Burdensome regulations on housing construction have caused costs to skyrocket. Minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, square footage minimums, floor-area ratio restrictions, overzealous height restrictions, parking requirements, abuse of environmental reviews, historic designations, community reviews, overzealous MFH requirements (like double-stair), below-market mandates, all have worked together to constrain supply, leading to skyrocketing costs.
It's the single most important economic issue for me. We need a nationwide effort to ease these restrictions, or we're just going to continue to see rents eat up more and more of young people's earnings.
Just curious, are there any regulations on housing you agree with? There tends to be belief that housing regulations exist to limit supply. Let's not forget that many of these encourage safety and are cost effective ways to increase the quality of life of the residents. If we take deregulation and cheap housing to the extreme we end up with shanty towns.
> If we take deregulation and cheap housing to the extreme we end up with shanty towns.
That's possible, but, considering that all the most expensive places in this country were developed in the very way this article is advocating, I'm going to label it as improbable.
Many amongst my friends and family think I'm a bit crazy living in the inner city, but the truth is my equity has skyrocketed, and will continue to do so. Urban dwellings are in high demand. Given that many of these same urban dwellings are illegal to construct now / prohibitively expensive, we've handicapped the ability of the market to meet demand.
Physical safety (structural integrity and fire safety), noise transmission and ventilation. I think regulations around these 3 aspects can help more than they hurt. Beyond these items, I would be skeptical.
If it makes you feel any better the oldest streets around here are wider than newer ones, because they had to be able to turn a wagon with a team of horses.
Having streets unable to be accessible by fire response vehicles doesn't seem like a good idea. What would be the alternative here? (genuine question, I'm not from the US)
Hm.. couldn't a fire engine be driven in reverse? It could have an emergency driver's wheel in the back. I have seen crane trucks driven with a joystick from outside the vehicle, so it doesn't seem impossible.
We can make them turn 360 degrees like the electric G-Wagon. If upgrading the fleet of firefighting trucks to do so costs less than the value brought by tighter spacing of homes, it’s worth it.
A lot of these zoning changes lower the already low barrier for multinationals to build, but does nothing for actual families. I'm presently surrounded by hundreds of empty units priced out of reach because these companies are illegally colluding to fix the price. They may claim ignorance and try to launder responsibility through a series of tech products, but at the end of the day the rent is high where I am because of price fixing.
How is double stair MFH overzealous? I can’t control if my neighbor blocks the stairwell with a couch that gets stuck while he’s moving in and now I have no egress if my other neighbor starts a fire.
I’m in favor of greater freedoms, and the freedom to choose a single stair MFH if I want.
A couch and a fire and that couch can't be pushed over or jumped over... That's quite a contrived scenario. I suspect that most of the improvements in the fire safety record of apartment buildings have to do with other factors like materials used, fireproof stair doors, etc etc. The reason I think the two stairs don't do much is that first world countries exist outside North America, they don't have this rule, and their fire safety is just as good or better than ours.
Same reason I'm extremely skeptical that our fire trucks need to be so grotesquely large, despite what the fire departments claim. If there were no countries with a good fire safety record outside North America, like sure, okay, maybe. But they're just as good or better at fighting fires in Europe, and manage to go this with human sized trucks that don't require extremely wide streets, wide turn radiuses, and aren't nearly as deadly for pedestrians as a result. Thanks for existing, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan etc! One day we'll accept that you to cities, building and engineering better and just copy you.
> I can’t control if my neighbor blocks the stairwell with a couch that gets stuck while he’s moving in and now I have no egress if my other neighbor starts a fire.
That is an extremely specific situation!
> How is double stair MFH overzealous?
There is a cost to every regulation. The cost to this one is that housing is more expensive for all Americans. Stress, poverty, and homelessness all lead to negative health outcomes. Taken as a whole, those negative outcomes may very well outweigh the fire safety benefits of double-stair (which have never been proven to exist).
> I’m in favor of greater freedoms, and the freedom to choose a single stair MFH if I want.
> But I don’t want.
Right, so it sounds like you are in favor of removing the double-stair regulation?
That doesnt help you because another neighbor is moving out and blocking the second staircase with another couch. This is the reason why you should have three staircases and only two neighbors. Though a problem arises if a neighbor is able to block a staircase and start a fire at the same time. That has to be checked beforehand.
We should require two stairs for single family housing as well.
The elderly and disabled will also need to get furniture up stairs. Not to mention that the housing shortage forces more people to share a house with strangers.
> Burdensome regulations on housing construction have caused costs to skyrocket.
