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Comment by ryukoposting | Hacker News Reader

In many cities, the second staircase is used as an amenity.

Chicago is chock-full of old houses converted to three-flats. Most of those flats have large balconies on the back... with a staircase. These balconies provide fresh air and nice views at a price point where both of those things are otherwise impossible to find.

So yes, my counterpoint is "but I like the second staircase." But, I really do - a lot of people do, and I don't see why landlords would build those things if they weren't required to.

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>Most of those flats have large balconies on the back... with a staircase.

It sounds like you're describing an external staircase - loosely speaking a fire escape. I could be wrong though, I'm not sure.

The article was discussing the requirement for _fully enclosed_ internal staircases, which is different.

I mean, yes, legally, it's a fire escape. But, there's a full size door leading out to it, it's typically made of treated wood, and the staircase is a normal wood staircase, not some rickety metal thing.

These also have the added bonus of being generally a nicer staircase than the one that's actually built into the house. The interior, retrofitted staircases tend to be narrow with lots of awkward, angled steps.

In Japan it seems like some buildings use those as primary stair cases. They have elevators also, but too many people need to use them to be very useful, so its up and down the outside fire escape.

Is the stairwell you’re talking about fully enclosed? If not, then I don’t think it counts.

Per the article, the latest IBC codes seem to say each stairwell must be fully protected/enclosed and the old external ones are insufficient. I used to live in a building with something similar and if yours is like mine then I doubt it meets the latest 2nd stairwell requirements.

(Which is a shame since I agree those backyard stairwells are lovely, and landlords will be even less likely to build them if they have to build 2 internal ones already. Of course if those stairwells increase property value/rent revenue, then that could incentivize them anyway)

Yeah, there's also a large collection of existing stock that does this as multi-family construction with a back porch:

https://chicagoreader.com/best-of-chicago/business-in-the-fr...

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