Mid-rise single stair apartments

[nortor]

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, Boston Indicators, and Utile have a new report out advocating changing the Mass. building code to allow up to six-story single stair housing. This could be a game changer for building dense housing on small lots and allow for a greater variety of housing typologies (esp. family sized units) in apartments.

Legalizing Mid-Rise Single-Stair Housing in Massachusetts

There is a growing recognition that zoning reform alone won’t solve the housing crisis. This report examines staircases and the common building code

www.jchs.harvard.edu

 

[stick n move]

I’ve been seeing this gaining more and more steam lately and Im a big fan. I think it would help change the perception of new development because everything wouldnt have to be 5 over 1s which are very unpopular with the general public. Plus having more buildings per street allows for more vibrant neighborhoods compared to just 1 building taking up an entire city block. Thats not to say dont build any more 5 over 1s they definitely have their place, but they shouldnt be the only thing being built everywhere.

Having 2 stair wells inherently leads to wide boxy shaped buildings because you have to spread the stair wells apart a certain distance. Having a single stair well allows you to wrap the units around the stair well and have much more slender buildings that better blend into existing neighborhoods. Plus the single stair well requirement allows you to build less units meaning a cheaper overall development because the 2 stair well requirement essentially creates a minimum viable building size based around the minimum distance required for the stair wells to be apart from each other per the fire code. If youre building a 6 story building the 2 stair wells need to be x amount of feet away from each other so the width of the building cannot be any shorter than this requirement and so you end up with a lot of buildings with the same boxy dimensions. With a single stair well requirement though you would be able to build many different shape and sized buildings depending on the requirements of the site all the way down to dutch style very slender buildings that are still 6 stories if you wanted to. I think this would be a very welcomed change.