How much have costs increased, and what tells us that it's regulations, not many other causes?
Also, which regulations? Some are more valuable, some less, and inevitably some will misfire. I'm not just going to trust real estate developers, who have their own interests, to meet other needs.
> below-market mandates
I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.
> community reviews
In cities, new buildings can impact a community for a century. They should have a say, not just a developer from another city.
The entire article is on the prohibition of single stair multi-family residential.
> I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.
This is silly. When car makers couldn't make enough cars in 2021 and the price went up, was the solution to ban making new cars? Should we have prohibited making cars with fancy trim? Having enough housing for everyone is the only way to make sure affordable housing exists.
Err, I just enumerated many regulations I have a problem with in the very post you quoted, and evidence is pretty strong that it's the combined effect of all of those regulations that results in higher costs. [1] I realized I left off overuse of exclusively single-family zoning, which is the worst offender. [2]
> I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.
Evidence is strong that market-rate construction causes richer residents to exchange their current unit for a higher-end unit, opening up supply at the lower end. [3]
The problem with BMR requirements is the increased costs borne by developers, who have to offset those increased costs by charging more for the market rate units. There's a limit to that market, so fewer units are constructed than otherwise would be. Middle class families are especially worse off, as they neither qualify for BMR lotteries, nor earn enough for the rapidly accelerating market-rate unit. [4]
Further, rents are lower in states that disallow BMR mandates (like Texas) than those that have BMR mandates (like California).
I don't know anyone starting a family happy with the situation. Most people I know are moving to suburbs only because they can't get 3 bedroom apartments in cities. If MFH's became broadly available I think many new families would flock there.
Looking from the outside I would guess this is one of the big reasons for the "missing middle" [1] (lack of medium-density housing) in most North American cities. It is simply not economically feasible to build a small to medium size multi-unit building if you need to include two stairwells, so all buildings are either single family houses or huge mega projects.
In my country the simple and cheap four-story walk-up condo building (with a single stair and no elevator) is the bread and butter medium density housing for the working class. You either have two or four units per floor, all opening to the stairwell with almost no space lost in corridors, it is simple and efficient. Alternatively for higher density there are higher versions with typically up to 12 floors with one or two elevators but still only one stairwell, so keeping the same efficiency.
The two stairways result in double-loaded hallways which also negatively impact unit sizes and make it impossible to have windows on more than one wall in most rooms. It's a total disaster
The reason five over ones are popular in the US has nothing to do with staircase requirements. The reason is money, like always.
You can stick build residential buildings up to five stories and it’s way, way cheaper than reinforced concrete and steel. They are mega complexes because the financial stakeholders want to maximize the available land and rents.
Part of the author’s point is that single-stair buildings can be built economically on much smaller pieces of land. This increases the number of plots — especially in urban environments — on which you can build MFH, plots which developers today wouldn’t even think of.
Legalizing single-stair buildings would not really change the viability of big apartment complexes, you’re right. But it would allow for smaller ones.
> The reason five over ones are popular in the US has nothing to do with staircase requirements. The reason is money, like always.
Yes it is money. More staircases remarkably increase the costs of buildings. Single stairway, cheaper buildings, more profitable to do other sorts of buildings, more variety of buildings etc.
It’s true that five stories is an economic sweet spot, but the idea is we could get five story point access blocks instead of double loaded corridor layouts.
I'd like to see more discussion of the safety impact; I know the article makes the point that fire deaths per capita are lower in Europe, which lacks the requirement, but it also notes that US housing stock is also much more wooden and therefore at higher risk to begin with. (Wood construction is generally a good thing from a sustainability perspective)
Whenever I see this proposed my brain immediately goes to the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK. I guess that may just be an outlier due to the myriad of other causes, but it gives me pause.
>US housing stock is also much more wooden and therefore at higher risk to begin with.
Fire compromising the structure of a building, or the structure itself burning is almost never the cause of death or injury. The primary killer in structure fires is hydrogen cyanide gas. Wood does emit hydrogen cyanide but the primary source is synthetic materials like upholstered furniture, wall and floor coverings, cabinetry, and other personal belongings.
If you have two houses, one made of gypsum-covered 2x4 walls and the other made of stone and steel and a faulty space heater ignites a sofa or some polyester curtains, the buildings are equally lethal. The hydrogen cyanide will have killed you long before the fire burned through the drywall. Non-flammable walls don't even necessarily slow a fire's spread if synthetic materials are involved. The high heat of by their combustion and their dirty combustion causes flashover which ignites all flammable materials in a given space.
