Single-stair reform has officially entered federal housing policy. The recently enacted 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act includes a bipartisan provision directing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to develop national guidelines for point-access block buildings. These are apartment buildings where one internal stair provides access and egress for the dwelling units on each floor.

Single-stair reform has largely advanced through a patchwork of local and state legislation, local code amendments and grassroots advocacy, so having this kind of federal recognition is significant as it shows that single-stair is a legitimate strategy for improving national housing supply through addressing a building-code issue.

The new federal law does not immediately legalize these buildings in North Carolina but it can help create more momentum in making changes. It creates a process for developing national guidance, influencing the International Building Code and potentially funding demonstration projects. North Carolina must still choose to change its own code.

HUD must develop national single-stair guidance

Section 102 of the new law, titled “Federal Guidelines for Point-Access Block Buildings,” directs HUD to issue model building-code language, technical guidance and best practices for Single-stair changes within 18 months, so roughly January 2028. HUD’s assignment will cover residential buildings up to six stories (Group R-2) which will allow Single-stair buildings taller than the current national three story limit and taller than some of the places that have already adopted Single-stair reform.

Congress is asking the agency to consider the relationship between building safety and the quality, affordability and supply of housing.The guidelines must address sprinklers, smoke detection, ventilation and egress, while also considering construction costs, housing affordability, accessibility, family-sized units and apartment configurations. HUD must review existing American codes, international standards and research from organizations working on code reform. It must also consult architects, developers, fire marshals, researchers and officials with direct experience permitting or evaluating these buildings. What’s important to note is that HUD has been directed to produce usable model language rather than another open-ended report as seen in some states.

How Will HUD Influence Regulations on Single-Stair?

The ROAD to Housing Act will create a path for legalizing Single-stair buildings nationwide, but ultimately state and local control over building codes determines whether buildings can be legally built. North Carolina must still amend its own regulations before these buildings can be permitted.

HUD’s role is to develop the technical and regulatory framework that states can use and then coordinate with the International Code Council (ICC) to encourage the incorporation of point-access provisions into the International Building Code.

The ICC is a private organization that publishes the International Building Code and related model codes used across the country. Its codes are developed through technical proposals, committee hearings, public comments and votes by government members. States and local governments then decide whether to adopt them, modify them or retain an older edition. This is the main regulatory pathway created by the Act. HUD cannot directly rewrite any given states’ building code, but it can provide model language and technical support that influence future ICC editions and state code updates.

An IBC provision would give North Carolina and other states a nationally developed standard to review rather than requiring each jurisdiction to create its own single-stair framework from scratch. Officials can consider tested model language as part of a regular code update. This is why the federal direction to work with the ICC may become one of the Act’s most consequential long-term provisions.

The ICC is already getting ahead of the federal guidance

The ICC has already approved a significant single-stair change for the 2027 International Building Code, moving the maximum height for qualifying Group R-2 apartment buildings from three stories to four. In May 2026, a modified version of proposal E24-24 received the support needed for inclusion in the new code.

Under the approved language, each floor of a qualifying four-story building will be limited to 4,000 square feet of net floor area, excluding common circulation. Safety features are also required such as a two-hour fire-resistance rating for the stair enclosure and automatic smoke detection in common areas and sprinklers at stair landings. Electrical receptacles are prohibited within the stair enclosure, which helps prevent fires caused by people charging electric bikes and scooters.

Just as importantly, the proposal avoids several requirements that could make the building type difficult to use or more expensive. It does not impose a universal stair-pressurization requirement, require a wider stair solely because the building has one exit, or mandate a full NFPA 13 sprinkler system where NFPA 13R is otherwise permitted. Apartment doors may open directly into the stair, and the stair may be located inside or outside the building. These nuances are important as code changes can technically allow a building type while adding enough special requirements to erase its design and cost advantages.

The reform is more limited than the six-story scope Congress has assigned to HUD, but it still represents a major shift and leaves the door open for future expansion as directed by HUD. The national model code will now recognize qualifying four-story single-stair apartment buildings rather than leaving reform entirely to state and local exceptions.

Not so fast: North Carolina does not automatically adopt the IBC

Due to North Carolina’s rules, a change to the International Building Code does not immediately change the North Carolina Building Code. North Carolina’s current code cycle shows how long this process can take: as of July 2026, the mandatory commercial code in NC is the 2018 North Carolina Building Code, which is based on the 2015 version of the IBC.

The current process for adopting changes to the IBC in North Carolina are as follows: the state selects a model-code edition, reviews it through technical committees, adds state amendments, completes fiscal and administrative review, holds public hearings, secures Rules Review Commission approval and then finally publishes its own integrated code. The General Assembly can also change council structures, restrict specific provisions or delay an effective date.

North Carolina is therefore still using a code based on the 2015 IBC while the ICC is completing its 2027 edition.

When could the 2027 IBC reach North Carolina?

Recent practice suggests North Carolina has been selecting approximately every other three-year ICC edition. The 2012 North Carolina codes used the 2009 I-Codes, the 2018 codes used the 2015 editions, and the 2024 codes used the 2021 editions. Following that pattern, the 2027 IBC could become the foundation for a future 2030 North Carolina Building Code. Under an orderly process, the earliest it might take effect is around 2030 or 2031.

North Carolina has already adopted and published the updated 2024 North Carolina Building Code based on the 2021 IBC, but there’s a catch. It was originally intended to become mandatory on January 1, 2025, but the General Assembly delayed implementation and later tied it to a series of conditions involving publication, distribution and the constitution of the Residential Code Council. Once the State Fire Marshal certifies that those conditions have been satisfied, another 12-month implementation period begins. If the 2024 code does not become mandatory until 2028, officials and industry groups may resist replacing it only a few years later.

The state must also coordinate two code councils, fill appointments, prepare amendments, complete fiscal reviews, fund publication and distribution, and train inspectors and construction professionals. A more realistic expectation would place mandatory implementation of a 2027-based North Carolina code between 2031 and 2033. Even after the ICC approves a reform, North Carolina may take years to consider it and may amend or remove the provision during its review. Waiting for normal adoption of the 2027 IBC could mean waiting until the early-to mid 2030s for a four-story single-stair pathway.

North Carolina should not wait for HUD or the next code cycle

The ROAD to Housing Act gives North Carolina a stronger case for acting now. The state can point to a bipartisan congressional directive that recognizes point-access blocks as a national housing issue. It can point to a federal process studying buildings through six stories and an approved 2027 IBC provision establishing a national pathway for four-story buildings.

North Carolina can adopt a carefully defined state standard before either process is complete, like more than 20 states including many neighbors. The NC Single-stair standard could address height, floor area, travel distance, sprinklers, alarms, fire resistance and construction type, then require the responsible code council to review it after HUD publishes its guidance.

Any reform must also account for North Carolina’s unusual position between two code editions. Language written only for the adopted 2024 code may not immediately affect projects governed by the mandatory 2018 code. A durable reform may need to amend the current code, create a conforming provision for the 2024 edition and direct that the allowance continue into future codes.

A national shift with a North Carolina deadline

The ROAD to Housing Act represents a meaningful change in the single-stair debate. Congress has directed HUD to produce national guidance and model code language through six stories. The ICC has approved a concrete four-story pathway for the 2027 International Building Code.

Together, these actions make single-stair reform more credible, more technically grounded and easier for states to adopt.

North Carolina, however, remains several code cycles behind. Waiting for ordinary adoption of the 2027 IBC could postpone reform until the early 2030s. Federal guidance will help, and the model-code change will help even more. North Carolina must still make its own decision.

The paths are becoming clearer. The question is: which one will North Carolina take?

