Twenty-three years' worth of questions

Q. I’ve read your column each week for several years. How did you get started writing it? And are the questions made up or are they real questions from readers?

A. I got started through a conversation with the editor of my local Herald, sitting at a Chamber of Commerce lunch in 1989. She and I were discussing local issues, and I told her about my concerns that people weren’t really protected from huge losses to their homes and businesses due to the lack of information about how to avoid being ripped off while doing construction work and remedying code violations so they could sell their homes.

At the time, I was lobbying for the American Institute of Architects in Albany on issues of public safety. Among all the building collapses, flood damage, consumer fraud and property losses from negligence that I had seen, I expressed the need for readers to have a place to turn to, a column to address their problems and help to others avoid the experience of these dilemmas. The editor was receptive, and asked me to write a sample column. I used a question from one of my clients about permits and water damage to their home, and it ran the following week, in December of 1989.