I have been a volunteer firefighter for almost 20 years. I have experienced too many fatalities but none of them have ever burned to death. All victims have been dead due to asphyxiation (CO/CO2) or cyanide poisoning.
The differences in death rates aren't as stark as the author contends (for example 0.2 deaths per fire in Great Britain, 0.3 in the US) and my gut tells me the main differentiation between the US and European deaths is the smaller, more compartmentalized nature of European dwellings (which limits the spread of smoke) coupled with their greater level of urbanization which leads to faster emergency services response (the faster a fire is knocked down the less gas it produces).
Open floorplans kill.
All of that being said, wooden construction does cause more firefighter deaths-- especially if engineered wood is used. But by the time the floor of a house has been weakened enough by a basement fire to fail and kill a firefighter, all of the occupants are already dead.
What are your thoughts on sprinklers in these types of situations?
Are they mostly to give people enough time to get out?
Do you feel the safety reduction of moving to single stair is offset by requiring sprinkling?
The way I have seen the idea of single-stair multifamily proposed in US was that in areas where zoning requires sprinklers in multifamily dwellings anyway, all the extra hallway space required for the second stairway is an unnecessary burden cost wise for little marginal safety.
Not to mention european houses also have drywall over the concrete these days, the days of barren concrete or plaster over concrete have been over since at least the 90s.
Grenfell is what happens when building regulations are poorly enforced.
In principle, each apartment in Grenfell should have been able to burn out completely while the neighbouring units were untouched, so there was no need for a second stair as any evacuation would have been limited to units adjacent rather than the entire population.
What actually happened is that years of neglect had seen firebreaks and bulkheads repeatedly compromised and then a load of flammable cladding added to the outside, because the building industry is basically rotten.
Had the same incident taken place when the building was first constructed, the damage would have been limited to the one apartment.
Which is why the article's call for "reform of defect liability laws that drive insurance costs up for condo developers" makes his whole position deeply suspicious.
Keep in mind that Grenfell was the responsibility of the local council. It was not run by eg a multinational corporation, which usually have better management and a commercial reputation to defend (and deep pockets to go after in a law suit).
Big business gets a lot of flak, but they are honestly better on average than small businesses and many local governments institutions.
Unfortunately people from the US (including those who have never lived in an apartment or thought about fire regulations before) instinctively get really worried about this whole idea and assume people are just going to get killed.
Happens in this thread and whenever it is brought up in social media. The original article talks about statistics, various extra measures to ensure safety and limiting to buildings 6 stores or less.
But US commentators have trouble getting past their initial reaction. They also do the usual US thing of discounting anything from overseas as "not applicable to US conditions".
I think there is some of that certainly, but it's also worth being cautious anytime a developer says they want to abandon fire codes that were put in place to save human lives so that they can add greater density housing. Fire codes got where they are in part because developers were fine with packing people into unsafe housing situations. Let's not let our guard down entirely now.
I totally agree with you that it's definitely instinctive. The article has a link to mass timber construction for fire officials. Coincidentally there is an office building near me with mass timber structure but whenever I tell people about it, they instinctively think of it as less safe than steel and concrete.
I also have an instinct to avoid standing where I could fall a long way - it's probably a good instinct. You haven't provided evidence that the instinct regarding fire safety in single-stair buildings is flawed.
The intention of the double stairwell requirement, is that you are not supposed to have your access point to the stairwell by an obstruction, and there should be a maximum access time to the stairwell.
One notable requirement of single-stair buildings where they are legal in the US, is that
1. the height is generally determined by the height of the fire ladders available, providing a second means of egress
2. the single stair requirement usually only applies to buildings that have a low maximum units per floor. In Seattle where they are legal, this is four units. At four units a floor, your front door directly opens feet away from the stairwell, and having a second staircase a sufficient distance away would be hard to fit in the floor plan.
> 1. the height is generally determined by the height of the fire ladders available, providing a second means of egress
This is an interesting requirement and makes me wonder if some of the need for two staircases comes from the proximity - or lack thereof - to fire services. I'd be sitting in a burning home for a long time if I had to wait for a fire ladder.
> Wood construction is generally a good thing from a sustainability perspective
This is something a lot of people get confused about^. To summarize, each ton of wood used in constructions takes approx 1 ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere (cellulose is basically solidified carbon and oxygen), whereas each ton of concrete used in construction puts approx 100kg of C02 into the atmosphere.
The new construction single-staircase building in NYC that I used to live in was metal and concrete framed, fitted with sprinklers throughout, and had double fire doors separating each apartment from the (all tile/metal/concrete) staircase with little vestibules. It didn’t give me pause in the slightest, really I felt like it was safer from a fire perspective than a typical wood frame single family home, or an older building with a rickety old fire escape.