Julian Frost, a recent graduate of Haverford College, didn’t set out to change building codes. While studying postwar reconstruction in France, walking through dense, layered neighborhoods shaped by decades of policy and planning, his focus was on the people around him. He was interested in how communities rebuild, how cities negotiate growth, and how our daily lives shape the spaces we live in. The mechanics of building design, especially something as specific as stair configuration, hadn’t even crossed his mind.

But somewhere between listening to a niche podcast episode and attending a swanky backyard fundraiser, Julian was struck by an epiphany. A technical requirement, largely invisible to the public, revealed itself as a structural barrier to the kinds of cities Frost had spent years studying. What once seemed like a minor detail began to represent something much larger: a constraint embedded in policy that quietly dictated what kinds of housing could or could not exist… and therefore, the lives we could or could not live.

From that point on, stairs were no longer simple architectural elements to Julian. They became a lens through which to understand the gap between American housing patterns and the more flexible, human-scaled urban environments he encountered abroad. Once Julian had recognized that gap, it became difficult to ignore.

Context

Across the United States, the push for “missing middle” housing — small-scale apartment buildings that bridge the divide between single-family homes and large developments — has gained traction in recent years. Yet despite growing interest, many of these housing types remain difficult or illegal to build due to constraints embedded in building codes. Among the most consequential of these is the requirement for multiple stairwells in residential buildings above a certain size.

Single-stair reform has emerged as an effort to address this issue. By allowing smaller multifamily buildings to operate with a single stair, cities can unlock more flexible layouts, improve unit quality, and make better use of constrained urban lots. In Baltimore, this idea has evolved from a niche policy discussion into a broader movement shaped by advocacy, design, and political momentum; an environment in which Julian has played a growing role.

From Student to Advocate

Julian graduated in 2023 with a degree in history and urban studies, but the trajectory that led him into housing advocacy began a year earlier. While studying abroad in France, he wrote two theses examining postwar reconstruction and the role of community input in large-scale urban projects. These experiences gave him a strong understanding of how cities evolve, but they didn’t immediately point him toward the regulatory mechanics that shape development in the United States.

That changed when he encountered the Livable Low Carbon City podcast hosted by Michael Eliason. Like his book, Eliason’s podcast emphasizes single-stair housing as a critical but under-discussed factor in urban form. This realization reframed Julian’s previous studies, connecting the dots between the urban environments he had observed in Europe and the regulatory barriers that limited similar outcomes in American cities.

Motivated by this new perspective, Julian began writing about his observations of urban environments on Substack. He supplemented this work by reaching out directly to planners, policymakers, and others engaged in housing discussions. These efforts pushed Julian to be an influential voice in the world of urban planning and single-stair policy.

A pivotal moment came at a Baltimore councilmember’s fundraiser, where Julian found himself in conversations about single-stair housing with individuals who had the power to change policy. He became an author at Greater Greater Washington, an organization working to reform land use, transportation, and housing throughout Greater Washington.

At the same time, Julian met Baltimore Councilman Ryan Dorsey, who announced legislation to legalize single-stair construction. Between his connection with the Councilman and his experience in communicating the benefits of single-stair housing, Julian became the perfect person to advocate for Baltimore’s single-stair design competition to the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) DC chapter’s board.

Baltimore’s Design Competition

The Baltimore Single-Stair Design Competition, organized by the CNU Mid-Atlantic chapter, was conceived as both a policy tool and a design exercise that would challenge architects to reimagine small-scale infill housing under a single-egress model. Set against the backdrop of ongoing code reform debates, the competition emphasized how single-stair buildings could restore a finer-grained, walkable urban fabric often associated with older cities. Jurors highlighted that many of the strongest entries succeeded not just technically but also contextually, demonstrating how this building type could seamlessly integrate into Baltimore’s historic neighborhoods rather than replicate the larger, more monolithic forms encouraged by conventional double-loaded corridor layouts.

The first-place winner, Eutaw Street Lofts by Daniel Morales, exemplifies this contextual sensitivity through its deliberate engagement with Baltimore’s 19th-century warehouse vernacular. “The site in the Loft Historic District North consists of the two conditions typically found in infill projects, the mid-block and corner lot. The mid-block building is subsidized and intended for families while the corner lot is market rate. Together they form a landscaped courtyard for the tenants of both buildings.”

Eutaw Street Lofts is organized around a shared courtyard, a typology that echoes historic urban block patterns while introducing contemporary housing diversity. Materially, the use of brick veneer and compositional rhythms reinforces continuity with the surrounding streetscape, while the relatively small footprints allow the buildings to “blend into the fine-grained streetscapes” characteristic of traditional Baltimore neighborhoods. Rather than mimicking historic forms outright, the design abstracts their proportions, massing, and material logic, demonstrating how single-stair construction can extend vernacular traditions into new development.

Similarly, the second-place proposal at 204 E. Gittings Street draws more directly from rowhouse-based vernacular cues, particularly through its use of bay projections and façade articulation. These elements not only increase interior spatial quality (bringing in light and expanding perceived unit size) but also reinforce the rhythmic street wall typical of Baltimore’s residential blocks. The building’s compact massing and tight core allow for multi-sided units, aligning with the spatial qualities of traditional urban housing while improving livability through cross-ventilation and daylighting. Together, the top two entries illustrate a shared architectural strategy: leveraging the efficiency of single-stair design to recover the scale, texture, and social coherence of historic vernacular architecture, rather than treating new housing as an isolated or purely modern intervention.

Studying the Possibility

The passage of Maryland’s single-stair study bill in late 2025 marked an important milestone in the broader effort to reform building codes. Notably, the bill was introduced as a standalone measure, separate from other contentious issues such as parking requirements. This strategic separation allowed the proposal to move forward with greater clarity and less political friction.

However, the structure of the study itself revealed some of the challenges inherent in pursuing regulatory change. Responsibility for the study was assigned to the state’s Department of Labor, which also oversees building code administration. With only a small team dedicated to this work, questions quickly arose about the depth and scope of the study’s eventual findings, as well as its capacity to meaningfully influence future legislation.

Fire safety, often a central concern in discussions of single-stair housing, was not deeply integrated into the study process. While fire officials contributed to drafting the bill’s language, their involvement in shaping the study itself remained limited. This gap highlighted a broader issue: the difficulty of coordinating across disciplines and agencies when addressing complex regulatory questions.

At the city level, Baltimore took a somewhat different approach. Councilman Dorsey prioritized building a strong working relationship with the city’s fire marshal early in the process, fostering trust and opening lines of communication. Combined with support from Mayor Brandon Scott — who had already backed a range of zoning and urban reform initiatives — this helped reframe single-stair housing as a manageable and beneficial change rather than a categorical risk.

The broader institutional context remains a complicating factor. Much of the United States relies on the International Code Council (ICC) for building code development, which limits local capacity to independently research and evaluate alternatives. As a result, even efforts to study new approaches can feel constrained by existing systems and resource limitations.

Despite these challenges, the Maryland study, expected to be released in late 2026, represents a meaningful step forward. Even if its direct policy impact remains uncertain, it has already contributed to a shift in how single-stair housing is discussed and understood.

Rewriting What’s Possible

Building codes are often perceived as neutral documents, objective standards that define safety and feasibility. In practice, however, they also function as powerful tools that shape the boundaries of what can be built. By setting these limits, codes influence not only development outcomes but also the collective imagination of what housing can look like.

In the United States, these boundaries have historically favored single-family housing, making it more difficult to deliver the types of medium-density buildings that characterize many successful urban environments. In Baltimore, a newly elected group of urbanist-leaning officials has begun to challenge this dynamic, but policy change requires more than political alignment. It also depends on effective communication and a shared understanding of the issues at stake.

