Hearth officers and pro-density urbanists are sometimes at loggerheads. That is particularly evident in notoriously car-centric Los Angeles, the place a firefighters’ union spent six figures opposing active mobility measures. The 2 camps can have totally different concepts of acceptable dangers and priorities.
However Matthew Flaherty, a firefighter who has lived in L.A. his entire life, bridges the 2 worlds. He’s an advocate for reasonably priced, transit-friendly housing. His battle to search out an condominium in a walkable neighborhood led him to grow to be a member of the Livable Communities Initiative, a nonprofit group advocating for extra walkable neighborhoods in L.A.
“Cities shouldn’t be designed across the fireplace division,” Flaherty argues. “The hearth division needs to be designed to cope with the infrastructure as it’s. You probably have a plumber design a home, the entire home goes to be a rest room.”
One space of rigidity for fireplace security advocates and density advocates is the requirement that almost all new condominium buildings have a couple of stairway to facilitate resident evacuation and emergency responders’ entry. In almost all American cities, not like in different elements of the world, builders are required to construct double staircases into four- to six-story residential buildings. (Although definitions differ, these are sometimes thought of mid-rise buildings.)
This additional staircase takes up about 7% of ground area and drives up prices by 6% to 13%, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. That additional price may very well be sufficient to kill a challenge to construct housing, says Stephen Smith, the chief director of the Middle for Constructing in North America, a nonprofit group targeted on constructing code reform.
Largely attributable to advocates like Smith and Flaherty, a motion is sweeping throughout North America, from Texas to Toronto, to calm down restrictions on residential stairways. Over 30 locations have now thought of such measures. The potential for comparatively rapid changes to local building codes, outdoors the nationwide three-year cycle, is elevating pressing conversations about density and security as cities grapple with housing shortages.
Seattle’s affect
Single-stair condominium buildings (generally referred to as level entry blocks) are sprinkled all through Seattle. Rents can begin at round $1,500/month for studio flats in such buildings. Strolling round these flats is an efficient strategy to get a really feel for Seattle’s distinct neighborhoods.
The unit styles vary as nicely, encompassing luxurious full-floor flats, shareable pupil flats, a hanging cohousing complicated, and almost 30 flats stacked subsequent to a different residential constructing. A few of these properties sit above ground-floor companies.
Seattle’s historical past with single stairways illustrates how attitudes towards housing have shifted over the many years. Within the Nineteen Forties, amid suburbanization and speedy constructing, a multiple-stairway requirement was imposed on buildings of three tales and up. Within the Nineteen Seventies, a housing disaster led Seattle to permit single stairways in condominium buildings, and not using a top restrict, however with a ground restrict of 4 items per ground. Throughout a backlash to growth within the Nineteen Eighties, town instituted a restrict of six tales to such buildings. Additional fireplace safety necessities adopted. Within the 2010s, momentum began to construct outdoors of the few American cities, like Seattle, that allowed for single stairways.
New York Metropolis’s single-stair permission is older: It was modified in 1938 in recognition of the necessity for extra housing on small heaps. However Seattle has been much more influential in galvanizing the present momentum round comparable reforms in different U.S. cities. In Smith’s evaluation, New York is an excessive amount of of an exception to the remainder of the nation to function a planning mannequin. With town’s shortage of city area, “we don’t have the room to construct these buildings with big hallways and two stairs,” says Smith, who himself lives in a five-story constructing in Brooklyn with a single stairway.
Plus, “within the constructing and fireplace world, there’s a deep mistrust and disdain for New York Metropolis,” Smith believes. “Seattle, I believe, has been extra of curiosity as a result of it’s a extra typical American metropolis,” right down to the frequency with which wooden is used as a constructing materials. Extra broadly, “the locations which were most fascinated with [single-stair reform] just lately have been the West Coast states with the extra extreme housing crises.”
Seattle’s model of single-stair permission has been referred to as the “Seattle Special,” exhibiting how a lot town has grow to be related to a selected sort of medium-density housing: an condominium constructing constructed on a small lot, with as much as six flooring and only one staircase. Each of those floors can have solely 4 items, all of which should keep inside 125 ft of the exit.
The Seattle Particular represents a form of compromise. It’s not a high-rise which may intimidate locals wedded to single-household properties, however it additionally permits for extra density than a home or duplex. By permitting for infill growth on land parcels the place it is perhaps troublesome to assemble different items, it could actually allow an environment friendly use of city area. In Seattle, this consists of corner lots and steep slopes.
The one stairway is probably the last word compromise. It offsets the potential security threat of dropping one other technique of exit with different fireplace safety necessities like pressurization techniques for smoke management (which admittedly could be costly to keep up). It additionally seeks to steadiness that threat with the good thing about gaining extra space contained in the constructing.
Mark Chubb, a Seattle-based building-code guide who beforehand labored as a hearth chief, explains that in varied elements of the U.S., land-use reformers had been realizing that simply having the authority to construct denser housing didn’t imply that in observe they might truly accomplish that.
