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The case for single-stair multifamily

thesisdriven.com

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Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#501

Post by wolverine876 »

amrocha wrote: post #448
wolverine876 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not an instinct, it's a gut reaction to change. The evidence is that people aren't burning to death in Europe.

That comment is the gut reaction. What is the injury rate in Europe with and without single-stair construction? In the US? In buildings with otherwise American-style construction?

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#502

Post by wolverine876 »

cheriot wrote: post #447
wolverine876 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mo…

> Also, which regulations? 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…

Cities have seen plenty of high-end housing built (afaik), and yet there is still a lack of affordable housing.

Building more expensive homes doesn't seem to increase availability of affordable ones. The idea that it would seems to be another 'trickle-down economics' theory, the one from the 1980s that if we help the wealthy get wealthier, the benefits will 'trickle-down' (turns out, only the first step worked). Reasonably, wealthy people don't see poor housing as an option, though there is gentrification.

> 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?

Making expensive cars wouldn't seem to result in many more affordable ones.

> This is silly.

An aggressive assertion that you aren't thinking, and aren't willing to.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#503

Post by Kon-Peki »

akavi wrote: post #300
neuronexmachina wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some possible reasons for why American fire trucks tend to be larger: * more frequently sent to rural homes, where there might not be an available hydrant, so they need to transport all the water they're likely to need * same for wildfires * American homes more likely to be wood+drywall

I would simply have small firetrucks in urban areas, and large fire trucks in rural areas.

The more rural you get, the more likely it is that the fire trucks have been purchased secondhand from urban fire departments that can afford to buy new equipment prior to the existing equipment literally falling apart (I've got an extended family member that runs the fire service for an entire county in a western US state, and often see him when he stops at my house while driving new-to-them equipment from the east coast).

You've also got a lot of volunteer departments where each firefighter keeps their equipment in their own personal vehicle.

Why firetrucks in the US are so large is a good question. In the spirit of Chesterton's Fence, I'd assume that there is a good reason until proven otherwise.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#504

Post by wscott »

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.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#505

Post by Pxtl »

colatkinson wrote: post #323
Pxtl wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even as a compromise you could make a pretty good small building with 2 units per floor, single walk-up stairwell+landing+elevator on the front, and an exterior fire-escape on the back.

This is a super common setup in my part of NYC (minus the elevator). It seems to work fairly well, especially since it makes it viable to have lots of buildings in a row with minimal wasted space between them. It's definitely not the densest design possible, but it certainly seemed to let them fit a lot of fairly spacious 1-2 BRs in not a lot of space back in the early 20th c., and the height can scale up pretty well…

I'm thinking more of a 10-floor building because I stayed in one with family in Buenos Aires that was like that several times.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#506

Post by toast0 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #342
toast0 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I would say, "this land has very high taxes compared to its price; therefore it's not very valuable land." If you implement a land value tax, as I understand it, the parking lot and the skyscraper next to it should be taxed the same if they have the same footprint. All things being equal, that means a very large tax burden for the parking lot owner, and that certainly is an incentive to transfer it…

> But at the same time, it makes the price you can get for the parking lot much lower. Lower than what? The price it would have had without a tax? Sure, but the same applies to the lot with the skyscraper. Increased land taxes will push down land prices, whether it's a land value tax or not. That doesn't seem like a fundamental issue with the idea. > And once I've seen that under a LVT, the parking lot has no or litt…

I'm assuming that a LVT replaces property tax. And that a skyscraper's property tax divided over the nearby footprint is pretty high.

I think that's reasonable.

If LVT doesn't replace property tax, well we already have land value as a component of property tax; I'm assessed for land value and improvements value.

If property tax on a skyscraper isn't very high, then the whole discussion is kind of moot.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#507

Post by seanmcdirmid »

eru wrote: post #420
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hong Kong is super dense and super expensive, Shanghai is similar, but at Mainland Chinese prices. I'm all for density, but anyone who thinks that density alone solves affordability issues simply hasn't travel enough.

Density is a way to deal with expensive housing. Not a cause of it.

Density is a way to make cities more livable and attractive, and to scale up public transit investments.

After you've done all this, you'll find that your city is more expensive than the surrounding cities without, not less.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#508

Post by xnx »

gamepsys wrote: post #234
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…

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.

> There tends to be belief that housing regulations exist to limit supply.

Also to enrich union tradespeople. See prohibitions against PEX plumbing and requirements for electrical conduit instead of Romex.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#509

Post by dumbo-octopus »

jeffhuys wrote: post #433
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. ^ "You're cutting down treeees ,…

How does that compare to leaving the trees grow, say, 25 more years? You’re only comparing the action of using them in construction.

The density of managed forests would not allow for that much growth across all the trees. Some would get larger, others would stagnate. Better to chop them all and replace with a fresh batch that will all be scrubbing.

The folks managing these forests are in the business of selling as much solidified CO2 as possible every single year, if there was a better way to do it I'm sure they would.

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