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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

No.

It’s not only fire that’s a hazard, but a personal safety thing. Most men here probably never experienced being stalked, or having to turn around when your path is through a group of shady characters.

In the Midwest, brick/concrete fire stairwells have another benefit: tornado shelters. While a sufficient tornado would decimate any wooden structure, these stairwells provide essential protection from the main hazard in a tornado: flying debris.

Offhand I can think of a dozen more reasons. Lets not reverse sensible progress in the name of profits and tax revenue.

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The two-staircase requirement leads directly to apartment buildings being big, with long corridors. Given my choice of living in a small building with a few families, with one staircase, where people know each other (the one-stair architecture does in fact lend itself to residents knowing each other) or living in a big building, with long corridors, where people don’t get to know each other, I’d feel a lot safer as a woman living in the smaller building.

A 2nd set of stairs split across multiple units is a trivial matter from a cost perspective. Height restrictions, adding more office space than housing, mandatory parking etc are the real issues.

Tiny increases in construction costs get wiped out when there’s insufficient housing stock.

There is a strong correlation between construction costs and housing stock.

Not in locations where there’s a housing shortage.

Outside of skyscrapers building housing is cheap, it’s land and permission that’s the issue.

Double loaded corridors fundamentally change the composition of buildings. If you look at example floorplans, single staircase buildings typically feature 2-3 bedroom apartments, because giving every bedroom a window is easier, while double loaded corridors end up mostly with deep studios and 1-beds.

Building new housing in the US is not cheap, and reducing the leasable or buyable square footage by 10% can move projects from being profitable to build to not. Especially when the quality of the remaining square footage goes down (as it does when you have 30’ deep units with only one wall with windows).

There’s a multitude of options here for various floor plans. One of the classic solutions is an external fire escape which is cheap per apartment and isn’t impacting floor space. People may dislike the aesthetics though.

Construction costs scale to the market segment you’re targeting. It’s common to aim up market with new housing but the cost of marble isn’t the same as the cost of housing. So be careful you’re looking at the minimums not what it takes to attract high end buyers.

The staircase itself is not the issue, it's the double-loaded corridor (hotel style) layout that it forces on the entire building.

I can’t tell whether you’re unfamiliar with the single- vs. double-staircase architectural arguments, or disagreeing with them: https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...

The floor plans being compared in that example are terrible. Nobody is going to give an interior hallway windows on both ends if they don’t need to.

You also need to consider external fire escapes etc.

I wonder if building second stairwells in multifamily buildings is really a cost effective way of mitigating stalking.

Mitigation isn’t the end result - the OP (as I read it) is saying that two exits provides for not being trapped by a stalker. You may still be stalked or approached by a malicious group of actors, but a second exit makes it much more difficult to be cornered.

you might want to entertain the possibility that, due to these limitations, there’s much less families in the city, as a 3BR apartment is rare and a 4 BR apartment unheard of. In Europe and even south America, that’s not typically the case.

Having lived in both Santiago, Chile and San Francisco with a family, I’d say generally the quality of life is higher (schools, restaurants, opportunities) in major cities in the US, but it’s easier live as family (without a car) in Santiago. Having relatives in Europe I think this is also true.

I’m not sure if removing this limitation fixes that, but without high density 3+ bedroom housing you don’t get families (especially middle class families)

You are free to choose buildings with multiple stairways if that's a requirement for you! We're talking about easing mandatory regulations, allowing builders to meet demand. We're not saying that all buildings must only have one stairway.

Safetyism will be the death of civilization.

Of a civilization.

Pedantry will kill the rest...

It's fucked up that you have problem with society and you think the way to solve it is building code.

Maybe, but there's a long tradition that suggests maybe it's necessary...

"229 If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then that builder shall be put to death."

- Hammurabi's Code, ~1750 BC

It's one thing to ensure the builder doesn't skimp on mortar and an entirely different thing to try to mitigate stalking with 2 stairwells...

This is why an architect and/or engineer(s) supervise a general contractor. A few things have changed in the construction industry over the last 3800 years.

I’m not sure why I even bother reading HN threads about construction.

And if you don't supervise well enough, should it be legally fine to give you a defective house?

If yes, that's a horrible idea. If no, then I don't see how "things have changed" in a way that's relevant to the comment you replied to.

Please respond in good faith instead of trying to ‘gotcha’ me.

There are building inspections periodically during construction by the authority having jurisdiction, with the important trades (MEP, civil, structural) having their own specialized inspections.

When you buy a new house (or a new building), you will receive a warranty for workmanship from the builder who should have corresponding workmanship warranties for all their subcontractors, and the materials will also have warranties from the manufacturer.

Lastly, you can sue the builder if all other options are exhausted.

If I was trying to 'gotcha' you I wouldn't have the if-yes, if-no section. I legitimately couldn't figure out your point. I still don't know what it is because those inspections serve the same purpose and while the mechanism is different I don't see how those differences are relevant.

As a reminder, the argument above was "It's fucked up that you have problem with society and you think the way to solve it is building code." followed by a citation for how many thousands of years building codes have been around to counter bad work. And you're saying that the ancient blunt building code has been replaced with... another kind of building code.

So what's wrong with the citation you replied to? Doesn't it serve the purpose of establishing building codes as normal? Why does it make you despair for HN's knowledge of construction? It's pretty clear they weren't suggesting current law works the same way.

I meant solving stalking and general violence level of the population with staircases :)

Who would’ve thought that the way you house citizens has an impact on their interactions.

"Think of the children" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children) has morphed into "think of the helpless women." Tell me, in places that do not have this building regulation, is stalking an epidemic at apartment buildings? In what other ways are they suffering? Would you support adding a two-stair requirement in those locales?

Yeah, that'll happen when no one thinks about women for a few hundred years. What year did your state make it illegal for a man to hit his wife?

> In what other ways are they suffering?

In Europe they are also suffering from too long toilet stalls and as a result there are mass drug use problems as well as all sorts of unsavory characters having sex in there.

Aren't there other ways to address these safety issues without ballooning the cost of the building? When safety regulations come with minimal extra cost/efficiency (think: ABS or seatbelts in cars) then it's a great idea. When it mandates massive inefficiencies, it must be questioned.

profits and tax revenue? how about more housing for those who need it? or should we prevent housing for the 500,000 americans who don't have it because of tornadoes?

This is what's called a false dilemma, pitting two non-mutually exclusive options as an either or situation when they're actually not opposed to one another.

We should get to reap the benefits of improved fire and personal safety and build more housing.

You would scream if those homeless died in a fire or tornado because the building lacked protection.

The two staircase rule increases costs, but not by that much - any place that allows building housing doens't have a homeless problem. That isn't to say there are no homeless people - there are many - but they are homeless because of other issues (mental). In California the homeless often are otherwise normal people who cannot afford a place to live despite the ability to work a job. Where I live you can rent a new two bedroom apartment in walking distance of Burger King that pays enough to afford that apartment and leave enough leftover for food - it won't be a great life, but you can live on one income (and since most people live as a couple that second income can buy some nice things)

> not only fire that’s a hazard, but a personal safety thing

Affordable housing. Every edge case preference accommodated. Pick one.

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