Burning down the house

As if the local housing market doesn’t have enough problems. Now, the city of Las Vegas has decided to pile on.

The City Council on Wednesday — following the county’s lead — voted to eventually require that all new single-family homes built in the city limits come equipped with fire sprinkler systems.

This sounds great, but good intentions aside, this is a costly regulation in search of a problem.

These systems are not cheap. Estimates run from $2,500 to $4,000 a home, not including maintenance and upkeep. That’s a multimillion-dollar burden on both builders and buyers — not an insignificant factor in overall affordability.

In addition, home builders already comply with a number of regulatory requirements that decrease the chances of house fires and can help mitigate fire damage, from better electrical wiring to smoke alarm mandates.

Deaths from house fires are relatively rare in Southern Nevada, thank goodness. According to Tim Szymanski of the Las Vegas Fire Department, only five people in the past two years have perished in house fires within Nevada’s largest city. A Clark County spokeswoman reports that just six people have died in house fires in unincorporated areas since 2007. If we are to demand that home builders and buyers spend millions of dollars in the name of public safety, our efforts might be better directed elsewhere.

Mr. Szymanski notes that the purpose of the new requirement isn’t just to save lives, but to "minimize damage" and lost property and help people "get back into their homes" quickly after a blaze. Those are certainly desirable outcomes, but they might also be an argument for encouraging home builders to include fire sprinklers as an option for buyers who share his concerns.

In recognition of the struggling economy, the council eased the mandate somewhat, putting off enforcement until new home permits in Southern Nevada’s municipalities hit 10,000 per year — just 4,000 permits were issued in 2011. That’s fine as far as it goes, but a re-evaluation of the entire issue by both the county and city would be a much better approach.