Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The case for single-stair multifamily

thesisdriven.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 562 posts

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#351

Post by hammock »

adameasterling wrote: post #63

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 work…

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.

But I don’t want.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#352

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#353

Post by AnimalMuppet »

ok_dad wrote: post #226
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everybody does a half-hour of research before every HN comment. Nor should they be expected to. LVT was named (I presume) by the advocates of it. If their name is misleading, don't blame the people reading it who are getting confused.

A person can read about it in maybe ten minutes max, and if someone can’t even do half an hour of research, anyways, should they even comment? Do people have the right to a conversation simply because they read the article title yet have not read even at the surface level about that topic?

Well, how much research have you done on the quality of discussion board topics, and how much time people should spend on research before they comment in order to produce the optimum discussion? And yet here you are, commenting on it.

;-), but a serious point: You don't actually live that way. Nobody does.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#354

Post by ajmurmann »

sokoloff wrote: post #285
loeg wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Setbacks, parking minimums and floor area ratios have nothing to do with safety. Community reviews have absolutely nothing to do with safety.

Side setbacks absolutely have an effect on fire safety (a greater distance gives less propensity to ignite the neighboring building and provides access with which to fight the original structure fire). Front setbacks and lot area coverage ratios have a more minor version of this same effect from fires across the street. It takes a pretty good sized fire to ignite the building across a street, but as density increases…

> Side setbacks absolutely have an effect on fire safety

Sure, but is the benefit worth the cost? Manhattan and denser European cities without those haven't burned down since we fireproofed building materials

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#355

Post by ajmurmann »

eru wrote: post #310
gamepsys wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Maybe it's OK if some housing is less perfect and closer to ashanty town. I'd rather live in a shanty town than a cardboard box under the freeway. If nobody wants to live in the "shanty town" nobody will move in and no investor will want to build another one. I sometimes think that the provocative way of putting all this is that we need more slum lords. They filled a need.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#356

Post by anikan_vader »

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…

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#357

Post by Seattle3503 »

anikan_vader wrote: post #356

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…

Seattle also allows for single stair multifamily. It hasn't been a problem for us yet.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#358

Post by twelvechairs »

throw0101d wrote: post #10

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 lon…

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

[0] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FnC9ge6WQAAFd7p?format=png&name=...

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#359

Post by davidw »

eru wrote: post #318
davidw wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having lived in both places - Italy and the US - I think it's a natural question. 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.

You could just add that as an option to the housing regulation: Either build in the traditional American style out of wood, or (new option) build out of stone and add a robust fire suppression system, but in return we let you get away with a single staircase and other features that increase density.

Concrete is probably not a great thing in much of the US for lower-rise buildings. Definitely not here in Oregon. And the fire suppression stuff is mandatory in multifamily housing anyway.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#360

Post by ajmurmann »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #97

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 c…

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
Post reply on HN