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Author: Center-for-Building

  • 2027 IBC single-exit height limit to be raised to four stories

    2027 IBC single-exit height limit to be raised to four stories

    Park Modern, a four-story single-stair condo building in Seattle. Photo courtesy of BUILD LLC, who designed the building

    On May 29, 2026, the International Code Council (ICC) announced that the Center for Building’s single-stair proposal, E24-24, won the support of a majority of the ICC’s governmental membership in its Online Governmental Consensus Vote. This was the last hurdle to our single-stair proposal being included in the next version of the International Building Code (IBC) in 2027.

    Our original proposal in 2024 would have allowed up to six stories of up to four apartments per floor to have one stairway. After the original proposal was voted down by the IBC Means of Egress committee, we reached a compromise with other stakeholders to reduce the story limit from six stories to four, along with some other mitigations.

    You can read the full code text here, but the basics are that the new code section allows single-stair apartment buildings to be four stories, rather than the previous three, as long as each story is limited to 4,000 square feet of net floor area (this does not include common circulation space).

    New mitigations include a requirement to install a manual fire alarm system and automatic smoke detectors in common spaces like corridors, and a ban on electrical receptacles (what most people would call an electrical outlet) in the stairway. Sprinklers are also required to be installed in the stairway as required by the NFPA 13 sprinkler standard for combustible stairways (although full NFPA 13 systems are not required), whether the stairway is combustible or noncombustible.

    Importantly, a number of cost-increasing mitigations that have been proposed or enacted in some jurisdictions, especially for code sections allowing single-stair buildings above four stories, were not adopted. The stairway may be interior or exterior, and apartment doors are allowed to open directly into an interior exit stairway without an intervening corridor, as they have been in the IBC for three-story buildings. There are no requirements for pressurization of the stairway or extra requirements for pressurization of the elevator hoistway beyond those required by the base code. The stairway width requirement has been left unchanged, in effect requiring a minimum of 36 inches. Any construction type otherwise permitted by the code is allowed. The code’s baseline NFPA 13R sprinkler requirement for buildings up to four stories is left in place.

    The Center for Building encourages policymakers and advocates interested in single-stair reform to adopt the text as it will appear in the 2027 IBC. While adopting the 2027 IBC will serve to update your jurisdiction’s single-stair code section to allow four stories, jurisdictions may also adopt this section ahead of full adoption of the 2027 code. Jurisdictions that have already adopted code sections allowing taller single-stair buildings than were allowed in the 2024 or prior codes should update their IBC adoption to reflect this new text, as even if they currently allow five- or six-story apartment buildings with a single exit, it is likely under a stricter set of conditions for four-story buildings than will appear in the 2027 IBC. For further questions or if you require technical assistance, please reach out to William Skudlarek.

  • The Hidden Cost of Trash: Improving Waste Handling in New York City

    New York City has long struggled with waste collection and keeping its street clean, but a hidden issue has lurked behind the bags of trash strewn all over the sidewalks: costs. The Center for Building partnered with the Center for Zero Waste Design to calculate, for the first time, the costs to building owners of New York City’s particularly laborious method of waste collection and handling. At $75 per dwelling unit per month, waste handling costs to building owners – the costs of simply moving trash, recycling, and compost from building courtyards, basements, and waste rooms to the sidewalk, not including city collection – add up to more than 1 percent of the median household’s income. Our report discusses the monetary and other costs of New York City’s system, and presents a containerized alternative that would improve housing affordability in the city and keep the streets cleaner. The report is also summarized in a piece for Vital City.

  • The benefits of bird-safe glass requirements do not seem to be worth the costs

    The benefits of bird-safe glass requirements do not seem to be worth the costs

    Bird-safe glass requirements are spreading across some of the highest-cost cities in North America. This year, Jersey City is again being asked to consider imposing a requirement, after one passed by its City Council was vetoed by former Mayor Steve Fulop late last year.

    The Center for Building reviewed the evidence in favor of bird-safe glass, and finds the benefits to be far outweighed by the costs. Estimates vary, but even proponents cite total construction cost increases of 0.38 percent. Meanwhile, the best available evidence suggests that only a handful of birds are killed by each building per year – even mid- and high-rise buildings. Given that each American eats around 24 birds per year for food, it is hard to justify spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars – rising to millions of dollars for some larger buildings – to save a few birds each year.

    More worrisome is that these requirements are only being considered in the densest, highest-cost cities in the United States. Imposing costs only on the more environmentally friendly, densest buildings in the country risks pushing settlement out to suburbs and smaller cities, where birds are probably more likely to be killed by buildings and outdoor cats.

    You can read our full letter to Jersey City lawmakers here.

  • Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record

    Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record

    The Center for Building in North America coauthored a report with the Pew Charitable Trusts on single-stair apartment buildings, with a focus on cost savings and the safety track record in New York City and Seattle. On the cost side, we found that a second stairway for a mid-rise apartment buildings costs roughly $200,000 to construct. On the life safety side, we combined NFIRS data and reports of home fire fatalities from the U.S. Fire Administration, which we joined with property-level data in New York City, through which we found no evidence of any fire fatality attributable to the lack of a second exit in any of the more than 4,000 single-stair apartment buildings of at least four stories in the city. Similarly, we manually reviewed records of fatal fires in Seattle and found the same.

  • Elevators

    Elevators

    We approach the issue of high elevator costs and low availability in North America from a comparative perspective, drawing on experiences in Europe in particular to examine the issue through the lenses of affordability, access, accessibility, codes and standards, and labor. We present the first public comparison between costs in the United States and our high-income peers in Europe (both for installations and ongoing items like maintenance), as well as the most up-to-date comparison of global elevator stocks. We look at the cost drivers, in three main categories – cabin sizes, labor productivity, and technical codes and standards unrelated to cabin size. We look at a few different cases of how other countries approach various issues related to elevators, from how China retrofits elevators into occupied walk-up apartment buildings (common in Europe too, but almost unheard of project in the U.S. and Canada) to France’s recent tightening of building accessibility requirements to Poland’s efforts to improve technical and vocational education to meet the labor needs of the elevator industry in the wake of its accession to the European Union.


    Finally, we present practical advice to policymakers in the U.S. and Canada who want to bring elevator costs down to earth. The report’s author is available to answer questions from reporters, industry professionals, policymakers, or anybody else at stephen@centerforbuilding.org.

  • Trash City takes a step towards cleaning up its act

    Last year, New York City Mayor Eric Adams released the first draft of his administration’s major zoning proposal, called City of Yes. Unlike most zoning changes, this one isn’t a plan for rezoning any one site or neighborhood, but rather it tweaks zoning rules across the whole city. The idea is to make it a little easier to build everywhere, without concentrating changes in any one area.

    The plan’s major elements include much-needed measures like cutting minimum parking requirements for new multifamily development, loosening unit density limits that require all new apartment buildings to more or less have a minimum average unit size of 680 sq. ft., and allowing more density for buildings that include affordable apartments.

    After the plan was released, the Center for Building in North America and the Center for Zero Waste Design reached out to the Department of City Planning (DCP)to ask that the zoning code’s requirement for on-floor trash rooms in new multifamily buildings with at least nine units be removed. DCP listened, and last week, when it released its draft zoning text, the provision (ZR 28-12, on pg. 507) was marked to be stricken.

    The removal of the requirement is in keeping with the Center for Building’s broader mission of improving the quality and affordability of new multifamily development in the United States through reforms of the details of how buildings are built and maintained, through building and zoning code provisions, technical standards, and other policies. Bigger-picture land use and zoning reforms are critical in allowing the density that American cities need to meet growing urban housing demand and climate goals, but getting the finer details of regulation right ensures that zoned capacity can be built out affordably and to an acceptable level of quality.

    The on-floor trash room requirement that has been in the city’s code for decades started from an admirable idea: that residents of all buildings should have convenient access to waste disposal. But the requirement ballooned and morphed over the years into something much more onerous, which adds to both construction and ongoing maintenance costs, and which must ultimately be paid for by residents. On-floor trash rooms also reinforce a waste collection model that is not working to keep the city clean or to encourage waste reduction and recycling, and are falling out of favor in much of the developed world. While developers would still be able to choose to build them after the zoning text amendment is passed, many would likely choose not to, particularly in non-luxury and non-high-rise buildings.

    The problems with on-floor trash rooms and chutes start in the design phase of a building’s life. When on-floor waste disposal was first provided in New York City buildings at the start of the 20th century, it consisted of trash chutes that open directly onto common hallways. Over time, these morphed into rooms that can accommodate bulkier items and bins for recycling. Modern accessibility standards caused these rooms to become even more expensive as they grew in size to accommodate people in wheelchairs, and grew in complexity as automatic door openers and occupancy sensors were even required in some cases. Sprinklers, required in every room and in the shaft itself, added to this cost. Each of these requirements make sense on its own, but the sum total grew to be quite expensive compared to the typical alternative of simply having a room on the ground floor or in the cellar where residents can leave their trash.

    The plan’s major elements include much-needed measures like cutting minimum parking requirements for new multifamily development, loosening unit density limits that require all new apartment buildings to more or less have a minimum average unit size of 680 sq. ft., and allowing more density for buildings that include affordable apartments.

    After the plan was released, the Center for Building in North America and the Center for Zero Waste Design reached out to the Department of City Planning (DCP)to ask that the zoning code’s requirement for on-floor trash rooms in new multifamily buildings with at least nine units be removed. DCP listened, and last week, when it released its draft zoning text, the provision (ZR 28-12, on pg. 507) was marked to be stricken.

    The removal of the requirement is in keeping with the Center for Building’s broader mission of improving the quality and affordability of new multifamily development in the United States through reforms of the details of how buildings are built and maintained, through building and zoning code provisions, technical standards, and other policies.