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The case for single-stair multifamily

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Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#331

Post by alistairSH »

autoexec wrote: post #269
notatoad wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>that were put in place to save human lives There's an assumption here that the code was put in place to save lives. There's a whole lot of regulation that exists simply to make it difficult to build. Lots of people profit when housing is scarce (or unavailable to certain demographics), and want to keep it that way. It is always worth asking what the point of a regulation is, and whether it accomplishes the thing it…

I think it's a much bigger assumption that the fire code which requires people have somewhere to escape to when a stairwell is on fire was put in place to make it difficult to build instead of for helping to keep families from burning alive. I fully agree that if after careful and thorough examination it's determined that the codes are outdated and can be removed without endangering people that they should be, even i…

More likely the code is amended and not removed. Two stairs OR better fire suppression/resistance.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#332

Post by alistairSH »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #253
autoexec wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All safety regulations are written in blood.

Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean the regulation is proper today.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#333

Post by Duanemclemore »

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!"

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#334

Post by astrange »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #322
mperham wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have zoning and internationally recognized building safety codes already. Our current housing emergency happening everywhere is a pretty good indicator that we should be much more aggressive about trimming back the regulatory state which has ossified our cities.

> Our current housing emergency happening everywhere is a pretty good indicator that we should be much more aggressive about trimming back the regulatory state which has ossified our cities. That isn't true though. Our housing emergency is limited to places that are growing and thriving. There isn't a housing emergency in Detroit or much of the midwest for example, just not many are thrilled about moving to those pla…

Those places that don't have housing emergencies generally have just as bad regulations, and would have the same problems the instant they became appealing enough to move there. Eventually you run out of built out sprawl.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#335

Post by astrange »

wiml wrote: post #303
bluGill wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

supply and eemand sets rents. You you rent perfecly good existing houses cheap in rural areas. Nobody wants to like there. There is no reason to think there is enourh room for everyone who wants to like in San Francisco, and statistics prove they heve not been building much. Mean while in other states we find areas of demand where housing is not expensive. Where I live you can rent one bedroom apartments for under $1…

Supply, demand, and cartels like Realpage.

Real estate has very distributed ownership and none of them are motivated to form a cartel.

The only way they can maintain one is through legal force. Zoning laws are almost entirely that force; they're a way to establish a cartel of homeowners.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#336

Post by astrange »

eru wrote: post #308
wiml wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply, demand, and cartels like Realpage.

Cartel's can't just magically set prices. They can withhold supply, and that might have an effect on market prices.

You can't pay the mortgage on a place you're not renting out though, so they mostly can't withhold supply.

It applies more to things like retired people living by themselves in a 3 bedroom house.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#337

Post by eru »

Tarq0n wrote: post #330
eru wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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…

Wood captures carbon within it and has minimal energy cost compared to steel, glass and brick. Lumber can also be regrown. So highly sustainable from a global warming perspective at least.

Steel can be recycled. And we are sitting on a giant ball of matter, so making more bricks or glass is easy. (Glass can be recycled, but it's not really worth it.)

You are right that wood captures carbon. But you have to think about the opportunity costs: the same land that you use to slowly grow your wood could be used to eg run wind turbines or solar panels to replace fossil fuels. (You could also stick a nuclear power plant on that land to replace even more fossil fuels. But on the margin, nuclear isn't really limited by the available land but by red tape and permissions. So adding a bit more land won't make the nuclear industry produce more energy.)

You'd have to run the numbers, it's not obvious to me which effect dominates. Probably also depends on how well wood grows in your climate, and how sunny and windy it is. And what else you could grow on that land.

Speculation: I suspect that emissions during construction will be relatively small fry, compared to the impact of density. Eg re-inforced concrete allows denser living (by building taller than wood, and by allowing single-stairs to be still firesafe, etc), and density tends to lower per capita CO2.

Of course, rural settings won't make use of the possibility of density. So for them it's just about the first order effects.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#338

Post by eru »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #319
eru wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You already have shanty towns with all the regulation. Making housing cheaper also means making higher quality housing cheaper.

We don't really have shanty towns in the states. We definitely don't have a Kowloon Walled City, which is an example of what can happen when no regulations are involved (and somewhat remarkably not burn down and kind of thrive even if still a slum). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City

> We don't really have shanty towns in the states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tent_cities_in_the_Uni...

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#339

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ryukoposting wrote: post #301
breischl wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of those flats have large balconies on the back... with a staircase. It sounds like you're describing an external staircase - loosely speaking a fire escape. I could be wrong though, I'm not sure. The article was discussing the requirement for _fully enclosed_ internal staircases, which is different.

I mean, yes, legally, it's a fire escape. But, there's a full size door leading out to it, it's typically made of treated wood, and the staircase is a normal wood staircase, not some rickety metal thing. These also have the added bonus of being generally a nicer staircase than the one that's actually built into the house. The interior, retrofitted staircases tend to be narrow with lots of awkward, angled steps.

In Japan it seems like some buildings use those as primary stair cases. They have elevators also, but too many people need to use them to be very useful, so its up and down the outside fire escape.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#340

Post by eru »

astrange wrote: post #336
eru wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cartel's can't just magically set prices. They can withhold supply, and that might have an effect on market prices.

You can't pay the mortgage on a place you're not renting out though, so they mostly can't withhold supply. It applies more to things like retired people living by themselves in a 3 bedroom house.

OK.

Though if they can't withhold supply, how are those cartels supposed to hold up prices, then?

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