> but it also notes that US housing stock is also much more wooden and therefore at higher risk to begin with. (Wood construction is generally a good thing from a sustainability perspective)
So if we really care about fire safety, shouldn't we be regulating more effective mitigations to protect these wooden buildings, rather than the two stair aspect?
Pointing out that there's a bigger risk factor than single stair has a natural conclusion.
However, I have become so jaded that I no longer believe that people advocating for two stair cases actually care about fire safety, because of their lack of concern about wooden structure risks.
Imposing strict, burdensome, and hardly-useful restrictions on multi-unit housing while ignoring life saving regulations for single unit housing has pretty clear ideological motivations.
> I'd like to see more discussion of the safety impact;
Another concern is building stability, whether or not the actual construction process followed code, whether or not structural maintenance is adequate, & the age of some high rises. Florida recently had a condo collapse. There are many old tall buildings built on shifting water permeable ground in the US.
China has issues with tall buildings as well, particularly in it's river flood plains. It is quite surreal to see an entire high-rise being carried down a river. Look it up.
Edit:
I was unable to find the video with today's search...so here is the video. Apparently there was censorship with the Chinese government over the video.
Basically through an analysis of fire loss history combined with open property data. The fire engineering field hasn't traditionally had access to great data, for a few different reasons, but now the data is actually potentially available to answer the question – but it does need a bit of time and investment.
> (Wood construction is generally a good thing from a sustainability perspective)
I don't really see how wood is more sustainable than eg brick or even steel and glass?
> Whenever I see this proposed my brain immediately goes to the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK. I guess that may just be an outlier due to the myriad of other causes, but it gives me pause.
You should look at statistics instead of single lurid anecdata. In any case, Grenfell Tower is a nice illustration of how when government provides services like housing, they don't magically provide safety. (Funnily enough, people usually try to spin that tower fire as some failure of the market, when the estate was managed by the local council.)
> I know the article makes the point that fire deaths per capita are lower in Europe, which lacks the requirement, but it also notes that US housing stock is also much more wooden and therefore at higher risk to begin with.
Btw, this might suggest to change the regulation so that you can either follow the existing US regulations when building with wood; or you get allowed more density and single-stairs etc, when building with whatever they use in Europe.
I can speak to and endorse this kind of unit from personal experience. I was born, raised and lived most of my life in Denver, CO. Now, I live in France in a 'single-stair multifamily'.
Growing up I mostly lived in single family homes, but in college my dad moved into a townhouse and I lived with him for a couple years.
Before moving to France, my wife and I lived in single family homes and a '5-over-1' apartment.
Now, we live on the 7th floor, end-unit of an apartment building. It's a 'single-stair multifamily,' 'floor-through' apartment (thankfully with an elevator). Meaning our apartment a large balcony one one side and windows on three sides. The only side without a window leads to the stairwell. Every room has a window, even the bathroom and toilet (often separated in France).
Without a doubt, this place is one of the best types of housing I've ever occupied. In the summer we can open up windows on either side of the apartment and get a fantastic breeze. The concrete structure does a great job regulating the temperature for most of the year. We get sunlight in the morning and evening.
I hate yardwork and there's none to do. No sidewalks to shovel snow from either. I also experience neighborliness on par with most single family homes. Very similar to my dad's townhouse actually (probably not by coincidence if you think about the incentive structures).
We have a 5 year old son and we don't miss having a yard. There are parks nearby with playgrounds and paths where he can safely ride his bike without worrying about any cars.
Admittedly, I do miss having barbecues in the backyard. I also miss having a garage to use as a workshop.
The 5-over-1, on the other hand, was easily the worst type of housing I've occupied. Poor lighting, anonymous, ugly corridors. No sense of neighborliness. Poorly maintained and constructed. Nowhere near a good park without walking along a nasty arterial surface street.
I frequently ask myself, 'why can't we have this in the States?!' and now I know why. Building codes, zoning and city planners strike again.
My partner and I love the "single-stair multifamily" building "Leilighet" that we live in Oslo, Norway. It was built in the 1920s and has 3 levels with each level having 3 units. We enjoy the people that we live near and we really appreciate that our son is able to be around so many people in our immediate community. For the most part, we are always seeing someone that we know when coming and going.
We have an access road behind the building that is between the building and the green space. This access road is gated and is used by all of us residents (especially the kids).
The green space has plenty of things to share (garden areas, berries, fruit trees, barbecues, tables, chairs, etc...) My 5 year old son has a lot of friends who live in our area and he's able to just be himself running around, climbing trees, digging in dirt, and exploring his world within a safe community.