“In order that’s after they began on the lookout for options and form of stumbled over the Seattle provision. And so they stated, ‘Gee, wait a minute. It appears to be like like Seattle solved this downside,’” Chubb summarizes. “We don’t have numerous buildings that use single exit, however we have now some pretty modern buildings on some pretty small parcels that characterize a big assortment of options.” Chubb believes the single-stair motion has not been pushed by massive moneyed pursuits, however by YIMBYs, activists, and designers.
L.A. lawmakers’ try to permit single stairways in residential buildings as much as six tales seems to have stalled following a Metropolis Council vote final yr; the Worldwide Affiliation of Hearth Fighters called it one of many group’s “key victories” in a “coordinated effort to cease these proposals earlier than they grow to be the brand new regular.” However inside L.A., Culver Metropolis has gone additional on single-stair reform than some other a part of California. In September 2025, after three years of advocacy, it accepted its personal single-stair ordinance.
“It’s the single most impactful factor that I’ve accomplished in all of my civic engagement,” says Travis Morgan, a cofounder of the Livable Communities Initiative.
This group didn’t got down to grow to be single-stair evangelists, Morgan explains. “It was extra of a method to an finish, and the top being this walkable, livable, engaged, group.” Their research recommended that with out single-stair reform, it will be almost not possible to construct housing on small L.A. heaps.
Culver Metropolis’s new ordinance bears greater than a passing resemblance to Seattle’s constructing code. That’s as a result of “we modeled the ordinance after town of Seattle,” Morgan says. In Seattle, “there’s been no fire deaths attributed to the single stairwell . . . and it truly is type of thought of the gold customary.” Honolulu has additionally copied Seattle’s rules.
Visualizing the unfold of Seattle’s single-stair buildings has additionally helped affect debate in Denver, whose Metropolis Council accepted a single-stair ordinance in November 2025.
In response to Denver architect Sean Jursnick, who created the Seattle single-stair map, it “was useful when discussing single-stair reforms with officers regionally as a result of it illustrates how single-stair initiatives are built-in into neighborhoods throughout Seattle and will combine into the same city cloth of Denver.”
Hearth security
The principle argument for conserving a double-stair requirement is fireplace security. Even almost 50 years after permitting for single-stair buildings in Seattle, the Seattle Hearth Division (SFD) doesn’t assist the extension of the Seattle mannequin elsewhere.
In response to Karen A. Grove, SFD’s fireplace safety director, the Nineteen Seventies code change “was accomplished partly as a result of fast response instances of SFD and the superb hydrant infrastructure in Seattle.” In different phrases, cities with fewer assets may discover it more durable to adapt. It may be troublesome to check these sorts of metrics throughout American fireplace departments, attributable to inconsistencies in knowledge reporting and definitions.
Permitting for only one stairway “places a bigger burden on the Seattle Hearth Division, as with out the second stair, we grow to be the again up plan if the primary stair is blocked or compromised,” Grove states. There may be additionally a burden from commonly testing and repairing the smoke management techniques that will grow to be required in lieu of the second stair. SFD cautions fireplace departments elsewhere to contemplate additional wants for coaching and tools, corresponding to ladder entry, if their jurisdictions take away the second-stair requirement.
“It’s a really solvable downside,” Flaherty, the Southern California firefighter, says of the potential adjustments like updating fireplace vans. As for the arguments for conserving a double-stair requirement, he believes that it’s not lifelike {that a} mass of residents will crowd on the one stairway and impede firefighting, or that smoke will acquire in a single stairway. As an alternative, in his expertise, “sprinklers are what maintain fires from getting uncontrolled.”
The proof appears to bear this out for the U.S. Between 2017 and 2021, American buildings with automated sprinkler techniques had 90% fewer civilian fire deaths than buildings with out these techniques.
In contrast to in the remainder of the world, new condominium buildings within the U.S. are sometimes already required to have sprinklers. So an essential fireplace safety measure has grow to be widespread for the reason that growth of double-stair necessities, but constructing requirements typically haven’t been up to date to replicate the unfold of sprinklers.
And for the most part, “we don’t require sprinklers in single-family properties, and there’s no ethical panic over it,” Flaherty factors out. For some urbanists, this dissonance means that the foundations round fireplace safety are primarily arbitrary.
Detailed fireplace security assessments are persevering with. Minnesota revealed one in December 2025. California’s, due in January 2026, is delayed. The Nationwide Affiliation of State Hearth Marshals has additionally opposed single stairways, stating, “Correct exiting, very similar to smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms, is thought to have saved hundreds of lives and have been and stay the basic constructing blocks to life security.”
Complicating the scenario is that not like in another international locations, many American firefighters now spend chunk of their time not truly responding to fires. Flaherty estimates that 90% of the incidents he attends are medical. Firefighting our bodies have argued that double stairways present flexibility in responding to a wide range of emergencies, together with active shooters and natural disasters. These situations aren’t all the time integrated into the design of constructing codes—or their amendments.