Julian emphasizes the importance of developing clear, compelling narratives around single-stair housing and similar reforms. This includes articulating how current regulations disadvantage “missing middle” housing, and demonstrating how contemporary designs can address concerns related to safety, livability, and context sensitivity. Without these narratives, even well-intentioned policymakers may struggle to justify their support for reform.

A key issue in this process is the limited representation of multifamily housing perspectives within organizations like the International Code Council. This imbalance contributes to a regulatory environment that defaults toward lower-density development patterns. Addressing this gap will require both institutional change and sustained advocacy from those working outside traditional code-making structures.

Julian often frames the challenge as a question for policymakers themselves: what does it mean to genuinely support urbanism? Identifying the specific positions and arguments that underpin that support can help move the conversation from abstract alignment to concrete action. Examples from other states, such as Minnesota’s successful study bill and California’s more limited recommendations, illustrate the range of possible outcomes and underscore the importance of context in shaping policy decisions.

Shortcomings… and What Comes Next

Despite growing momentum, the single-stair movement continues to face headwinds. One of the most notable is the relative lack of engagement with the financial realities of development. Advocacy efforts often focus on policy and design, but without a strong understanding of pro formas and market dynamics, it can be difficult to translate regulatory changes into built projects.

There is also a clear need for more robust visualization and design work. While policy arguments are essential, they are often not sufficient on their own. Drawings, renderings, and real-world examples help bridge the gap between abstract concepts and lived experience, making it easier for stakeholders to understand and support new approaches.

The Baltimore single-stair design competition provided a valuable demonstration of this potential. In at least one instance, a developer reviewing the proposals expressed immediate interest, asking when such projects could become feasible. This response highlights a critical point: there is demand for these housing types, but unlocking that demand requires continued effort across multiple fronts.

Julian sees the current moment as a transition rather than a conclusion. While passing legislation represents a significant achievement, it is only the beginning of a longer process. The next phase involves revisiting previously overlooked sites, exploring new development opportunities, and encouraging architects and developers to experiment with emerging typologies.

Public engagement will also play a key role. Encouraging people to imagine what single-stair housing could look like in their own communities helps build broader support and fosters a sense of shared ownership over the outcomes. In this sense, education is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process tied to visible action.

Looking ahead, there are several important areas of focus. These include applying pressure to state agencies responsible for building code administration, coordinating with legislative efforts to move from study to implementation, and engaging with economic development and transit-oriented development authorities. Large, underutilized sites, such as office complexes surrounded by parking, represent particularly promising opportunities to demonstrate what is possible.

Closing

It’s easy to think of systems like building codes as fixed and unchangeable: too technical, too bureaucratic, and too distant from individual influence. Julian Frost’s experience suggests otherwise. His path into advocacy did not begin with formal expertise or institutional backing, but with curiosity, persistence, and a willingness to engage with an overlooked issue. What began as a passing realization evolved into a sustained effort to rethink how housing is regulated and delivered. Along the way, stairs became a conduit to understanding the deeper structures that shape our cities.

In that sense, the story is not just about a specific policy reform, but about the process of recognizing constraints, questioning them, and working to expand what we believe is possible to build.

Defining “eco-districts”

The students in Professor Erdim’s class have chosen to explore single-stair developments in the context of eco-districts. According to urbanist Michael Eliason, eco-districts are compact, walkable, mixed-use urban neighborhoods that integrate environmental performance, social equity, and everyday livability at the neighborhood scale, not just the city-wide scale.

In Eliason’s writing and advocacy, eco-districts are not isolated sustainable developments or luxury green enclaves. Instead, they are “dense, human-scaled neighborhoods designed to reduce car dependency while fostering strong social infrastructure.

Eco-districts rely on mid-rise, small-footprint buildings, often 4-8 stories, with diverse unit types. This is where single-stair housing becomes central to the story. Instead of pointing to glitzy megaprojects, Eliason identifies European single-stair apartment buildings as the backbone of eco-districts, providing family-sized apartments, enabling small developer participation, and serving as incremental infill.

Density is essential to this vision… but not high-rise density. Instead, eco-districts call for “Goldilocks density”: enough people to support daily amenities within walking distance, but not so much scale that buildings become alienating. Parking is often consolidated or minimized so land can be used for housing, green space, or community services instead of flat asphalt.

“The goal is not to “ban cars” but to design neighborhoods where daily life does not require one.”

Eco-districts prioritize walking and cycling infrastructure, access to high-quality transit, and shared mobility options. Rather than separating residential, commercial, and civic uses into zoning silos, eco-districts mix them at a small scale.

Each student team focused on one of two goals: identifying and enhancing existing eco-districts in Raleigh through the addition of single-stair housing, or creating all-new eco-districts through the construction of single-stair housing. The following analysis of sites for single-stair construction is the first step of that design process.

The Single-Stair Studio’s Research

The teams of students conducted an urban analysis study of several neighborhoods in and around downtown Raleigh. Through their research, three consistent topics of interest became prevalent for what makes a strong single-stair site: urban mobility, cultural integration, and connection with green space. Let’s dive deeper into what those terms mean…

Urban Mobility - Cars, Parking, Cycling, Walking, and Public Transportation

Transportation and mobility is one of the most important aspects of a successful and thriving city. Effective transportation systems enable people to access jobs, schools, healthcare, grocery stores, and other essential destinations. It’s critical that a city’s infrastructure allows people to live without sole reliance on automotive transit. Shelley Anderson outlined this concept well in her team’s project, titled Fragments to Nodes: “We can’t get rid of the highways and the railroads that have created the breakage, but we can bring pedestrian connections back into new developments”

The smaller scale of single-stair housing is a goldmine for urban mobility. Infill lots between destinations could become viable housing for people who work nearby, and the mixed-use nature of single-stair would reduce travel distances for residents who work close by to where they live.

In another aspect of mobility, parking lots could become a key factor in the siting of single-stair housing. Following current parking requirements for residential buildings, a 24-unit single-stair building could require up to 48 parking spots onsite — far less than the 400 parking spots needed for a 200-unit double-loaded apartment structure. By nature, the small lots that are appealing for single-stair housing may not have room to accommodate all of the required parking spots. As a solution, students explored other sources of parking that could be utilized by single-stair residents.

Many parking lots at popular shopping centers are packed during the stores’ business hours of 10am to 6pm, yet are empty outside of these hours. If single-stair housing was built adjacent to these parking lots, residents would likely be home from work after 6pm, and thus could utilize empty parking spaces. Phased daily parking, shared commercial/residential spaces, and even rooftop parking on aging strip malls could transition us away from car-dependent infrastructure toward walkable neighborhoods. Parking doesn’t need to be removed completely, we just need to be creative with how it can be utilized for the highest degree of efficiency — optimization, not eradication.

Cultural Integration: Preferences of Privacy vs Community

North Carolina’s architectural vernacular reflects climate and social patterns: porches, stoops, operable windows, and more. Yet many modern apartment buildings ignore this. The “first-floor problem” emerged as a recurring concern: ground-level units with windows directly facing sidewalks feel exposed. Privacy matters in Southern culture, where front yards traditionally buffer homes from public life.

Jasmine Mann and Divinity Hilton studied Clark Avenue and Chamberlain Street, asking critical “why” questions about the transitions between private and public space. Why are public sidewalks only ever adjacent to a road? Could certain pedestrian paths be fully separated from cars? Could alleyways become small plazas for adjacent neighbors to host gatherings?

