To Cut Housing Costs, Some States Are Easing Fire Safety Rules

Business|To Cut Housing Costs, Some States Are Easing Fire Safety Rules

For roughly a century, most apartment buildings in the United States taller than three stories needed to have at least two staircases. It was considered a safety feature, giving people multiple ways out of a building, especially if there was an emergency like a fire.

But since 2024, a number of states have eliminated the requirement for small apartment buildings, a move that proponents say will go a long way to addressing the nation’s billowing housing crisis. Requiring only one staircase, they say, eliminates the need for a second, reduces the space needed for common areas like the hallways between staircases, which allows residential buildings to be on smaller lots, theoretically making them cheaper to develop.

“We’re seeing single-stair buildings on what were otherwise unbuildable small lots,” said Stephen Smith, the executive director of the Center for Building in North America, a research and advocacy group in New York. Allowing more cities to do this will help meet demand for housing, said Mr. Smith, who lives in Brooklyn in a building with one set of stairs.

In the past two years, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Texas and Tennessee have approved code changes allowing just one stairway. In July, Washington State will join them. And California, Hawaii, New York, Minnesota, Oregon and Virginia are conducting studies exploring the code change.