What single-stair reform can and might’t do
For Cody Fischer, a much bigger obstacle than the prices of constructing a second staircase has been the rigidity. His firm, Footprint Growth, develops and manages low-carbon multi-household housing in Minneapolis. Whereas engaged on his very first challenge, one of many limitations “ended up being this very obscure security element within the mannequin constructing code,” which units requirements for well being and security.
Even in sought-after places that had been zoned for six-story buildings, it was powerful simply to discover a web site with the size to accommodate a multi-stairway constructing. And if a web site may very well be situated, he could be restricted to one- or two-bedroom flats, and “gross-feeling hallways” with restricted home windows. The affect of this single element was eye-opening to Fischer: “When you see it . . . it’s like the one factor you see.”
Like Fischer, numerous single-stair supporters have been radicalized by their experiences of different international locations, which don’t require second stairways and but don’t endure extra from fires. Within the case of the influential Seattle architect Michael Eliason, a stint working in Germany, seeing that his colleagues had been designing an 11-story constructing with a single stairway, initially shocked him.
Hearth-protection and building-code skilled Chubb labored for years in New Zealand, the place he generally noticed single-stair condominium buildings. He additionally served as an skilled witness relating to the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings. Whereas American fireplace departments are nervous about having single exits in active-shooter conditions, he says that mass shootings are inclined to happen outdoors of residential buildings.
For Smith of the Middle for Constructing in North America, spending a part of his childhood in Romania, the place his household hails from, normalized single stairways for him. Smith says he would even really feel comfy in a 30-story single-stair constructing in Switzerland. “Generally, I believe the restrict needs to be increased, the upper your incomes are,” Smith displays, due to the overall hyperlink between increased GDP and higher fireplace safety.
After all, a loosened coverage received’t routinely result in extra development. In Culver Metropolis, activist Morgan is hoping that newly allowed single-stair buildings will come into being throughout the subsequent few years. However he acknowledges that this can require schooling, possible with some demonstration initiatives to show that the sort of housing could be each worthwhile for builders and reasonably priced for residents.
In Seattle, a form of demonstration metropolis, progress after single-city reform was initially sluggish. Chubb estimates that, typically, it might take eight years to really see the impact of a building-code change. An analysis by Dartmouth student Albert Zhang concluded that following permission to incorporate only one stairwell in 4-to-6-story buildings, a median of about 53 extra items had been constructed per yr in Seattle. It is a modest addition to town’s housing.
One motive could also be that the constructions themselves should be modest, with not more than 4 items per ground. This limits the facilities, like gyms, that builders can bundle into massive condominium buildings to extend their enchantment.
One other lesson is that code adjustments aren’t sufficient on their very own. It’s solely throughout the final decade or in order that “the schooling element is beginning to occur,” Eliason believes. Although a small however vocal group of architects like him has embraced the chances of single-stair design, even in structure faculty “it’s hammered in our brains” that two modes of exit are wanted, Eliason says.
Some proponents have argued that single-stair reform can have a bunch of advantages even past growing housing choices, from fostering community-minded cohousing (by permitting extra space for widespread areas) to encouraging local weather adaptation (by permitting extra air flow). There are examples of those in Seattle, however it’s not a given.
“Single-stair will not be some silver bullet that’s going to create a utopia,” Flaherty, the L.A. firefighter, notes. However he calls it a vital reform, on high of others like removing parking mandates, to ease the event of reasonably priced housing.
Seattle seems to replicate this. Jursnick, the Seattle-mapping architect, says that there was “an uptick of single-stair initiatives in areas like Capitol Hill about 10 years in the past when parking minimums had been lifted for areas close to frequent transit.” So single-stair reform was a constructing block, which different reforms might construct upon.
The progress has been piecemeal in different methods as nicely. Within the U.S., it has largely occurred one metropolis or state at a time, by legislative adjustments that may be extra politically complicated than the slower however extra uniform technique of amending the mannequin code set by the Worldwide Code Council each three years. (Regardless of its identify, this physique units constructing requirements primarily for america.)
For the 2027 model of its Worldwide Constructing Code, which might affect requirements nationwide, the council is contemplating permitting four-story buildings to have single stairways with out smoke management techniques. This might characterize vital, if incremental, progress for the single-stair motion.
Constructing-code debates can appear arcane. However on the sharp edges of those sorts of choices are folks like Gabbie Metheny, a mom of two renting a cramped condominium in L.A.
“Constructing rules that overly limit how we use area are an enormous think about why of us depart L.A. for the suburbs after they begin having households,” Metheny says. She’s unconcerned about fireplace dangers in a single-stair constructing, and wonders if ditching the second staircase might enable for extra reasonably priced family-size flats.
“If there was a three-bedroom condominium within the metropolis in my worth vary, I’d bounce on the alternative,” she says. However sadly, she says, that doesn’t exist.
Help for this story was offered by The Neal Peirce Basis, a nonprofit group devoted to supporting journalism on methods to make cities and their bigger areas work higher for all folks.
This story was initially revealed by Next City, a nonprofit information outlet protecting options for equitable cities. Join Subsequent Metropolis’s newsletter for his or her newest articles and occasions.
