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The case for single-stair multifamily

thesisdriven.com

81–90 of 562 posts

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#81

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 haza…

"Think of the children" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children ) has morphed into "think of the helpless women." Tell me, in places that do not have this building regulation, is stalking an epidemic at apartment buildings? In what other ways are they suffering? Would you support adding a two-stair requirement in those locales?

> In what other ways are they suffering?

In Europe they are also suffering from too long toilet stalls and as a result there are mass drug use problems as well as all sorts of unsavory characters having sex in there.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#82
post #3

Land Value Tax being the main method of taxation would encourage municipalities to adopt things like this.

I have yet to understand why people have made land value tax a thing. As I understand it, land value and improvements are already taxed but a land value tax would only tax land value. Can someone make this make sense? Why would this promote development?

it would increase the tax rate on land to be much higher. In the most extreme case, the annual tax on land value would so high that vacant land could be purchased for close to zero purchase price because the holding cost of the tax is high enough to capture all the value which is capitalized into a purchase price.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#83

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?

To be fair, crisis is when you suspend existing laws so you can move fast and break stuff.

See: martial law as a legal precedent.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#84
post #36
post #17

European here. I can't even put to words my embafflement upon having learnt that you US folks need two staircases.

The US has some very interesting requirements when building. In some cities, regardless of destiny, new buildings are required to have 1.x parking spots per unit or something of the sort as well. Which basically assures all buildings have to be designed for car centric life.

It's the same for many European cities and towns. Many cities started to reduce it down to 0.5 parking spaces per flat or less, because many of those parking spaces tend to be empty in bigger cities. And just increase prices for housing.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#85
post #16

No mention of the ADA in the entire article - I guess people with mobility issues should go fly a kite.

It does mention buildings can be a single stair with an elevator. 2 stairwells vs 1 stairwell doesn't need affect ADA compliance.

It does mean disabled residents are sort of screwed if there's a fire alarm and the elevators are shutoff--as a friend told me recently--unless the neighbors can help. But that's sort of ignored given lack of realistic options.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#86

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…

The builder doesn’t design a building, they’re given a set of engineered plans and told to build it.

If it meets code and passes inspection, why are design problems the builder’s fault? That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#87
post #39
post #17

European here. I can't even put to words my embafflement upon having learnt that you US folks need two staircases.

How do you think we feel about cookie notices?

There is one solution for the cookie notices that is very seldomly talked about: just don't use any marketing cookies, then you don't need consent from the user :)

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#88
post #75

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 haza…

The two-staircase requirement leads directly to apartment buildings being big, with long corridors. Given my choice of living in a small building with a few families, with one staircase, where people know each other (the one-stair architecture does in fact lend itself to residents knowing each other) or living in a big building, with long corridors, where people don’t get to know each other, I’d feel a lot safer as a…

A 2nd set of stairs split across multiple units is a trivial matter from a cost perspective. Height restrictions, adding more office space than housing, mandatory parking etc are the real issues.

Tiny increases in construction costs get wiped out when there’s insufficient housing stock.

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#89
post #36
post #17

European here. I can't even put to words my embafflement upon having learnt that you US folks need two staircases.

The US has some very interesting requirements when building. In some cities, regardless of destiny, new buildings are required to have 1.x parking spots per unit or something of the sort as well. Which basically assures all buildings have to be designed for car centric life.

We’ve really done a number to cater to cars and the auto industry in the United States. Some More News does a great job on outlining the history of cars, roads, and what can be done to make things better - https://youtu.be/sayw3TOhykg

Re: The case for single-stair multifamily

#90
post #39
post #17

European here. I can't even put to words my embafflement upon having learnt that you US folks need two staircases.

How do you think we feel about cookie notices?

Another European here: I think the law is fine. How companies, specially US companies react to it, that is not.

1. A ton of Health related websites in US refuse to work in Europe, because they are NOT willing to let you visit without sensitive data being grabbed with cookies. I truly do not understand how US people are ok with this.

2. The law says that you can't make hard to refuse cookies, yet many US-based sites I visit have shady, shady practices, for example many you have to click a button to see all the sliders for individual cookies, and when you click that button, it switches the orders of the buttons, so that the button you just clicked become "accept all", and the previous "accept all" button becomes "save current settings". Thus if you double click/tap by accident you accept all.

3. The sites that most often piss me off with shady cookie banner that tries its hardest to force you to opt-in to tracking, are ones that use a company called "Admiral", that according to LinkedIn is from Florida. https://www.linkedin.com/company/getadmiral/

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