TONOPAH -- Nye County is cracking down on people who haul manufactured homes into Pahrump at night, hook them up to electricity and start living in them without having them inspected or paying permit fees.

Nye County Code will be changed effective April 27 to require an inspection by the Nevada Division of Manufactured Housing before mobile homes can be placed on a lot, after county commission action Tuesday.

Richard Johnson, manager of building safety and code compliance, said there have been 60 or 70 code compliance cases over the last year and a half involving mobile homes brought onto lots with no fees paid. Johnson said he discussed the problem with Scott Lewis, chief of the Pahrum Valley Fire and Rescue Service.

But Commissioner Butch Borasky persuaded the board another provision in the code, requiring inspections before an addition would be permitted, would be too onerous.

The Pahrump Regional Planning Commission last July had suggested amending county codes to require structures built prior to Oct. 1, 1998, and not residing in a special flood hazard area to comply with current building codes and inspections if they are expanded.

Another change to county code would eliminate a requirement for another soils report if a property owner was replacing a manufactured home with another one of equal size or smaller.

Johnson said the stealth movement of manufactured homes into Pahrump, usually from Las Vegas, could be a health problem.

"We want to make a level playing field between manufactured housing and stick-built houses in Pahrump. Currently, on stick-built homes before they can be moved into, the service boxes have to be examined and we make sure it is electrically sound before it is energized when people move in," Johnson said.

"We have had a problem in Pahrump with mobile homes being moved in in the middle of the night to residential neighborhoods. The pedestals are energized, people move into the homes, the county doesn't get any inspections, no impact fees, and people are living illegally in a home that has never been safety inspected and we have a difficult time getting them out," Johnson said.

The inspections for additions onto existing homes however were termed by Borasky as "an invasion of privacy."

Johnson agreed with striking the requirement to inspect additions. Homes built before 1998 were built before county codes were in place.

"It's a terrible burden on a homeowner to have to bring those up to current code in order to expand those facilities," Johnson said.

Borasky said he doesn't like ordinances that are "strange or intrusive," especially with the tough economic times.

"I think maybe we're getting too intrusive. Give me some numbers. I want to see how many per year come into town, circumvent the law and get them hooked up at night," Borasky said.