Single-Staircase Buildings: A Design Solution to a Political Problem?

The single-staircase building, prohibited in many U.S. cities due to fire safety regulations, has been getting a lot of attention lately as U.S. housing advocates look to loosening staircase regulations as one way to create more housing and lower construction costs. Planetizen has previously covered arguments in favor of single-staircase construction, whose proponents say it would improve housing affordability and encourage more ‘missing middle housing.’ 

Writing in The Nation, Kate Wagner argues that permitting single-staircase buildings is not the housing solution many think it is. Although a “good idea,” for Wagner, it is simply a design change that “fixes an architectural problem. There is little evidence as far as I can see that the schema will do anything to lower rents or fix urban inequality or anything else that would be so deeply transformative.”

Ultimately, for Wagner, the problem at the root of the housing crisis and of tragedies like the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire is “a housing market that is completely financialized and inherently predatory.” The drive to profit from housing as a commodity, Wagner argues, can’t be solved through design changes. 

I would posit that rarely are buildings architectural failures—more often, they are social and political failures.

Wagner goes on, “Single-stair is not going to fix the housing crisis, because the housing crisis stems from an economic system in which housing is a commodity and a money-making scheme instead of a human right to shelter.” The key: “severing the connection between shelter and profit.”