More importantly, how should the first floor function in a single-stair building? Perhaps it should not always be residential. Many Americans value a sense of privacy not often seen in single-stair buildings in other countries. However, rather than striking down single-stair as a useful building typology, the students began to rethink what that first floor space could be used for. Retail spaces, mail rooms, laundry facilities, lounges, or coworking rooms could activate the street level while protecting privacy of private residences. A raised stoop or elevated entry, borrowing from brownstone traditions, could lift residential units above sidewalk level as well.

Particularly in the existing West Morgan eco-district analyzed by Nico Castilla Lopez and Ian Shore, a number of existing small businesses could be enhanced by integrating mixed-use single-stair buildings into the neighborhood. The existing condition includes a number of apartment buildings, a few single family homes, and several low-density, free-standing restaurants. By bringing single-stair here, walkable residential areas can be densified while adding additional amenities like small grocery stores, healthcare, or childcare. A mixed-use environment would increase the customer base of the existing local establishments, and in turn provide residents with vibrant streetlife and commercial activities.

Many of the aforementioned restaurants and businesses feature a historic, vernacular architecture style, which could be borrowed by new construction to continue the character of the eco-district. As mentioned in our previous article, the vernacular traditions of North Carolina’s architecture are evident through the use of porches, pitched roofs, and operable windows, among other design moves. To build single-stair residences that look like they belong in North Carolina, developers can draw design elements from neighboring properties. Many infill lots are already present in Raleigh along corridors of historic homes, which is the perfect space for single-stair buildings to be added at a scale that complements the current architectural character.

Single-stair homes provide a unique opportunity to incrementally increase density in these older, character-rich neighborhoods, without being overbearing in building height or lot size. The units themselves can feel comfortable and welcoming, with better daylighting and more chances to create usable outdoor spaces. The exterior designs of the buildings can emulate the architectural language of their neighbors, preserving the neighborhood’s beauty and charm. Historic neighborhoods are appealing to people of all ages, and creating opportunities for younger generations to live there generates greater resilience within the neighborhood, increasing its ability to preserve its character as time goes on.

Green Spaces, Sustainability, and Resilience

Shelley Anderson, Trey Cook, and Aidan Staub examined Raleigh’s downtown and warehouse districts, discovering that resilience in communities is created with smart zoning that promotes social cohesion, physical activity, and connection with nature. In these eco-districts especially, green spaces act as communal backyards for households without private yards. Proximity to grocery stores, cafes, and corner markets reduces reliance on cars, one of the key components of a successful eco-district. RX zoning and mixed-use strategies can help eliminate food deserts by embedding small-scale food retail within residential areas. Areas with a high concentration of food options along with nearby green spaces provide optimal opportunity for residential densification via single-stair housing. The presence of amenities within walking distance of these residences would help alleviate the traffic congestion sometimes associated with density increases.

Chloe Craig and Rafael Salas-Garzon’s project, “Extroverted Urbanism,” emphasized enhancing popular destinations rather than overwhelming their existing scale. Neighborhood parks are an appealing amenity for many residents; adorning their boundaries with mid-rise single-stair buildings that contain ground-floor retail would provide space for small businesses, without intruding to the extent of a full shopping center. Family-owned coffee shops and bistro cafes would enhance the experience of the existing green space. By giving residents of the single-stair building easy access to a shared outdoor location, quality of life would improve without requiring expansive backyards for each individual housing unit.

Single-stair housing grows differently than master planned neighborhoods or large-scale apartment complexes. It can emerge incrementally, lot by lot, block by block. It can “grow out of” existing city parcels rather than requiring wide scale demolition and land assembly. As Rafael Salas-Garzon and Chloe Craig observed in their study of Historic Oberlin Village and Forest Park, large buildings and roadway projects can feel like walls: introverted and overwhelming. Single-stair buildings, by contrast, are small enough to integrate into existing contexts, unlocking infill opportunities near parks, corner stores, and neighborhood destinations.

What’s next?

NC State’s single-stair studio has laid out a useful framework for assessing the viability of a site for single-stair development. The foundation for vibrant eco-districts already exists in Raleigh, and single-stair housing provides the missing piece to really make these neighborhoods come to life.

The concept of an “eco-district” provides a useful framework for assessing the vibrancy of a neighborhood. This approach of urban integration respects what is already present, and identifies three key components of success in densification: urban mobility, cultural integration, and connection to green spaces. It asks: what urban features exist here? How can we amplify them? How do we add housing without adding walls? What could match the architectural character of the surrounding neighborhood?

In coming articles, we will explore the student teams’ proposals for single-stair housing within their chosen eco-districts. As the students continue to work on their housing proposals, stay tuned to see what the future of housing looks like in Raleigh, North Carolina!

What becomes clear when reading these reports is that they are not actually answering the same question. Each study asks something different about safety, risk, and building performance. Minnesota asks: What combination of building systems determines the probability of fatal fire outcomes in modern apartments? California asks: How does a shared stair affect evacuation and firefighting operations during an emergency? Massachusetts appears to be asking a third question: Can stakeholders build enough consensus to support a code change?

Understanding what each study is designed to measure is crucial. These reports can’t simply be lined up and compared by their headlines. Their conclusions reflect the questions they were built to answer.

Minnesota: Treating Fire Safety as an Engineering Problem

The most technically rigorous of the recent studies comes from Minnesota. Commissioned by the state legislature and completed in 2025, the Minnesota Single-Exit Stairway Apartment Building Study evaluated whether mid-rise buildings with a single stair could achieve safety outcomes comparable to those currently required under the building code.

Unlike many legislative task force reports, Minnesota funded a formal engineering study and hired outside fire protection specialists to conduct it. The work was led by fire protection engineers from Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates and Crux Consulting, firms that routinely analyze building safety and fire performance. The study was conducted by fire protection engineers using a risk-informed engineering approach, a methodology commonly used in industries such as aviation and nuclear energy. The study used simulation tools, national incident databases, and probabilistic modeling to estimate how different building systems interact during fires.

One useful way to understand the methodology is the distinction between numerators and denominators. Firefighters and emergency responders naturally experience the numerator: the fires they are called to, the rare incidents where things go wrong. Engineering risk analysis tries to capture the denominator as well: the thousands of buildings where fires occur but are quickly contained by sprinklers or fire-rated construction. By modeling both probabilities and consequences, the Minnesota study attempts to evaluate overall risk rather than focusing only on worst-case anecdotes.

Four building types were studied, including both traditional two-stair apartment buildings and single-stair buildings up to seventy-five feet in height. The goal was not simply to measure evacuation time but to estimate overall building risk by examining the chain of failures required for a fatal fire scenario to occur.

The results pointed to a conclusion that surprised many observers: the dominant factor in apartment fire safety is the reliability of the sprinkler system. In fact, the simulations showed that the difference between a working sprinkler system and a failed sprinkler system was far more consequential than the difference between one stair and two.

According to the study:

“Nearly 97 percent of modeled building risk was associated with sprinkler system failure.”

When sprinklers functioned as intended, the number of stairways had little effect on modeled life-safety outcomes. For a catastrophic scenario to occur, several failures would have to happen simultaneously: the sprinkler system would need to fail, the apartment door where the fire started would need to remain open, and the stair door would also need to be open, allowing smoke to enter the stair enclosure.

The empirical fire data reviewed in the study reinforced this finding. In Minnesota, only about 1 percent of multifamily fires between 2004 and 2024 resulted in a civilian fatality, and those deaths almost always occurred within the unit where the fire began. Fires in corridors or stairwells were not a significant driver of fatal outcomes.

Minnesota’s study therefore reframes the debate around single-stair buildings. Instead of asking whether one stair is inherently dangerous, it asks which systems actually determine the outcome of modern apartment fires.

