row as readily as for a deleted section, so 78 is an upper bound on removal set against a floor of 118 on addition.

What it cost

Four things, and the first is the largest. This measures volume, not stringency, and volume is not burden — a code can add sections that liberalize, and nothing here distinguishes a new exemption from a new requirement. So the finding supports "the code got bigger" and cannot be stretched to "the code got harder" without separate evidence this project does not have. Second, it is the model residential code only, which leaves out local zoning and land use, where a large share of the binding restriction on housing actually sits; the number cannot stand in for regulation generally. Third, the series stops at three editions. Free pre-2015 copies on the Internet Archive are image scans with no text layer, and no free 2024 full text exists, so extending the trend means buying editions — two intervals is a direction, not yet a law. Fourth, it forecloses a line this project might otherwise have found tempting: codes plainly do delete, dozens of times per cycle, and the honest claim is asymmetry rather than absence.

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