A NEW REPORT suggests doing away with the second stairwell in buildings of three-to-six stories could boost housing production – a case of addition through subtraction.
Due to fire safety, building codes for three-to-six story structures currently require two points of egress. The new proposal for one stairwell is accompanied by additional fire safety requirements such as sprinklers, fire-treated materials, less distance to the point of egress, and windows that meet emergency rescue escape requirements.
Since the proposed one-stairwell building would be smaller and have additional fire safety measures, it would likely match or offer increased safety compared to apartment buildings with two staircases that are built today, according to the report, which was commissioned by Boston Indicators, the research arm of the Boston Foundation, and carried out by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies and Utile, a Boston-based design firm.
The report estimates that doing away with the second stairwell could cut construction costs by 15 to 25 percent and add about 130,000 new homes on undeveloped small- to mid-sized parcels near public transit in the Greater Boston area.
“We have the really good bones and infrastructure for transit that reaches to almost all of eastern Massachusetts, and there are a lot of small to mid-sized parcels of land that are either totally undeveloped or way underdeveloped and are really ripe for this type of single-stair typology,” said Luc Schuster, the executive director of Boston Indicators.
Point access blocks, the name sometimes used for single stairwell buildings, have a large variety of designs. Typically, however, they are, “buildings which have one circulation core, one elevator and stair, and then units radiate around that,” said Sam Naylor, an associate at Utile. “There’s no need for a connective hallway.”
Boston has a history of single stairwell buildings, but that changed when Massachusetts adopted a new building code in 1974 which required the two points of egress. In 2017, an international building code was adopted so buildings up to three stories and 12 units with one point of egress were legal and could be built again, according to the report.
“Many people probably still live in them or have lived in them over time, from the row houses of Back Bay to Fenway brick apartment buildings to Cambridge modernist flats,” Naylor said.
Because of the changing building codes, Naylor said Boston housing “has a missing middle,” which means that there are far fewer single stairwell buildings that have more than 10 units but less than 45, Naylor said.
“The benefits to this type of housing are numerous, and the downsides of not implementing them will be felt in the pocketbook and mindset of millions for generations,” Naylor said.
Other cities like Honolulu, New York, and Seattle have already passed building codes that allow for one stairwell in a six-story building. The US is an outlier when it comes to single stairwell buildings, and some countries have no limit, according to the report.
“The single stair movement has really come from housing advocates, architects, and urbanists, people and groups working to make our cities better and who see a huge opportunity in turning our attention to the building code, which after years of focus on zoning, might just be the next frontier in housing reform,” Naylor said
These buildings can also be more sustainable and more inviting because people can get cross airflow in their units when the windows open on both sides. More sunlight will also flow through the buildings and more money will be spent on the entry way of the building because it is the only one, Naylor said.
“One might think of taking away a stair as taking away the wing to an airplane, but I think more aptly, it’s to compare it to a different vehicle altogether,” Naylor said.
Hannah Edelheit is working for CommonWealth Beacon as part of the Boston University Statehouse Program.
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