This is why the current trend of Cities bowing to developer's rights is a mistake:

Homes evacuated in San Antonio as hill crumbles


SAN ANTONIO – Construction crews moved dirt to shore up a group of houses precariously perched on a crumbling hill in San Antonio on Monday as engineers tried to determine why the land below was shifting, causing dozens of homes to evacuate.

Gaping crevices, some 15 feet deep, cut across several yards as dirt cascaded into a towering stone retaining wall that nearly split in half. Fences crumpled like accordions as crews packed dirt under one home and around its exterior after part of its foundation was exposed.

One soil expert said the cause of the landslide appeared to be the result of poor retaining wall design, and a city official said the nearly 1,000-foot-long wall in the upper-middle class neighborhood of sprawling two-story homes was built without a permit.

No one has been injured, but about 80 homes were evacuated on Sunday after a resident in the northwest side subdivision reported that his backyard was sliding down hill. By Monday afternoon, residents in about 55 of those homes were allowed to return after inspections and soil monitoring found them to be safe, said Valerie Dolenga, a spokeswoman for Pulte Homes Inc., the parent company of the neighborhood's builder, Centex Homes.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_soil_shift_evacuation

City officials must take some sweet kickbacks from these people with what they let them get away with.

From my own experience, it does look like it's one of the places they cut corners. Can you imagine building a retaining wall that isn't mortared? (That's my situation, not the case in the article)

Yeah, there's no way that the San Antonio developer could have built a 1000 foot retaining wall without the City's knowledge.

Our home is was the only one on the street for 2 miles, it is now surrounded by developments. The shit they have done to us and the shoddy construction of the homes they built was shocking.

They put the sewer down the opposite side of the street then we were ordered to connect. We had to pay to bore under the road. Anywhere I have ever been before, the developer would have to bring it to the property line, not here. When we didn't choose them as the contractor to do the work, the city suddenly changed the code for the bore, the contractor we had selected wouldn't talk to us until his quote was expired. The price tripled.

They built the houses across the street with no vapor barrier and single pane windows. In northern Ohio that is unbelievable. $500K for something that is going to mold away in a few years.

Where I live, the problem is that the City sees these businessmen as THEIR customers. In other words, the ordinary man is not relevant to them. Money talks. The City wasn't to attract the big money. But, here in this state, the City doesn't feel it has anything to barter with to attract these business to their City, so they barter away their oversight powers. They literally look the other way as connected individuals in their City screw over their neighbors! How they do it is with the help of attorneys. The City Attorney won't do due process of law and won't tell the Staff important things that would protect homeowners, and if the homeowners do gander on, it will be difficult to find a clean attorney. All the locals ones know the game. They're tied into the same business networks as the connected business owners. They know the situation and they will not reveal their conflicts of interest and just sucker the poor homeowner, consulting them down a blind alley.

It's a scam which the federal authorities should look into.