from Hacker News

The case for single-stair multifamily

by jbrins1 on 1/18/24, 4:41 PM with 550 comments

by adameasterling on 1/18/24, 6:08 PM
This is a fantastic article.
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.
by SkeuomorphicBee on 1/18/24, 6:21 PM
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_middle_housing
by nicole_express on 1/18/24, 5:54 PM
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.
by gabesullice on 1/19/24, 7:31 AM
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.
by throw0101d on 1/18/24, 5:46 PM
The province of British Columbia (BC) seems to be considering it:
* 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.
by Tiktaalik on 1/18/24, 6:48 PM
Interesting to see how we got to where we're at.
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.
by mitthrowaway2 on 1/19/24, 7:10 AM
See also a related video by About Here:
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"
by massysett on 1/18/24, 11:26 PM
The evidence the author gives is not compelling.
"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.
by BurningFrog on 1/19/24, 2:08 AM
Maybe the biggest problem with regulations is that even if they're very positive when enacted, there is usually no mechanism to reevaluate them during the following decades.
And so the effects of a fire 164 years ago screws up housing across the US today.
by anikan_vader on 1/19/24, 2:16 AM
The author does not even attempt to analyze the safety impact of removing the second stair. The only evidence they provide is that Western Europe has fewer fire deaths than the US. Which suggests that perhaps the US should be increasing fire safety standards rather than removing them…
by baq on 1/18/24, 5:52 PM
European here.
I can't even put to words my embafflement upon having learnt that you US folks need two staircases.
by logifail on 1/18/24, 6:12 PM
Mostly OT, but related to emergency staircases.
We visited Glasgow (Scotland) last summer and the hotel fire alarm went off the middle of the night (for whatever reason we seem to attract fire alarms while on family holidays)
After getting the kids dressed(ish) we exited the rooms, totally missing that there was one emergency staircase immediately opposite. There was a sign at ceiling height, at 90 degrees to us, which was basically invisible. There was no sign on the door to the staircase itself :/
So, we went all the way down the hall, along with a bunch of other guests, then I carried my 7 year-old down seven floors' worth of the secondary staircase stairs to the ground floor, really pretty slow progress due to the number of people, on exiting the building we met four fire engines plus a significant police presence, and hundreds of hotel guests. Turned out it wasn't a fire, but a disturbance, and a fire alarm had been activated as part of that. We were outside for ages.
Lesson learned: just as you hopefully do immediately after boarding an aircraft, check your exit routes well before you need them...
by hiAndrewQuinn on 1/18/24, 5:38 PM
The Boston triple decker should be the standard home of North America and nobody can tell me otherwise.
by pottertheotter on 1/19/24, 4:21 AM
I've been hoping that this would change because the type of mid/low-rise multifamily housing we have in the United States is horrible. What I really hope happens is that ownership of multifamily real estate becomes much more fragmented.
Imagine multifamily housing where each lot is the same as a single family lot. You can have varied types right next to each other (one building could house several seniors in small apartments, another could house several young people in smaller apartments, another could be the owner in a two floor "house" on the top to floors with rentals below, another could be a building comprised of entire floor flats that are each owner-occupied).
They can be redeveloped so much more easily or repurposed. When an entire block is a huge multifamily building, it's pretty much impossible to change anything about it.
But, we really need to also change how we finance these buildings. A big reason everything is the same these days is because the finance system underwrites them. The system is there for these other types of smaller buildings.
by earino on 1/19/24, 12:32 PM
What a wonderful article.
I've lived in single family homes and apartments in USA, Switzerland and Spain. I never understood why the apartment buildings in the USA felt so different, and now it makes sense. Even in my 15 story apartment in Zurich, there was a single stair. It made the apartment layouts much better, made it easier to make apartments with a lot more light, and many of the things this article talks about.
Now I live in Spain in a building from the 1960s. A 4 story apartment building, retrofitted in the 1980s with a tiny elevator. It's a really efficient design, though my wife and I have discussed that from an accessibility standpoint, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Now I understand the constraints of apartment designers in the USA a bit better!
by neilv on 1/18/24, 11:48 PM
> But when architects try to design apartments with two or more bedrooms, the apartments balloon in size, since every 10-foot-wide bedroom ends up coming with 30 or more feet in unit depth. Try to add a single 120-square foot bedroom and you’ll end up having to add another 180 square feet on top that you need to fill some other way—probably with walk-in closets and en-suite bathrooms, adding the expense of more plumbing, fixtures, and tiles.
