California’s ‘one staircase’ report is out. Regulators don’t like the idea

from Ben ChristopherCalMatters

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Two months after the statutory deadline, California’s top fire safety regulator released a report Monday on whether and how the state should legalize mid-rise residential buildings with a lone staircase.

If that doesn’t sound like exciting news, you may have missed the brewing battle between housing advocates and firefighting professionals over the cause of “one-step reform” and whether America’s fire-rated building standards are getting in the way of more affordable, higher-quality urban living.

The reportpublished by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, takes a rather dim view of the single-stair case, but offers several policy recommendations to state lawmakers should they move forward with the idea.

At least one Democratic lawmaker appears intent on doing just that with legislation aimed at rewriting the state building code.

In California, as in much of North America, three-story apartment buildings must have at least two staircases. This rule is intended to give residents multiple exits in the event of a fire. But a coalition of activists, architects and urbanists from Yes in my Backyard argues that much of the world doing well with single-stair apartment blocks, and that the state’s restrictive stair rules make it more difficult and expensive to build modest-sized apartments on small urban lots.

Although modern safety measures, such as automatic sprinkler systems, smoke detectors and self-closing doors, reduce the risks associated with smoke and flame, they “do not fully replace the redundancy of two independent staircases”, which “is important to maintain safety in the event of unforeseen failures”, the report said.

If state lawmakers do decide to change the law, the report recommends that apartment buildings with one staircase be a maximum of four stories, rather than three, and be subject to additional safety rules. The state should not consider going up to six stories — the current standard in New York, Seattle, Honolulu and Culver City — without a second fire investigation, the report concluded.

In its section on the financial implications, the report also assessed three mid-rise apartment projects and found that the second staircase accounted for between 7.5% and 12% of the estimated total construction costs.

Although the findings mirror those contained in an earlier draft of the report obtained by CalMatters in February, they came as a disappointment to some supporters of looser ladder requirements.

“As you would expect from this group,” Bubba Fish, the Culver City Council member who spearheaded the single-stairway ordinance last year, said in a text message. He called the four-story maximum “ridiculous,” noting that even with this modestly relaxed requirement, California’s building code would remain inconsistent with much of the world.

The report is more than two months late, missing the Jan. 1 deadline set by a 2023 bill authored by Milpitas Democratic Assemblyman Alex Lee.

Lee said his office was still reviewing the report’s findings late Monday afternoon. But in a written statement, he expressed enthusiasm for future changes to the building code.

“Stairway requirements can have a profound effect on what gets built and what doesn’t get built in our neighborhoods,” Lee said. “With the development of modern fire mitigation measures, it’s critical that we reevaluate our building codes and unlock previously undeveloped properties to build more housing.”

Last month, Lee introduced account with the express intention of allowing “residential buildings of 4 or more storeys to have one stair entrance and exit”, but which does not yet include further details.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.