There's a long tradition of complaints against builders, that can be traced back for thousands of years, at least as far back as the Babylonian Empire. Sometime between 1792 and 1750 B.C. one Hammurabi, the 6th and best known king of the first Amorite Dynasty, issued a model building code. Unlike more contemporary codes, representing some compromise between social priorities and technical requirements, the Hammurabi Code is clear and to the point. Especially so for those who transgressed it:

228          If a builder builds a house for a man and completes it, that man shall pay him two shekels of silver per sar (approximately 12 square feet) of house as his wage.

229        If a builder has built a house for a man and his work is not strong, and if the house he has built falls in and kills the householder, that builder shall be slain.

230        If the child of the householder be killed, the child of that builder shall be slain.

231        If the slave of the householder be killed, he shall give slave for slave to the householder.

232        If goods have been destroyed, he shall replace all that has been destroyed; and because the house that he built was not made strong, and it has fallen in, he shall restore the fallen house out of his own material.

233        If a builder has built a house for a man, and his work is not done properly and a wall shifts, then that builder shall make that wall good with his own silver.

This is excerpted from my introduction to the draft Housing and Neighborhood Song Book.

Warm regards,
Landlady's Daughter