Figure 2. Fire floor egress and tenability times in the corridor for a corridor fire for the four building

geometries.

What the Fatality Data Actually Shows

Engineering models are useful, but they raise an obvious question: do real fires show the same pattern?

A recent analysis by The Pew Charitable Trusts examined 468 fire deaths in New York City apartment buildings between 2012 and 2024. Among those fatalities, only three occurred in buildings with a single staircase, and the study found that the number of stairs was not the cause of those deaths.

This does not prove that stair configuration never matters. But it suggests that single-stair buildings do not appear as a major driver of fire fatalities in large urban datasets. Instead, the primary factors associated with fatal fires were far more familiar to fire protection engineers: fires starting inside residential units, delayed detection, and smoke inhalation occurring before evacuation even begins.

Organizations like Pew are beginning to compile better national data on multifamily fire outcomes, and that evidence base is still evolving. What we have so far, however, points in the same direction as the Minnesota study: suppression and containment systems dominate life-safety outcomes.

California: Treating Fire Safety as an Operational Problem

California’s report on single-stair buildings takes a different look at the question. Produced by the Office of the State Fire Marshal in response to Assembly Bill 835, the report places far greater emphasis on the operational realities faced by fire departments during emergencies.

The report acknowledges the importance of the same modern safety systems highlighted in Minnesota: sprinklers, smoke alarms, and fire-resistant construction but ultimately frames the question differently. Instead of focusing on probabilistic risk modeling, it examines how building design affects firefighter operations and evacuation dynamics.

One of the most detailed sections of the report analyzes evacuation simulations conducted for a hypothetical mid-rise single-stair building. These simulations measured the time required for occupants to exit the building under different conditions.

In the baseline scenario, occupants were able to evacuate the building in approximately 2 minutes and 23 seconds. However, when firefighters entered the stairwell to begin suppression operations, a realistic scenario in most fires, the evacuation time increased dramatically to 6 minutes and 35 seconds. Other modeled scenarios produced even longer evacuation times. When higher occupant loads were simulated, evacuation could take more than 10 minutes, and scenarios involving rooftop amenities or slower-moving occupants also significantly increased egress time.

In other words, the California study is asking a very specific operational question: how does a shared stair affect evacuation time and firefighter access during an emergency? Within that scope, the findings are meaningful. If firefighters and residents must use the same stair, congestion and counterflow can slow evacuation under certain scenarios.

These findings illustrate the central concern raised by many fire officials: in a single-stair building, firefighters and residents must share the same vertical path. Hose lines deployed in the stairwell may narrow the available exit width, and the counterflow of firefighters ascending while residents descend can slow both evacuation and suppression operations.

The report also highlights the importance of redundancy in life-safety systems. While modern fire protection technologies significantly reduce risk, the presence of a second stair provides an additional layer of resilience in the event of unexpected failures.

From this perspective, the key question becomes not simply whether single-stair buildings can be made statistically safe, but whether they create operational challenges that firefighters would prefer to avoid.

Massachusetts: Studying the Question Before Answering It

Massachusetts has recently entered the conversation with yet another approach. In February 2026, Governor Maura Healey issued an executive order establishing a Technical Advisory Group on Single-Stair Multifamily Residential Buildings.

The order acknowledges the state’s urgent housing shortage and notes that building types such as single-stair apartments “can play a critical role in increasing housing production in areas with existing infrastructure.” At the same time, it emphasizes the importance of grounding any potential building code changes in rigorous technical analysis.

Rather than commissioning a single engineering study immediately, the state has assembled a broad advisory group including representatives from fire chiefs, professional firefighters, architects, developers, building officials, fire protection engineers, housing researchers, and planning organizations.

The group has been tasked with conducting a comparative analysis of single-stair buildings and recommending possible updates to the Massachusetts building code within twelve months.

In this sense, Massachusetts may be studying not only the technical question but the institutional one. Fire officials, engineers, architects, and housing advocates all approach the issue from different professional perspectives. The advisory process creates a venue where those perspectives can be negotiated before the state attempts to change the building code.

Why so many studies?

From a purely technical standpoint, many of the core questions about apartment fire safety have already been studied. The physics of fire growth, smoke movement, and sprinkler suppression do not change from state to state. Much of the data used in modern fire safety research comes from national incident databases and decades of fire protection engineering work.

So why do new state studies continue to appear?

Part of the answer is political. Commissioning a study or creating a task force is often the easiest step for legislators to approve. It allows policymakers to acknowledge a problem, gather stakeholders, and defer a difficult decision.

Studies also serve another function: they produce documents that provide political cover for whichever policy outcome ultimately emerges.

Studies as Consensus-Building

One way to understand this pattern is to recognize that building codes change slowly because they sit at the intersection of multiple professional cultures: engineers, firefighters, architects, and regulators. Each group approaches safety from a slightly different perspective. Engineers tend to focus on system performance and probabilities. Firefighters focus on the rare emergencies they encounter in the field. Policymakers must weigh both perspectives while also considering housing affordability and feasibility.

Minnesota approached the issue primarily as an engineering problem. California approached it through the lens of fire service operations. Massachusetts is now attempting to bring those perspectives together through a structured advisory process.

Seen this way, single-stair studies may function less as scientific experiments and more as institutional confidence-building exercises.

The question is not simply whether single-stair buildings are safe. The question is whether the institutions responsible for public safety feel comfortable changing long-standing rules. Single-stair apartment buildings already exist in cities like Seattle and New York and are widely used internationally in mid-rise housing. The technical evidence base around fire safety continues to grow.

What remains uncertain is not the physics of fire.

It is the politics of reform.

If we are serious about building connected communities, single-stair housing must be legalized in the building code. It would be the most effective bridge we have between mixed-use districts and existing suburban neighborhoods.

Our Existing Urban Fabric: a Tapestry Torn Apart

Drive through North Raleigh and you’ll see townhomes backing up to strip malls. A wooden fence separates patios from parking lots. While technically adjacent, the built environment creates barriers that disconnect these destinations and prompt the use of cars for short trips.

A typical American strip mall faces towards arterial roads, with parking lots outside the storefront. This configuration neglects the people living in close proximity to the strip, where vegetation or fences block off walkable paths. In these buffer areas, mid-rise, single-stair apartments could provide a gradient between commercial and residential zones. By fronting the commercial street, stepping down in height toward the townhomes, and activating the sidewalk with small retail or residential stoops, single-stair buildings would make both residents and customers feel like they belong in the urban environment.

The above diagram illustrates how Cary Towne Center could be reimagined with mixed-use and residential multifamily housing to better integrate with its surroundings. By utilizing the vacant parking spaces, much needed medium-density housing could be created right next to mixed use zoning. If large-scale apartment buildings with first floor commercial developments were to be created in the MXD (Mixed Use District) zone, single-stair buildings in the RMF zone would serve as both a buffer and a connector between commercial establishments and the existing neighborhood.

Fenton and Southpoint Mall: Gorgeous in Plan, Failure in Practice

Fenton is one of the Triangle’s newest mixed-use districts. It has apartments, restaurants, offices, and curated public space. On paper, it’s a success, but think about the journey to get there… It requires a car ride and a walk from a parking lot or deck. Anyone in the adjacent neighborhoods is forced to walk along Maynard Road or Cary Towne Boulevard because there are no sidewalk connections directly from those neighborhoods. The result is Cary Towne Boulevard and Walnut Street functioning more like defensive perimeters than connective tissue, since those transportation arteries are built for cars.

The former Cary Towne Center site embodied the same pattern prior to redevelopment: a mall ringed by parking, accessible primarily by car, designed for peak occupancy rather than everyday integration.