The density and use of space is much more efficient than what I was previously used to in the Pacific Northwest. During the last five years of living in Oslo, we have only needed a car when visiting friends at their cabins. I feel privileged to live a car free lifestyle.
> Admittedly, I do miss having barbecues in the backyard. I also miss having a garage to use as a workshop.
This is something that Singapore seems to do quite well. Many blocks of flats have shared outdoor facilities like a bbq, childrens playground, pool, etc. I've never lived there but have friends who do and when I visit we'll have a bbq.
I live in the UK. The housing here is notoriously poor quality, even (or sometimes especially) new build blocks of flats. And even in the expensive places I'm not sure they offer this.
The diagram illustrates that the longest aerial ladder firetruck available in North America is 137' / 41m, which should be able to reach about fourteen storeys high. A 'typical' aerial ladder is about 75' / 22m, which is about seven storeys.
What's not covered in the diagrams you've provided are construction standards (for fire ratings) and also whether scissor stairs [0] satisfy the requirements for two staircases. These vary widely across the countries noted
Seems like at no point along the way, as more and more fire safety measures were being added (eg. sprinklers!) did anyone think that maybe it meant some of the more egregiously expensive safety measures were now deprecated and their use should be ended.
British Columbia's government has mentioned they're looking into this and I hope we see an end to the mandated two staircases. People consistently say they want more two and three bedroom apartments. Single stairway buildings seem like one of the best ways to introduce the flexibility that would make those products more viable.
which mentions this very pertinent section of the US National Housing Association Proceedings (1913), p.212:
"Do everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two-family dwellings, because the two-family house is the next least objectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind... if we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction; if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds (compared to zoning regulations based on race), because that can be justified as a legitimate exercise of the police power[...] In our laws let most of the fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings, and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with no fire protection whatever"
"Almost every country in Western Europe—where single-stair apartment buildings can rise many times the IBC’s three-story height limit—has fewer fire deaths per capita than the US."
There is no analysis of where these fire deaths are occurring: are they in single-family homes? Commercial buildings? Car wrecks that caught on fire? Trailer parks? More compelling would be to compare apartment deaths in other countries with those in the US or, at a minimum, explain why the available statistics advance this thesis even if they are not completely comparable.
Readit News
Burdensome regulations on housing construction have caused costs to skyrocket. Minimum lot sizes, setback requirements, square footage minimums, floor-area ratio restrictions, overzealous height restrictions, parking requirements, abuse of environmental reviews, historic designations, community reviews, overzealous MFH requirements (like double-stair), below-market mandates, all have worked together to constrain supply, leading to skyrocketing costs.
It's the single most important economic issue for me. We need a nationwide effort to ease these restrictions, or we're just going to continue to see rents eat up more and more of young people's earnings.
Making housing cheaper also means making higher quality housing cheaper.
That's possible, but, considering that all the most expensive places in this country were developed in the very way this article is advocating, I'm going to label it as improbable.
Many amongst my friends and family think I'm a bit crazy living in the inner city, but the truth is my equity has skyrocketed, and will continue to do so. Urban dwellings are in high demand. Given that many of these same urban dwellings are illegal to construct now / prohibitively expensive, we've handicapped the ability of the market to meet demand.
It is often more the case that limited supply is an unintended outcome. People just don’t think ahead.
Also to enrich union tradespeople. See prohibitions against PEX plumbing and requirements for electrical conduit instead of Romex.
I’m in favor of greater freedoms, and the freedom to choose a single stair MFH if I want.
But I don’t want.
Same reason I'm extremely skeptical that our fire trucks need to be so grotesquely large, despite what the fire departments claim. If there were no countries with a good fire safety record outside North America, like sure, okay, maybe. But they're just as good or better at fighting fires in Europe, and manage to go this with human sized trucks that don't require extremely wide streets, wide turn radiuses, and aren't nearly as deadly for pedestrians as a result. Thanks for existing, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan etc! One day we'll accept that you to cities, building and engineering better and just copy you.
That is an extremely specific situation!
> How is double stair MFH overzealous?
There is a cost to every regulation. The cost to this one is that housing is more expensive for all Americans. Stress, poverty, and homelessness all lead to negative health outcomes. Taken as a whole, those negative outcomes may very well outweigh the fire safety benefits of double-stair (which have never been proven to exist).
> I’m in favor of greater freedoms, and the freedom to choose a single stair MFH if I want. > But I don’t want.
