Sean Jursnick

I've been on two calls today with fire safety professionals where the topic was the safety of single-stair buildings. On both calls, somebody was driving while on the call – one a firefighter, the other a fire protection engineer.

MR. LAWRENCE VEILLER, Secretary, National Housing As- sociation, New York City: Digitized by Google

212 NATIONAL HOUSING ASSOCIATION we can answer that we must be sure that we want to keep them out. If we put it to a vote in any one of your cities, I think we would find it very difficult to get a vote against an apartment house. I am not for it —don't misunderstand me — but I do recognize that it provides a very convenient way of living, and because of the servant question, which Mr. Davis alluded to, a great many people prefer it. Per-sonally, I think it indicates a very bad tendency and will have a very bad effect on American life and upon our political and social conditions. I don't think you can have proper homes in an apartment house of the highest type.

The question is, " How are we going to stop it?" I think there is a way; at least, I have tried it and I think it is going to work. In framing our laws to regulate the construction of dwellings of all kinds, 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, whether it is flat, apartment house or tenement house.

As brought to my attention by a Strong Towns article by @dpherriges.bsky.social and posts by @dereksagehorn.bsky.social, this is Lawrence Veiller talking about the idea behind using the building code to incentivize single-family houses and discourage apartment buildings, from 1913:

Denver single-stair case study using recent changes in the city's zoning and building code to unlock 4-stories of affordable housing on a lot zoned for 3-stories.

kgarch.com/4-story-sing...

"Building For People" by @holz-bau.bsky.social is one of the best recent urbanism books with a blistering critique of the status quo and how to change it.

Earlier this year ... I toured an apartment project under construction that has been designed for families in Redmond, Washington

AMLI Redmond Way

126 Units, average size >1100 SF. 1BR+Den, 2BR+Den and 3BR units.

Amenities:

A multi-family project for families!?

What a great (and atypical) idea. How can we help get more family projects built? Were any incentives used that pushed the developer into the family-sized plans?

for now, I'll just dream about the day this project can be built anywhere in the US

Hard no. IBC only allows a max of 3-stories of single-stair multifamily housing.

Nor will it might comply with 2027 IBC updates increasing the IBC limit to 4-stories shown here

Winner of Billings Architectural Association's 2025 Single-Stair Housing Competition by Trae Schwenneker. The competition focused on urban infill in Downtown Billings, MT.

The winning project honors the historic brick architect of Montana Avenue w/ ground-floor retail & four upper levels of condos.

Good news - Safe, new apartment construction is at a 50-year high, with nearly 600,000 units in 2024

Bad news - U.S. housing stock is the oldest that it has ever been, putting residents at risk

bsky.app/profile/sean...

‘Residual Income’ Study Reveals Two-Thirds of Working Age Renters Struggle to Make Ends Meet - h/t Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University Half of U.S. renters are considered ‘rent burdened,’ but an even larger number of households have a hard time affording basic necessities after rent.

‘Residual Income’ Study Reveals Two-Thirds of Working Age Renters Struggle to Make Ends Meet - h/t Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University

Modern Multifamily Buildings Provide the Most Fire Protection A large body of research has demonstrated that apartment buildings and other types of multifamily housing can provide many benefits to a community, especially when built in high-demand areas where hou...

New analysis by Pew shows how modern multifamily housing built since 2000 has far lower death rates than new single family homes and older housing stock.

www.pew.org/en/research-...

Only a few projects meet Denver's proposal for 5-stories max and non-combustible construction.

If you took away those two overly-restrictive requirements, allowing 6-story height and any construction type (similar to Seattle's approach for 50 years) then almost all of the projects would work.

Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge (2025)

Challenge: Envision a way to boost housing, lower costs, & allow more light-filled, family-friendly units on small Denver lots

Result: 230+ creative submissions from designers and architects around the world

architecturecompetitions.com/pointaccessb...

Amid initial safety concerns from firefighters and the public, Dorsey’s single-staircase bill moves forward | Baltimore Brew Approved by a committee vote today, legislation removing the two-staircase requirement for certain multi-family buildings, the councilman says, will spur development without endangering public safety.

Baltimore looks to be the next municipality to adopt single-stair reform after great advocacy work by @serviceurbanisme.bsky.social

Interesting to see fire officials educating themselves on the topic and coming around to the changes after initial resistance

www.baltimorebrew.com/2025/09/25/a...

it's absurd that a walkup single stair building for 96 residents (and no elevator) is legal - but a 4-5 story single stair (with protected stair, shorter travel distance from apt. to stair) serving half that is not.

a walkup for 96 residents, with 64 residents sharing that one stair

Modular, mass timber, and single-stair

This workforce housing project in Montana maxes out the current IBC code limitations on single housing with a 10,000 sf floor plate and 8-bed units that each feature shared living, kitchen, and laundry.

www.idcubedmodular.com/blank

Roll back regulations to lower housing costs - The Boston Globe The sheer volume of Massachusetts’ regulations can drive up the total cost of construction in significant ways. But some rules are no longer necessary.

The Boston Globe Editorial Board is running a whole series on the state’s excessive building code regulation over the next three weeks – single-stair, Massachusetts’s unusually low high-rise definition, and the mess of different septic system rules www.bostonglobe.com/2025/09/21/o...

St. Olavsvei Apartment Block (Norway)

•Mass timber
•5-stories
•28 units
•up to 7 units per floor
•single-stair

In light of today’s news I’d like to remind you that this is a real newspaper clipping. History repeats itself when we don’t stop it.

DETAIL Modular Building Congress 2025 Is serial construction a method that revolutionizes construction and focuses on both efficiency and quality? We will be exploring this question on September 18, 2025 in Stuttgart.

Register to learn more about modular European construction with this live webinar featuring German architects at DETAIL Magazine's Modular Construction Congress.

Presentation is in German with English subtitles.

www.detail.de/de_en/modulb...

Why are single-stair buildings actually SAFER than two stair buildings in some circumstances?

It seems counter intuitive… obviously, more redundancy is better, right?

Design study comparing single-stair vs multiple stair egress on a small 5,500 SF lot in Denver:

(L) double-loaded corridor
•71% efficiency
•(4) units

(R) single-stair
•87% efficiency
•(4) dual-aspect units

Shared Stair is a great name.

LA’s firefighter union has come out with a four-page letter opposing single-stair buildings. I’m going to respond to a few of the points within it. 🧵

Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge (2025)

Challenge: Envision a way to boost housing, lower costs, & allow more light-filled, family-friendly units on small Denver lots

Result: 230+ creative submissions from designers and architects around the world

architecturecompetitions.com/pointaccessb...

Jensen Hughes won the NYS contract to conduct a single-exit study for the state code (the city already allows six stories and has a very different building code). The contract is in the amount of $331,000, and it has an end date of May 2027. wwe2.osc.state.ny.us/transparency...

Denver's KGA Studio published this great summary of the impact of Denver's upcoming single-stair building code change with an analysis of which of the city's zoning districts hold the most potential

kgarch.com/single-stair...

Are some fire codes making affordable housing harder to build? The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University has announced a forthcoming event reviewing research on fire codes in multifamily housing.

Yes, regulatory hurdles (like the building code) make affordable housing harder and more expensive to build in North America than other parts of the world.

internationalfireandsafetyjournal.com/fire-codes-m...