The irony? Malls contain exactly what people say they want from urban living: restaurants within walking distance of shops, public gathering spaces, outdoor plazas, and social activity. As someone who grew up in the Triangle, “going to the mall” wasn’t an errand… it was an afternoon. My friends and I would walk around the plazas at The Streets at Southpoint for hours before grabbing lunch in the food court. And with Chris “Juggle Boy” Fowler performing in the open-air corridor, it felt like a town square.

eThe catch: Southpoint is a town square surrounded by a field of asphalt.

What if those edges were wrapped in mid-rise, single-stair buildings instead of parking spaces? What if the parking was structured and tucked behind? What if the development bled seamlessly into adjacent residential blocks?

North Hills: A Promising Local Precedent

North Hills along Six Forks Road works beautifully as a high-density node. With towers, retail, and offices, it’s decidedly urban in form and experience. These urban nodes serve a vital role in providing social centers for people and corporate hubs for many companies. We need increasing density at all scales, and single-stair housing serves the role of making density increases viable on lots that may be too small for large apartments or condos. With the integration of single-stair housing, North Hills would have more versatile housing options and would regain some of the neighborhood character that struggles to find expression in large apartments.

As is, the seam between North Hills and the surrounding neighborhoods can feel harsh. However, this isn’t a failure of density increases, it’s a failure of building typology and zoning allowances. When your only multifamily tool is a double-loaded corridor building requiring two stairs, elevators, and large floorplates, you end up with big blocks or nothing at all. Infill lots become unfeasible and undesirable for developers.

The integration of single-stair buildings into an urban network like North Hills would allow for more comfortable transitions between existing neighborhoods and new developments, and infill within the mixed-use district makes the whole area feel more like a neighborhood. Shallow lots unfit for high rises could be used for single-stair housing, creating a well-utilized buffer between destinations.

Why Single-Stair Works

New York City, Chicago, and Boston are enjoyed by millions of tourists every year. Part of the charm of these cities is their walkability. Parks, local restaurants, and coffee shops tucked into small lots along the sidewalk provide moments of interest and exploration. These destinations alongside a walkable streetscape is a feature that many post-industrial cities lack. Most modern American municipalities were created with cars as the primary mode of transportation; as a result, the pedestrian experience was left in the dust.

Single-stair buildings enabled the formation of walkable avenues throughout Europe and North America, but this walkability was hampered when modern code changes in the United States mandated dual means of egress for most multifamily buildings over a certain size.

Legalizing single-stair buildings with modern fire safety standards would restore a number of positive dynamics to our urban networks, from unlocking small-scale developer opportunities to improving the lighting and ventilation in units. The first floor of these structures could be made into local coffee shops, restaurants, and stores, while gaps between buildings would supply niches for small parks and green space.

But What About Parking?

It’s no secret that shopping in America requires a significant amount of parking spaces. In the development of single-stair buildings on small infill lots, parking poses a significant challenge. The lack of space for a large-scale apartment means that there is also very limited onsite space for parking to exist. Commercial shopping malls present a unique opportunity to solve this problem, where parking underutilized in off-peak hours could serve as parking for the single-stair residences.

The most optimized use of any parcel of land is to have it occupied for as many hours out of a 24 hour period as possible. Parking lots can be one of the most poorly utilized land types, depending on what businesses the parking is used for and when they are open. Because Residential parking and commercial parking tend to be utilized at opposite times of day, an opportunity exists for those parking lots to be combined. This could be possible with the incremental construction of medium density housing, which can utilize a portion of these commercial parking lots during businesses’ closed hours.

Fenton’s original masterplan makes use of well placed parking decks and green spaces to create a comfortable, mixed-use district. What ended up getting built faces many of the same problems as traditional shopping malls: vibrant, central shopping spaces, lined with a “moat” of parking.

The diagram on the right takes the existing layout and consolidates its parking into a few large decks, while highlighting where single-stair buildings could fit on the regained land. This is where single-stair apartments would excel: filling in small, oddly shaped sites in ways that hulking double-stair apartment blocks never could.

In North Hills, an abundance of parking infrastructure already exists underground for commercial entities. Medical facilities, retail, and a nearby grocery store provide amenities for people within walking or biking distance, further reducing the need for a car. This combination of factors makes North Hills an ideal location for single stair integration, where additional onsite parking may be a challenge.

Visualize the Retrofit

Picture the scale of North Hills. Now overlay slender 18-unit single-stair buildings along its residential edge. Step them down toward adjacent neighborhoods. Add small corner cafés or live-work sites. Insert mid-block pedestrian paths.

Imagine Fenton. Replace peripheral parking lots with a series of 4-story single-stair buildings. Connect them to surrounding subdivisions through landscaped pedestrian corridors.

Take the aging strip centers across Wake County. Instead of redeveloping them as one massive mixed-use block, allow incremental infill throughout unused lots and parking lots… one small building at a time.

Our mixed-use districts and malls are headed in the right direction: walkable retail and restaurants, public plazas, and flexible spaces for social interaction. Yet, they fail in one massive way: connection outside of themselves. Our malls and neighborhoods shouldn’t be bubbles, and our parking lots shouldn’t act as castle moats. If we want truly walkable communities in Raleigh, Cary, Durham, and beyond, we need typologies that transition, instead of dominate.

Single-stair buildings are small enough to fit, flexible enough to adapt, and powerful enough to stitch together what zoning and asphalt have pulled apart. The question isn’t whether we can build vibrant mixed-use hubs. We already do. The question is whether we’re ready to connect our neighborhood network.

Small lot zoning creates a regulatory environment in which single-stair buildings can thrive. The scale we’re interested in is those empty lots you may see between single-family houses, or an old, vacant house that could be rebuilt into something more useful. These “infill” lots have a lower entry cost than large-scale apartment complexes or single-family subdivisions, making the investment feasible for aspiring developers. Single-stair housing fits perfectly in these smaller lots, blending in with existing neighborhoods and providing more affordable housing options for prospective residents.

What Is a Single-Stair Building—and Why It Matters

A single-stair building is exactly what it sounds like: a multifamily residential building organized around one primary stair serving all units. Typically ranging from three to six stories and four to twelve units, these buildings are common throughout Europe and in older North American cities, but are often prohibited under modern U.S. building codes once a building exceeds a certain size or height.

The requirement for two stairs is frequently justified as a life-safety measure, yet in practice it imposes significant cost and design penalties—especially for small buildings. A second stair consumes valuable floor area, increases structural complexity, and often forces inefficient double-loaded corridors. For small lot developments, these inefficiencies can be fatal to project feasibility.

Single-stair buildings solve this problem by concentrating circulation in a compact footprint. The result is more usable space per unit, better daylight access, and dramatically improved cost efficiency—all without sacrificing livability or neighborhood scale.

By allowing multiple dwelling units on modest parcels and removing artificial minimums tied to lot size or building footprint, it enables a housing typology that is cost-efficient, energy-efficient, socially diverse, and accessible to small developers. When combined with mixed unit sizes and internal cross-subsidization, single-stair buildings offer a compelling alternative to both suburban sprawl and institutional-scale apartment development.

Construction Efficiency: Shared Walls, Fewer Stairs, Lower Costs

Affordability is one of the strongest arguments in favor of single-stair buildings. Detached single-family homes are among the least efficient housing types to build, requiring four exterior walls per unit, individual roofs, and fully separate structural systems. Even townhouses, while more efficient, still duplicate many other building elements such as mechanical lines, HVAC units, and water heaters.