Right, so it sounds like you are in favor of removing the double-stair regulation?
I suggest reading the article, which is intended to answer this question in depth. It provides concrete examples!
The elderly and disabled will also need to get furniture up stairs. Not to mention that the housing shortage forces more people to share a house with strangers.
Deleted Comment
How much have costs increased, and what tells us that it's regulations, not many other causes?
Also, which regulations? Some are more valuable, some less, and inevitably some will misfire. I'm not just going to trust real estate developers, who have their own interests, to meet other needs.
> below-market mandates
I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.
> community reviews
In cities, new buildings can impact a community for a century. They should have a say, not just a developer from another city.
The entire article is on the prohibition of single stair multi-family residential.
> I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.
This is silly. When car makers couldn't make enough cars in 2021 and the price went up, was the solution to ban making new cars? Should we have prohibited making cars with fancy trim? Having enough housing for everyone is the only way to make sure affordable housing exists.
> I'm not sure we need more high-end development - those tenants have plenty of options.
Evidence is strong that market-rate construction causes richer residents to exchange their current unit for a higher-end unit, opening up supply at the lower end. [3]
The problem with BMR requirements is the increased costs borne by developers, who have to offset those increased costs by charging more for the market rate units. There's a limit to that market, so fewer units are constructed than otherwise would be. Middle class families are especially worse off, as they neither qualify for BMR lotteries, nor earn enough for the rapidly accelerating market-rate unit. [4]
Further, rents are lower in states that disallow BMR mandates (like Texas) than those that have BMR mandates (like California).
1. https://www.axios.com/2019/08/28/study-californias-land-use-... 2. https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/business/single-family-zoning... 3. https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/research/market-rate-development-... 4. https://escholarship.org/content/qt036599mr/qt036599mr_noSpl...
In my country the simple and cheap four-story walk-up condo building (with a single stair and no elevator) is the bread and butter medium density housing for the working class. You either have two or four units per floor, all opening to the stairwell with almost no space lost in corridors, it is simple and efficient. Alternatively for higher density there are higher versions with typically up to 12 floors with one or two elevators but still only one stairwell, so keeping the same efficiency.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing
You can stick build residential buildings up to five stories and it’s way, way cheaper than reinforced concrete and steel. They are mega complexes because the financial stakeholders want to maximize the available land and rents.
Part of the author’s point is that single-stair buildings can be built economically on much smaller pieces of land. This increases the number of plots — especially in urban environments — on which you can build MFH, plots which developers today wouldn’t even think of.
Legalizing single-stair buildings would not really change the viability of big apartment complexes, you’re right. But it would allow for smaller ones.
Yes it is money. More staircases remarkably increase the costs of buildings. Single stairway, cheaper buildings, more profitable to do other sorts of buildings, more variety of buildings etc.
(see also no parking mandates)
Whenever I see this proposed my brain immediately goes to the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK. I guess that may just be an outlier due to the myriad of other causes, but it gives me pause.
Fire compromising the structure of a building, or the structure itself burning is almost never the cause of death or injury. The primary killer in structure fires is hydrogen cyanide gas. Wood does emit hydrogen cyanide but the primary source is synthetic materials like upholstered furniture, wall and floor coverings, cabinetry, and other personal belongings.
If you have two houses, one made of gypsum-covered 2x4 walls and the other made of stone and steel and a faulty space heater ignites a sofa or some polyester curtains, the buildings are equally lethal. The hydrogen cyanide will have killed you long before the fire burned through the drywall. Non-flammable walls don't even necessarily slow a fire's spread if synthetic materials are involved. The high heat of by their combustion and their dirty combustion causes flashover which ignites all flammable materials in a given space.
I have been a volunteer firefighter for almost 20 years. I have experienced too many fatalities but none of them have ever burned to death. All victims have been dead due to asphyxiation (CO/CO2) or cyanide poisoning.
The differences in death rates aren't as stark as the author contends (for example 0.2 deaths per fire in Great Britain, 0.3 in the US) and my gut tells me the main differentiation between the US and European deaths is the smaller, more compartmentalized nature of European dwellings (which limits the spread of smoke) coupled with their greater level of urbanization which leads to faster emergency services response (the faster a fire is knocked down the less gas it produces).
Open floorplans kill.
All of that being said, wooden construction does cause more firefighter deaths-- especially if engineered wood is used. But by the time the floor of a house has been weakened enough by a basement fire to fail and kill a firefighter, all of the occupants are already dead.
The way I have seen the idea of single-stair multifamily proposed in US was that in areas where zoning requires sprinklers in multifamily dwellings anyway, all the extra hallway space required for the second stairway is an unnecessary burden cost wise for little marginal safety.