Can any architects say whether that's absolutely true, within the constraints, or are solutions with different desirable properties possible?
Reason I'm asking: I've been looking at floorplans and renders for new condo and apartment buildings recently, and I wonder whether some of the decisions in layouts might've been phoned-in, without lots of creative or problem-solving work happening.
(Maybe it's like software, in which brilliant isn't normally demanded, so sometimes the work is approached more like a huge bulk of tediousness to slog through?)
(Or maybe some of the confusing decisions are due to solving larger constraints, like a $1M condo gets an inexplicably badly-positioned kitchen because the $3M condo above takes priority for where pipes run, and they're generally trying to minimize plumbing costs?)
by RecycledEle on 1/18/24, 9:40 PM
I worked on a design (only as a hobby) for a group of units in a pentagon or hexagon shape that would surround a central room. The landlord can quickly sheetrock over some doors while cutting others open. The idea is to be able to expand or contract units to accommodate different tennants.
The most hilarius objection I could imagine is "nobody can have 2 refrigerators and 2 kitchens," coming from my brother who spent a fortune to renovate for exactly that.
A second laundry room can be handy, as can a second bathroom. A third laundry room can be converted to a closet with minor work to cover the washer/dryer connections and some shelves.
The central area would be another bedroom that has one doorway cut open and all the other doorways sheetrocked over.
One last thought, if you have never considered buying a duplex for a growing family and cutting in a door or two between the sides, you should. The "you can't do that" usually turns into "that's so cool" after a few hours.
by rsync on 1/18/24, 6:21 PM
I knew this was coming.
Affordability problems in desirable locales already caused progressives to jettison anti-sprawl initiatives and environmental reviews.
It was only a matter of time before our gaze shifted to building codes and life safety provisions as cost-adds that "we" should all work against.
It does not gratify me in any way to have foreseen this.
by ryukoposting on 1/19/24, 12:18 AM
In many cities, the second staircase is used as an amenity.
Chicago is chock-full of old houses converted to three-flats. Most of those flats have large balconies on the back... with a staircase. These balconies provide fresh air and nice views at a price point where both of those things are otherwise impossible to find.
So yes, my counterpoint is "but I like the second staircase." But, I really do - a lot of people do, and I don't see why landlords would build those things if they weren't required to.
by spanktheuser on 1/18/24, 8:08 PM
I’m curious whether this is really the issue in most US cities. In Chicago we achieve significant density with a two staircase requirement. If the goal is to unlock greater density in Manhattan I accept that single-stair multifamily may be necessary. However, it seems to me that the greater need is to bring more density to urban areas such as Houston, Dallas and Phoenix. All of which seem to have ample opportunity for increasing density in a manner that preserves multiple egress options.
by from-nibly on 1/18/24, 6:14 PM
We just need to make builders more liable for issues caused by their own building.
Building codes are just a way to say, you won't get in trouble for bad things that happen, in return you have to follow these rules every time you build a house.
Instead if we just say, if you build a house that kills someone, you are now a murderer, then yeah I think the markets can figure out how to not get people killed. But that's not going to happen for lots of reasons.
by xnx on 1/18/24, 7:33 PM
It would seem sensible if fire codes were something like LEED certifications, where different elements scored different points toward certification. Example: You don't need a second staircase if you have a sprinkler system. Non-flammable materials like brick and stone earn more points that wood and asphalt. etc.
by Duanemclemore on 1/19/24, 1:21 AM
Hi, architect here. I have a lot to say about the issue, but I'll just start with a comment that the place with the highest rate of fires in residences and deaths from these per capita is Mississippi, which has one of the lowest rates of people living in multifamily buildings. In addition to the rural nature of the state, and prevalence of non-professional fire departments in these areas (these two items moot to this discussion), a simple version of the biggest contributors to this outcome are: the housing stock here starts out as poor quality - there are a lot of mobile homes, which have a separate, less restrictive and more dangerous building code. Plus the lack of skilled labor leads to worse initial quality over the entire built sector. The other major factor is lax or nonexistent enforcement of existing building codes and housing regulations. So already poor housing degrades quickly and badly. A relatively wealthy small town I'm familiar with went two years without a Building Code enforcement official.
But in contrast to the average American city, the average "European" city (let's just go with the generality) is much more "regulated" in this area. Planning permission is much harder to come by, and questions like whether a building can get by -safely- with a single stair is part of that vetting process. But it's very definitely just one aspect of the review.