Single-stair buildings maximize shared walls, floors, and ceilings, along with the aforementioned mechanical systems. The shared envelope components dramatically reduce the amount of exterior material needed per unit, while also saving time and money in construction. And, of course, eliminating the second stair itself further compounds these savings. Stairs are expensive: they require additional structure, fire separation, handrails, landings, and code-mandated clearances. Removing one stair can free up hundreds of square feet that can instead be used for living or mechanical space… or allow the entire building to fit into underutilized infill lots.

The Entrepreneur’s Motivation of Investment

Compared to large apartment buildings, single-stair buildings sit in a “sweet spot” of efficiency: dense enough to share costs, but small enough to remain comfortable in neighborhoods. In contrast to deep, double-loaded corridor apartments, single-stair buildings often allow for through-units or corner units with better daylight and natural ventilation. This improves occupant comfort while reducing reliance on mechanical systems.

Single-stair buildings perform well over the life of the building. Shared walls reduce heat loss and heat gain, making these buildings significantly more energy-efficient than detached homes. Units typically have fewer exposed sides, which translates to lower heating and cooling loads.

Lower operational costs matter deeply for affordability. Even when rents are similar, reduced utility bills can make a meaningful difference in a household’s monthly expenses. Over time, these savings accumulate—particularly for lower- and middle-income residents.

Construction restraints born out of overzealous building codes can cause a snowball effect in building scope. For example, when two stairs are required, it takes up too much building footprint to make small lots feasible investment opportunities. Then, as larger lots are needed, more units are needed to produce a high enough profit to repay the real estate loan. Entrepreneurs have to make a profit some way or another… so when profit isn’t feasible on a small scale, large-scale real estate development becomes the only scale to exist.

Lower Barriers for Small Developers

Perhaps the most transformative benefit of single-stair buildings is who gets to build them. Large apartment projects require large loans, sophisticated financial structures, and institutional investors. This reality excludes most small developers and local builders from participating in multi-family housing production.

Single-stair buildings, especially when enabled by small lot zoning, dramatically lower the barrier to entry. The total project cost is smaller, the construction is simpler, and the loan amount is more manageable. A small developer—or even an owner-occupant—can finance a four- to eight-unit building in ways that are simply impossible with a 100-unit complex.

For small, owner-occupied buildings (four units or fewer), Freddie Mac–backed loans work very differently than commercial apartment financing. Instead of asking the building to “stand on its own” with a debt-service coverage ratio, lenders underwrite the borrower, counting roughly 75 percent of rent from the non-owner units toward qualifying income.

The loan is valued using residential comparable sales rather than cap rates, often allowing higher per-unit valuations, lower down payments, and 30-year amortizations. In practice, this means a household can use its income and partial occupancy to backstop risk, making it possible to build or stabilize small multifamily housing with homeowner-style financing, one of the few rungs on the development ladder for missing-middle projects.

Because the initial investment is lower, the pressure to maximize rent is reduced. A developer can accept modest returns while still operating profitably. In some cases, the owner may live in one unit while renting the others, creating long-term stability and personal investment in the building’s success.

This model spreads risk, distributes wealth-building opportunities, and keeps housing development rooted in the local community.

Mixed Unit Sizes and Internal Subsidy

Single-stair buildings are uniquely well suited to mixed unit types. Because the circulation core is compact, floor plans can be highly flexible. Smaller studios or one-bedroom units can coexist alongside larger family-sized units within the same building.

This diversity enables internal cross-subsidization. Smaller, more affordable units—often located on lower floors—can be offset by larger or premium units with higher rents. The building as a whole remains financially viable, without every unit being priced at a premium.

This approach allows affordability to be achieved within the building rather than through external subsidies alone. It also fosters social diversity, as residents of different incomes and household sizes share the same address rather than being separated by building type or neighborhood.

Entrepreneurs Simply Respond to the Rules We Set

Developers are not inherently predisposed toward large, expensive buildings. They respond to the regulatory environment. Entrepreneurs will be entrepreneurs: they ask what is legal, what can be financed, and what will pencil. Those questions are answered not in the abstract, but through very specific mechanisms, rent comparables, appraisals, loan terms, and underwriting standards that translate rules into built form.

To make money, a developer needs three things to align. First, rent comps must exist to justify projected income; lenders and investors will not underwrite hypothetical demand for a building type that is illegal or rarely built. Second, appraisals must support the cost of construction, which requires comparable properties that appraisers can point to with confidence. Third, financing must be available on terms that allow the project to carry its debt without excessive rents or equity. When any one of these breaks down, the project does not fail gradually it becomes unfinanceable.

When single-stair buildings are illegal or impractical to build, these mechanisms collapse in predictable ways. Without legal precedent, there are no rent comps. Without rent comps, appraisals fall back to single-family or large-apartment benchmarks. Without appraisable value, financing disappears or becomes prohibitively expensive. Developers are then forced into extremes: detached single-family homes, which fit cleanly into residential underwriting, or large apartment blocks that can absorb regulatory costs through scale.

In this sense, regulations do not merely shape outcomes; they actively produce them. By prohibiting efficient, human-scale buildings, the rules foreclose the financial pathways that make them viable. Single-stair buildings demonstrate that affordability and profitability are not opposing goals—they are regulatory outcomes. When codes allow smaller buildings to exist, the market can generate the rents, comps, appraisals, and financing needed to support them. When they do not, the market is left with fewer options, higher costs, and less choice.

Aligning Policy, Design, and Affordability

Small lot zoning provides the legal foundation for single-stair buildings to re-emerge as a mainstream housing type. Together, they enable gradual, incremental density rather than disruptive redevelopment. A single-family lot can become a six-unit walk-up. A corner parcel can support a three-story apartment building that fits comfortably into the existing neighborhood.

If the goal is to produce more affordable housing while maintaining neighborhood character and expanding access to development opportunities, single-stair buildings deserve a central place in housing policy. Small lot zoning makes them possible, and thoughtful code reform makes them viable.

The housing crisis is not simply a failure of the market—it is a failure of imagination constrained by outdated rules. Single-stair buildings offer a clear, proven, and human-scale alternative. When we allow them to be built, we align entrepreneurial energy with public good—and unlock a housing future that is more affordable, more diverse, and more humane.

When we talk about housing affordability, the conversation often jumps straight to rents, interest rates, or construction costs. But according to a recent analysis by Goldman Sachs economists, the real problem starts much earlier with the rules that determine what kinds of homes are even legal to build.

Their conclusion is clear: land-use regulations have become the first and most crucial constraint on U.S. housing supply. In other words, affordability is less about market failure and more about self-imposed scarcity.

Today, in the 240 largest U.S. metropolitan areas:

• About 60% of residential land is restricted to buildings no taller than two or three stories—roughly the height of a single-family home.

• Only 7% of residential land allows buildings five stories or taller.

• Additional rules cap the number of homes per building, require large minimum lot sizes, and mandate excess open space, even in places with strong demand for housing.

The result is predictable: when most land can only support a small number of homes, prices rise not because housing is inherently expensive, but because it’s artificially scarce.

Affordability Is a Supply Problem

When communities limit how many homes can be built in desirable locations: near jobs, schools, and services they force households to compete for a shrinking pool of options. That competition shows up as higher rents, higher purchase prices, longer commutes, and fewer choices for families.

Goldman Sachs’ analysis reinforces what many housing economists have argued for years: we cannot meaningfully address affordability without changing land-use rules. Subsidies and incentives can help at the margins, but they can’t overcome zoning that blocks new homes almost everywhere.

Why “Missing Middle” Housing Matters

The good news is that affordability doesn’t require turning every neighborhood into a high-rise district. There’s a wide range of housing types often called “missing middle” housing that can add supply while fitting comfortably into existing communities.