Not to mention european houses also have drywall over the concrete these days, the days of barren concrete or plaster over concrete have been over since at least the 90s.
In principle, each apartment in Grenfell should have been able to burn out completely while the neighbouring units were untouched, so there was no need for a second stair as any evacuation would have been limited to units adjacent rather than the entire population.
What actually happened is that years of neglect had seen firebreaks and bulkheads repeatedly compromised and then a load of flammable cladding added to the outside, because the building industry is basically rotten.
Had the same incident taken place when the building was first constructed, the damage would have been limited to the one apartment.
Big business gets a lot of flak, but they are honestly better on average than small businesses and many local governments institutions.
Happens in this thread and whenever it is brought up in social media. The original article talks about statistics, various extra measures to ensure safety and limiting to buildings 6 stores or less.
But US commentators have trouble getting past their initial reaction. They also do the usual US thing of discounting anything from overseas as "not applicable to US conditions".
The answer I've heard that makes sense, is that if you do this in US buildings you need decent fire suppression systems even if those bump the price.
But it's well worth doing in terms of making more types of nice buildings viable.
One notable requirement of single-stair buildings where they are legal in the US, is that
1. the height is generally determined by the height of the fire ladders available, providing a second means of egress
2. the single stair requirement usually only applies to buildings that have a low maximum units per floor. In Seattle where they are legal, this is four units. At four units a floor, your front door directly opens feet away from the stairwell, and having a second staircase a sufficient distance away would be hard to fit in the floor plan.
This is an interesting requirement and makes me wonder if some of the need for two staircases comes from the proximity - or lack thereof - to fire services. I'd be sitting in a burning home for a long time if I had to wait for a fire ladder.
This is something a lot of people get confused about^. To summarize, each ton of wood used in constructions takes approx 1 ton of CO2 out of the atmosphere (cellulose is basically solidified carbon and oxygen), whereas each ton of concrete used in construction puts approx 100kg of C02 into the atmosphere.
^ "You're cutting down treeees, oh the humanity!"
So if we really care about fire safety, shouldn't we be regulating more effective mitigations to protect these wooden buildings, rather than the two stair aspect?
Pointing out that there's a bigger risk factor than single stair has a natural conclusion.
However, I have become so jaded that I no longer believe that people advocating for two stair cases actually care about fire safety, because of their lack of concern about wooden structure risks.
Imposing strict, burdensome, and hardly-useful restrictions on multi-unit housing while ignoring life saving regulations for single unit housing has pretty clear ideological motivations.
Another concern is building stability, whether or not the actual construction process followed code, whether or not structural maintenance is adequate, & the age of some high rises. Florida recently had a condo collapse. There are many old tall buildings built on shifting water permeable ground in the US.
China has issues with tall buildings as well, particularly in it's river flood plains. It is quite surreal to see an entire high-rise being carried down a river. Look it up.
Edit:
I was unable to find the video with today's search...so here is the video. Apparently there was censorship with the Chinese government over the video.
https://youtu.be/MCC7C5PJrOI?si=TAgIKOYbIpr8VAM0&t=154
Basically through an analysis of fire loss history combined with open property data. The fire engineering field hasn't traditionally had access to great data, for a few different reasons, but now the data is actually potentially available to answer the question – but it does need a bit of time and investment.
(I'm the author of the article.)
I don't really see how wood is more sustainable than eg brick or even steel and glass?
> Whenever I see this proposed my brain immediately goes to the Grenfell Tower fire in the UK. I guess that may just be an outlier due to the myriad of other causes, but it gives me pause.
You should look at statistics instead of single lurid anecdata. In any case, Grenfell Tower is a nice illustration of how when government provides services like housing, they don't magically provide safety. (Funnily enough, people usually try to spin that tower fire as some failure of the market, when the estate was managed by the local council.)
> I know the article makes the point that fire deaths per capita are lower in Europe, which lacks the requirement, but it also notes that US housing stock is also much more wooden and therefore at higher risk to begin with.
Btw, this might suggest to change the regulation so that you can either follow the existing US regulations when building with wood; or you get allowed more density and single-stairs etc, when building with whatever they use in Europe.
So highly sustainable from a global warming perspective at least.
Older buildings only.
Dead Comment
Growing up I mostly lived in single family homes, but in college my dad moved into a townhouse and I lived with him for a couple years.
Before moving to France, my wife and I lived in single family homes and a '5-over-1' apartment.