I have extensive experience with California, having worked there for over a decade and even having passed the California Supplemental Exam. Folks are absolutely 100% correct that environmental and community planning review processes are routinely abused by those with clout to maintain scarcity of the resource they possess. "Those with clout" typically means wealthy homeowners and large developers who want to shut smaller parties out of the process.
Anyway, much more to say about this and I might chime in if I get the chance. But I love that the discussion is happening. The system in the US is pretty universally broken. But TL;DR the cause is not as simple as "less regulation good!" or "more regulation good!"
by TomK32 on 1/19/24, 10:23 AM
There's point about the whole fire risk that has been missed so far: Denser settlements allow fire fighters to repsond and arriver faster and the chance for a neighbour to spot the fire in a house is much higher if there are more neighbours.
by wscott on 1/19/24, 4:05 PM
That article gave an example of a "typical European floorplan". It did have multiple stairs they were just not normally accessible from all apartments. If you had some emergency-only provision to enter your neighbor's apartment and then bust their wall to access the apartment behind it, more than one egress would be possible. Some emergency doors where an alarm would sound perhaps? I come up with all kinds of problems with this, but that was my thoughts looking at that floorplan.
by kjellsbells on 1/18/24, 11:16 PM
There's logic, and there's what is politically feasible.
I assert that people generally understand building safety codes to have been written in blood: the rule exists only because once upon a time it didnt, and people died. Fire exits and Triangle Shirtwaist, that sort of thing.
Coupled with the equally strong perception that property developers and builders will take any shortcut to make a buck, and the ideas in this article are simply dead on arrival. The public will vote with their wallets and stay away.
by amluto on 1/18/24, 11:21 PM
> The common hallway that must connect the two stairs in a modern American code-compliant building cuts the structure in two, cutting off the possibility of floor-through apartments found in traditional American multifamily architecture like the New York City tenement or the Los Angeles dingbat.
What requires a common hallway? The example single-stair plans seem like an equal number of staircases could be bolted on the back, giving every unit a second egress.
by Gabriel54 on 1/19/24, 1:29 PM
I know I'm going to get a lot of pushback for raising this point, but I'm somewhat incredulous to see people bring up safety as the reason for these restrictions, when this country simultaneously (in many places) allows young adults to buy a gun (or lots of guns!) simply by walking into a store and asking for one. But heaven help you if you want to build a three story building with one stairway.
by ardaoweo on 1/19/24, 1:21 PM
Aside from getting rid of unnecessary regulation, letting everyone who can work remotely to do so is a great way to bring down house prices in most in-demand areas.
Way too many people are forced to move into big cities simply for work, even though they really wouldn't want to. It's bad for them, and bad for those who actually want to live in those areas, but can't afford it.
by jmacd on 1/19/24, 3:10 AM
An excellent video was recently published on this topic, although it focuses laregly on Vancouver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRdwXQb7CfM
by ip26 on 1/19/24, 4:55 PM
Why is this debate being simplified to "single-stair vs double-stair"? I am not seeing anyone even attempt to pitch a return to single-stair plus fire-escape, which seems odd.
by standardUser on 1/18/24, 6:06 PM
I don't see why fire escapes aren't the better answer here.
by anovikov on 1/19/24, 5:45 AM
It feels ridiculous that a huge country with so much good land and widely spread cities, has problems like this. Just nix zoning guys. You have infinite land to build on.
by elzbardico on 1/18/24, 11:28 PM
Enclosed stairways are the default in a lot of countries. I prefer having a single enclosed stairway with fire-doors than multiple stairways.
by LandoCalrissian on 1/18/24, 6:00 PM
Why not get rid of all fire safety protections? We can really get moving then. The ADA is pretty onerous, if we just ignore that we can have it up in half the time! I don't REALLY need all that electrical grounding in my house, all that extra copper adds up you know, think of how many more houses we could build without it?
by ponderings on 1/18/24, 6:31 PM
I see these things in movies, sometimes the last part is a ladder?
Why isn't it one big ladder?
by alexb_ on 1/18/24, 5:39 PM
Land Value Tax being the main method of taxation would encourage municipalities to adopt things like this.
by TacticalCoder on 1/19/24, 1:37 AM
Single-stair multifamily: why not. I live in one now (wife, daughter and me) after having spent time in a rural area (detached house in the middle of nowhere).
But why take Barcelona as an example? These superblocks are horrible. Barcelona is noisy, stressful and impersonate (plus there are shitloads of pickpockets and serious issues between independentists and nationalists).
There's a middle ground between one house per family and these fugly superblocks.
