Abundant Housing Illinois

Single Stair Buildings are Family-Friendly Housing

Single stair buildings are beautiful, sustainable, and safe

Help them come to Chicago and Illinois!

Single-stair buildings are one the world’s most beloved forms of urban housing, and are present and permitted just about everywhere in the world except the United States (and Canada). They are great for families, can maximize the number of homes on a property, and have a strong safety record.

Charming, family-sized, and great for neighborhood character. There are so many reasons to love five and six-story single-stair apartment buildings. That’s why these little buildings could be the next big thing in your town.

But firstly, what’s up with the large apartment buildings today?

You may have noticed that many apartment buildings today tend to look like this one. They can take up whole blocks and often look out of place in neighborhoods.

What’s happening? Well, most cities' regulations require apartment buildings above three stories (two stories in Chicago) to have two stairways serving every floor. This in turn necessitates a hallway bisecting each floor, which consumes a lot of space and pushes developers to build at a huge scale to make the project work.

These buildings are known as "double-loaded hallway apartment buildings", and they end up looking like hotels with long and loud hallways without any natural light. This requirement sounds reasonable but it actually does little for safety and has many downsides.

SB4061 can end the dual stair mandate, with limitations

Illinois is considering legislation to allow mid-rise residential buildings with a single exit stairway (single-stair), subject to strict limits on building height, floor area, and number of units per floor in order to build more family-friendly apartment and condo layouts. At the time of introduction, SB4061 would limit the buildings to six stories and four dwelling units per floor.

Current U.S. building codes generally require two stairways, but recent studies (including this one from Pew) shed light on how building safety actually works — and what matters most for protecting occupants. The latest research also shows that, for mid-rise residential buildings up to a certain size, those with one stair are as safe or safer than equivalents with two stairs.

MYTH: Single-stair buildings are less safe than currently allowed two-stair buildings

FACT: A recent study found that single-stair buildings up to eight stories with up to six units per floor (higher than what the bill proposes) pose less risk to occupants than buildings with dozens of units per floor and two stairways, which are allowed with today’s building codes. Minnesota's Department of Labor and Industry from a group of fire protection engineers, including two based in Illinois.