The Washington Post says:

The District’s skyrocketing real estate prices have fueled an increase in illegal construction as property owners across the city are building and renovating homes without obtaining the required permits, according to D.C. officials and a review of city records.

But it occurs to me that in fact real estate prices in D.C. may be ‘skyrocketing’ because it’s so damned hard to build anything there. They’re arresting people who are building without permits — or without the city’s bureaucracy being properly aware that permits have been obtained.

Cyrus C. Blackmon and his wife, Katarina Varani, were arrested at their Capitol Hill home in April and charged with building without a permit, removing stop-work orders and entering a property in violation of a stop-work order.

In the past 17 months, D.C. has issued over 1,400 stop-work orders, according to the Post. Fairfax and Montgomery counties — each of which is larger than D.C. — each issue fewer than fifty a year.

One report of illegal construction activity can quickly lead to other violators being cited.

Alerted by a neighbor, the agency’s inspection unit recently discovered that Oladele had been constructing a four-story, multiunit building at 723 Morton St. NW since 2003 without a building permit. Inspectors immediately posted a stop-work order.

Then they noticed that a homeowner across the street was renovating his house without permits. They halted that work, too. D.C. police officer Kevin E. Brittingham, the property owner, has received $10,000 in fines and penalties. He said he is appealing the fines because he didn’t know he needed a permit to remodel his kitchen and replace windows.

“I know now,” he said.

He knows to move out of D.C., and to a place that doesn’t see targets on all of its residents’ backs, if he has any sense.