International Residential Code

The organization creates what it calls the International Building Code (IBC) and International Residential Code (IRC), two model building codes, which have been adopted for use as a base code standard by most jurisdictions within the United States. The ICC's model codes have been criticized for inflating housing costs and reducing housing supply in the United States through arbitrary and stringent standards that do little for safety and are out of sync with best practices in other countries. The IBC has contributed to the spread of 5-over-1 type of buildings across the US and contributed to a lack of medium-density housing (so-called "missing middle housing").