What Is The Financial Agreement Between ICC And THIA?
There has been a secret battle for tiny houses that has been simmering for years that most are not aware of and it is time to blow the lid off and reveal all. I will try to give a short summary.
Tiny Houses have been held captive by the executives of ICC for over 6 years for their desired outcome that benefits ICC and their services. Appendix Q Tiny Houses, that was adopted into the 2018 IRC, originally had provisions for movable structures, but the head of the ICC code approval process said that he would not accept the proposal as written because he believed it was what they call in the industry a “hijack” of the original proposal.
Originally when ICC/MBI 1200 and 1205 were developed, tiny homes were excluded, then included, but after the 2024 IBC hearing, when the standards were turned down, they removed all the terms relating to tiny houses from the committee description, scope of the standards, and the body of the standards, with the ‘notion’ that tiny homes were inclusive, and there was no need to call them out.
Note: G102-21 Was The Code Proposal That Referenced The ICC/MBI 1200 And 1205 Standards.
For More Back Story: Tiny Home Terms Deleted From The Standard
Short Summary
The short version is that the International Code Council and a trade association called the Tiny Home Industry Association ( THIA) jointly fought the formation of an ASTM committee on tiny houses for a year with a false claim of duplication. It is important to note that David Tompos Sr. was not only on the board of THIA, but paid staff of ICC, and the VP of ICCNTA, a third party inspection, certification, testing lab, with engineering services.
We won every milestone honestly and overcame all their objections, and now have a subcommittee called E06.26 Tiny houses within the E06 Performance Of Buildings committee.
A few months later, ICC and THIA announced they were co-branding a tiny house standard together, OSMTH 1215. It is a complete duplication of our standard development, though they put out a disingenuous press release stating they joined the ASTM subcommittee to help the committee and make sure there was not an overlay. It is a complete overlay.
The Joint Venture Of ICC And THIA
ICC and THIA have created a joint venture with the purpose of controlling the tiny house marketplace and they tried to restrict trade in a housing crisis.
ICC stacked the vote on the OSMTH 1215 committee with THIA board members and close associates, to make sure their back door plan for the Small Residential Unit was ushered in.
The move to have tiny houses as a subcategory under the made up term, Small Residential Unit, is symbolic of the control ICC wants to have over tiny houses, in favor of large industry players that they certify, and to make sure tiny houses are tightly controlled under the umbrella of ICC.
Fast Forward To Now
I have attended the meetings as an interested party and it has been a disturbing experience. I stayed involved because I was immediately concerned about the direction the standard was going in with the direction of the Small Residential Unit and FORCING the provisions of ICC/MBI 1205 on the industry for certification.
I even had a 4 hour call with a couple of the voting committee members and interested parties early on to find some understanding and hopefully collaboration. The call was very positive, but it did not affect anything positive toward the standard.
ICC is violating the WTO Coherence agreement not to duplicate, ANSI Essential Requirements, including dominance, balance, appeals, openness, ICC Consensus Procedures, and antitrust violations in a standard development setting, and more.
At every meeting the director of standards calls out a large list of the policies they are suppose to be following and then he always mentions we cannot discuss marketing, with the elephant in the tiny house, that ICC has given THIA their own marketing page on the ICC website with their joint publications.
Attending the meetings is like going to church in the back room of a speak easy during prohibition. When you walk in you see pink lemonade and sweet tea on the counter, but you swear you can smell the moonshine brewing.
For More Of The Back Story
Building Official Exposes ICC Tiny House Monopoly
Colorado Chief Building Official Files PINS Complaint Against BSR/ICC/THIA 1215-2On May 19, 2023 Larimer County, Colorado Eric Fried, Chief Building Official filed a PINS complaint against proposed ANSI standard BSR/ICC/THIA 1215-202X “Design, construction and regulation of Tiny Houses for permanent occupancy.”
When the standard was first announced in 2023, Eric Fried submitted a PINS complaint to ICC. A key point was:
''ICC appears to be acting in bad faith, opaque, monopolistic manner to dominate the Tiny House regulatory market and prevent competition.''
-Eric Fried
Learn More
Why Didn't The RB42-25 Code Proposal That Referenced The ICC/THIA 1215 Standard NOT Include The Chassis In The Definition Of The Small Residential Unit? And Why Didn't They Add The Chassis To Appendix BB Tiny Houses?
Are we back to where we started from when movable provisions were not allowed in the proposal?
Learn More: Code Proposal Disapproved Referencing ICC Standard At CAH
Thank you again for signing, sharing, and chipping in to get more shares. Please keep sharing.
Janet Thome President
Tiny House Alliance USA
janet@tinyhouseallianceusa.org
I do not represent ASTM on any level with my comments, they are entirely my opinion.