Now, we live on the 7th floor, end-unit of an apartment building. It's a 'single-stair multifamily,' 'floor-through' apartment (thankfully with an elevator). Meaning our apartment a large balcony one one side and windows on three sides. The only side without a window leads to the stairwell. Every room has a window, even the bathroom and toilet (often separated in France).
Without a doubt, this place is one of the best types of housing I've ever occupied. In the summer we can open up windows on either side of the apartment and get a fantastic breeze. The concrete structure does a great job regulating the temperature for most of the year. We get sunlight in the morning and evening.
I hate yardwork and there's none to do. No sidewalks to shovel snow from either. I also experience neighborliness on par with most single family homes. Very similar to my dad's townhouse actually (probably not by coincidence if you think about the incentive structures).
We have a 5 year old son and we don't miss having a yard. There are parks nearby with playgrounds and paths where he can safely ride his bike without worrying about any cars.
Admittedly, I do miss having barbecues in the backyard. I also miss having a garage to use as a workshop.
The 5-over-1, on the other hand, was easily the worst type of housing I've occupied. Poor lighting, anonymous, ugly corridors. No sense of neighborliness. Poorly maintained and constructed. Nowhere near a good park without walking along a nasty arterial surface street.
I frequently ask myself, 'why can't we have this in the States?!' and now I know why. Building codes, zoning and city planners strike again.
We have an access road behind the building that is between the building and the green space. This access road is gated and is used by all of us residents (especially the kids).
The green space has plenty of things to share (garden areas, berries, fruit trees, barbecues, tables, chairs, etc...) My 5 year old son has a lot of friends who live in our area and he's able to just be himself running around, climbing trees, digging in dirt, and exploring his world within a safe community.
The density and use of space is much more efficient than what I was previously used to in the Pacific Northwest. During the last five years of living in Oslo, we have only needed a car when visiting friends at their cabins. I feel privileged to live a car free lifestyle.
This is something that Singapore seems to do quite well. Many blocks of flats have shared outdoor facilities like a bbq, childrens playground, pool, etc. I've never lived there but have friends who do and when I visit we'll have a bbq.
I live in the UK. The housing here is notoriously poor quality, even (or sometimes especially) new build blocks of flats. And even in the expensive places I'm not sure they offer this.
* https://morehousing.substack.com/p/bc-single-stair
* https://morehousing.substack.com/p/single-stair
See also:
> Number of storeys permissible with single exit stair around the world.
* https://www.coolearth.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/image-1....
* https://www.coolearth.ca/2022/03/16/building-code-change-to-...
The diagram illustrates that the longest aerial ladder firetruck available in North America is 137' / 41m, which should be able to reach about fourteen storeys high. A 'typical' aerial ladder is about 75' / 22m, which is about seven storeys.
A building that is seven stories high is going to be big enough to have multiple stairways; probably multiple elevators.
London has many high-rise buildings, but the many narrow roads and tight corners mean they don't operate the tallest fire trucks.
[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FnC9ge6WQAAFd7p?format=png&name=...
Seems like at no point along the way, as more and more fire safety measures were being added (eg. sprinklers!) did anyone think that maybe it meant some of the more egregiously expensive safety measures were now deprecated and their use should be ended.
British Columbia's government has mentioned they're looking into this and I hope we see an end to the mandated two staircases. People consistently say they want more two and three bedroom apartments. Single stairway buildings seem like one of the best ways to introduce the flexibility that would make those products more viable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM
which mentions this very pertinent section of the US National Housing Association Proceedings (1913), p.212:
"Do everything possible in our laws to encourage the construction of private dwellings and even two-family dwellings, because the two-family house is the next least objectionable type, and penalize so far as we can in our statute, the multiple dwelling of any kind... if we require multiple dwellings to be fireproof, and thus increase the cost of construction; if we require stairs to be fireproofed, even where there are only three families; if we require fire escapes and a host of other things, all dealing with fire protection, we are on safe grounds (compared to zoning regulations based on race), because that can be justified as a legitimate exercise of the police power[...] In our laws let most of the fire provisions relate solely to multiple dwellings, and allow our private houses and two-family houses to be built with no fire protection whatever"
"Almost every country in Western Europe—where single-stair apartment buildings can rise many times the IBC’s three-story height limit—has fewer fire deaths per capita than the US."
There is no analysis of where these fire deaths are occurring: are they in single-family homes? Commercial buildings? Car wrecks that caught on fire? Trailer parks? More compelling would be to compare apartment deaths in other countries with those in the US or, at a minimum, explain why the available statistics advance this thesis even if they are not completely comparable.
[0] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/statistics/v12i8.pdf