You know why people like me suffocate so much in Barcelona? Because Franco (a dictator) allowed the Comarcal plan: cheap housing and allowing buildings to become much higher. And unsurprisingly it all turned to shit.
Superblocks came much later and were an answer to that past SNAFU where these high, gigantic blocks created an unlivable city. Superblocks are at best a band aid which doesn't fix Barcelona's root issue: these blocks (no matter if they're grouped by 9 in superblocks) are simply completely oppressive.
Where I live (another EU country) all the buildings are semi-detached (so it's always two buildings together), four stories / eight apartments per building. So sixteen families for two "attached buildings". And, contrarily to Barcelona, people can breathe here. There's five times two attached buildings, disposed in an "U" shape. So it's open (not closed like these fugly blocks in Barcelona). There's a shared park and below the buildings are the parking spaces (all shared). There are I take it about 80 apartments altogether. Next block: repeat something similar. But there's room. It's not suffocating. It's not alienating.
And all these blocks are facing a "Natura 2000" protected forest: nothing shall ever be constructed there. Nature: I'm sure some city planners have at least heard the word "nature".
You know what I did today? I didn't use the car. I left my single-stair multifamily and went for a walk in that forest, with my family, walking in the snow (there's been a snowstorm last night).
Explain me, when I'm in block 298 in superblock XKY, surrounded by countless superblocks, how do I get to nature?
I mean, yeah: it's nice to try to fix housing. But it's 2024 and by now people have figured out better arrangements than those created under a dictator in Spain.
by chubot on 1/19/24, 12:13 AM
Wow very interesting! This is what I come to Hacker News for
by rolph on 1/18/24, 6:15 PM
multiple streams of people converging on a choke point exit is poor planning in general, but often lethal in the case of fire.
by istillwritecode on 1/19/24, 5:11 AM
The case for burning up in a fire.
by phkahler on 1/18/24, 5:44 PM
Sounds like a cost savings for those buying up all the real estate in the US and renting it out.
by jes5199 on 1/18/24, 6:01 PM
I think we've hit peak density already and the rest of the 21st century will be defined by people moving into former farmlands
by hobs on 1/18/24, 5:52 PM
No mention of the ADA in the entire article - I guess people with mobility issues should go fly a kite.
by gumballindie on 1/19/24, 11:29 AM
> great urban fires by the 19th century were mostly confined to smaller or poorer cities on the continent’s edge that hadn’t yet made the transition to brick, stone, metal, and concrete.
London's Grenfell Towers would like to have a word with you.
by ponector on 1/18/24, 5:52 PM
I have a great idea how to solve housing shortage in US: ban single family houses inside and near the city borders. Make 25-mile zone where new construction could be multi family only.
by jojobas on 1/19/24, 3:09 AM
Naturally the authors don't live in dangerous shoeboxes, dorm rooms or co-living pods they advocates the plebs should race to the bottom to.
Every time someone nudges "the workforce" closer and closer to the 2-penny hangovers you can be sure he has a downtown penthouse, a suburban mansion, or both, and hope to scalp bottom-feeder market once regulations are laxed.
by KaiserPro on 1/18/24, 6:50 PM
I'm sorry, but the assertions that multi-exit housing blocks take up more space is frankly bollocks.
Housing estates in Europe manage it by having proper balconies that can be used as exits, but also having share walk ways out the front.
Not only can you have two or more exits, it also means that you can secure the building more easily as there are less doors to secure.
take this estate: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RXscnAJaDRCLausL9
there are 200 flats, a mix of 1-4 bedrooms. The biggest flats are about 85m2 (~1000sqft) every flat has a separate kitchen, living room and toilet/bathroom.
There are four exits to ground level on the "C" (the top, right and bottom of the block) they are secured by keyfob. Each landing is then secured by another keyfob.
In case of fire, the balcony divider can be pushed open allowing refuge in the next flat.
These flats are made of concrete, and there are only 4 holes into the flat above/below, meaning that fire doesn't spread. That estate has a fire at least once every 2 years, and it only affects one flat.
by exabrial on 1/18/24, 5:53 PM
No.
It’s not only fire that’s a hazard, but a personal safety thing. Most men here probably never experienced being stalked, or having to turn around when your path is through a group of shady characters.
In the Midwest, brick/concrete fire stairwells have another benefit: tornado shelters. While a sufficient tornado would decimate any wooden structure, these stairwells provide essential protection from the main hazard in a tornado: flying debris.
Offhand I can think of a dozen more reasons. Lets not reverse sensible progress in the name of profits and tax revenue.