Photo via CalEarth Facebook
By Arizona Agenda
An artful, affordable, energy-efficient home in one of the most beautiful parts of Arizona, for less than $50,000? Must be in Cochise County, where half of all rural home owner-builders take advantage of the county’s “opt out permit” that most Arizonans have never heard of.
These opt-out permits allow home owner-builders to eschew typical code inspections and use alternative methods and materials to construct their desert dwellings. This laissez-faire allowance has attracted all kinds of new residents to the area over the last decade, from libertarian off-grid individualists to community-seeking sustainability nerds. Before we take a closer look at how “opt-out culture” is blossoming in the area, some historic context.
Rural Characters
Flash back to 2006: Cochise County was preparing to update its building codes to align with the International Building Code, as many counties already had. But not everyone was keen on that tidy, one-size-fits-all framework.
At a public hearing on June 6 of that year, locals rallied in support of an amendment tailored for rural owner-builders.
The locals argued that the amendment would preserve the “rural character” of the county by keeping parcel sizes large, preventing high-density developments, air pollution and rising property taxes.
The Supervisors were convinced — mostly. The amendment passed 2–1. But did anyone anticipate that this provision would become a bat signal for young families over the coming decades?
Generation Drift
Millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, and Boomers are increasingly finding their way to rural Cochise County. That’s partly to do with the lure of the opt-out permit, made famous by local YouTube channels, but also because rents and home prices elsewhere became a forcing function.