Single-stair apartment buildings are a great example.

• They typically range from two to four stories well within the height limits already common across much of North Carolina.

• They allow more homes on the same land without overwhelming infrastructure.

• They support family-sized units, not just studios.

• And they create walkable, neighborhood-scale buildings that feel more like traditional housing than large apartment blocks.

In other words, single-stair buildings directly address the affordability problem by making it possible to build more homes on land that is currently underused.

A Local Opportunity for North Carolina

Because land-use rules are mostly set at the local and state level, affordability isn’t just a national issue it’s a policy choice we make here in North Carolina. Updating building and zoning codes to allow more small-scale multifamily housing would unlock supply in precisely the places where demand is strongest.

If we want housing that working families can afford, we need to stop treating low-density zoning as the default and start allowing housing types that reflect how people actually live.

The Bottom Line

Housing affordability isn’t broken because people want too much, it’s broken because we allow too little. By legalizing housing types like single-stair apartments, North Carolina can take a meaningful step toward easing prices, expanding choice, and building more inclusive, walkable communities.

Let’s take a walk through one of North Carolina’s older neighborhoods… perhaps beneath tall oaks in Raleigh, along breezy streets in Wilmington, or up in the mountain towns near Asheville. You’ll notice something subtle but powerful as you stroll through the streets: the houses seem to belong there. Deep porches offer a moment of invitation and onlooking. Rooflines echo the slope of the land, while creating a visual rhythm down the street. Uniquely decorated homes reflect the character of the people who live there, offering glimpses into their lives. Alleyways aren’t trash collectors, but instead offer semi-private courtyards for neighbors to gather. These places feel settled, as though they grew out of their communities rather than being placed upon them.

This sense of belonging is not accidental. Historic homes across North Carolina were shaped by climate, craft, and daily life. Now, as the state faces housing shortages and rising demand for walkable neighborhoods, many communities are introducing new building types; especially small, single-stair homes such as multiplexes, courtyard buildings, and house-scale apartments. The encouraging reality is that these new homes don’t have to look or feel out of place. When they draw inspiration from the state’s residential vernacular traditions, they can fit comfortably into existing neighborhoods while meeting contemporary needs.

What vernacular architecture means for homebuyers

The term “vernacular architecture” sounds academic, but its meaning is simple. Vernacular houses emerged from local materials, regional climate, and ordinary, functional life. Carpenters and residents built what made sense: structures that stayed cool in summer, shed rain and snow, used the timber at hand, and reflected the rhythm of family and farm life. They were not designed as showpieces, instead they were designed to work and serve the needs of those who lived there.

Vernacular architecture is adaptable, and there was evidence of that along our walk through Raleigh’s historic neighborhoods. We saw additions to many of the homes, with evidence of renovations throughout the decades. As families grow throughout the years, vernacular houses are able to expand and adapt to the new needs of their occupants. Looking towards the future, homes designed with vernacular principles feel more comfortable and offer room for expansion as needed.

For prospective homebuyers, this matters more than you might expect. Homes shaped by vernacular principles often age gracefully, because their forms are based on function and proportion rather than trends. They anchor neighborhood character, which can strengthen long-term resale value. They bring a sense of continuity… you aren’t just purchasing square footage, but joining an ongoing architectural story rooted in the buildings’ site.

Single-stair apartment buildings inherently follow many vernacular principles, such as fitting on small, existing lots and having an abundance of windows for ventilation. When we design single-stair buildings with historic, vernacular architecture as our inspiration, we allow the building to adapt for its residents, evolving and growing to fit the needs of those who live there.

A journey through North Carolina’s historic home types

Across the Piedmont, many early homes followed the I-house or hall-and-parlor floor plan. These houses were simple and practical: two stories tall, usually one room deep, with a central passage and chimneys at the center or ends. Builders used abundant local timber, sheathing exteriors in weatherboards and framing large porches facing south to capture breezes and shade. Even today, when you walk through traditional neighborhoods in cities like Raleigh or Durham, the rhythm of symmetrical façades, elevated entries, and front porches still shapes the experience of the street.

On North Carolina’s coast, architecture tells a different but equally climate-aware story. Houses rise on piers or stilts to protect against flooding and shifting soils. Wide porches wrap around living areas, softening sunlight and giving residents a place to watch storms roll in or feel evening air after heat-filled days. Large windows encourage cross-ventilation, turning wind into a natural cooling system long before air-conditioning was commonplace.

In the mountains, the landscape itself guided design decisions. Log cabins and Appalachian farmhouses grew out of the resources at hand: timber from nearby forests and stone dug from the ground. Roofs pitch steeply here, shedding snow and rain, and homes nestle into slopes in ways that feel anchored and protective. These structures read as sturdy companions to the terrain rather than objects imposed upon it.

Even North Carolina’s towns and small cities generated their own vernacular forms. Shotgun houses appear in mill villages and railroad communities; narrow and efficient, they speak to working-class histories. Craftsman bungalows spread in the early twentieth century, celebrating porches, exposed rafters, and handcrafted details. In these homes, living space extends into the outdoors, blurring the boundary between house, yard, and street life.

Porch spaces that extend living areas outward and encourage interaction with the surrounding neighborhood.

What these homes teach us about comfort and livability

Although these historic houses differ in region and material, they share common ideas that future residents can still feel today. Most were shaped to respond to climate before mechanical systems existed: high ceilings invite warm air to rise, windows on multiple sides pull breezes through rooms, and deep porches provide shade and flexible outdoor living. Roofs are typically simple in form — gable, shed, or hipped — making repair and maintenance straightforward. Entryways are scaled to people, not cars, and homes sit on their sites with care, following the contours of hills or orienting toward light.

These aren’t merely aesthetic choices; they are practical qualities that directly affect everyday life. A well-shaded porch becomes an extra room. Good cross-ventilation lowers energy bills. Thoughtful siting protects privacy and enhances comfort. The enduring popularity of these elements reflects the wisdom embedded in vernacular design.

Historic typologies and single-stair homes naturally fit together

A single-stair building typically contains a small number of homes, stacked two to four stories in height, organized around one shared stair rather than hotel-style corridors. At first, this may sound like an urban or contemporary concept. But in reality, it aligns closely with historic North Carolina house patterns.

Traditional homes were usually narrow, vertically organized, and oriented toward the street or yard. Circulation was focused around a single stair or central passage. Massing was compact and legible; readily understood as “a house,” not a sprawling apartment complex. This means that today’s single-stair multiplexes and small apartment buildings can echo familiar forms without pretending to be historic replicas. A building can borrow the proportions of an I-house or Craftsman bungalow while accommodating multiple households within.

For residents, the result feels intuitive. You enter through a porch or stoop rather than a vast lobby. You share a stair with only a few neighbors, supporting the community without sacrificing privacy. From the street, the building reads as part of the neighborhood fabric, not as an out-of-scale intrusion.

Single stair is vernacular, and it already exists in our neighborhoods

Throughout our walk, we noticed many multi-family homes in what we assumed were exclusively single-family neighborhoods. When duplexes, quads, townhomes, or small apartments are built as one-offs on small lots, they are forced to adapt to the character of a smaller scale neighborhood. In contrast, the rise of large scale developments and subdivision master plans has limited the adaptability of a neighborhood to grow as density requires it. Single-stair buildings offer the opportunity for neighborhoods to grow and adapt as cities become more populated, without requiring such large plots of land for their construction.

For existing residents, density growth through single-stair buildings doesn’t feel as intrusive. The rhythm of the buildings and the character of the neighborhood can be preserved through the use of porches, gardens, pitched rooflines, shuttered windows, and more.

Recognizing the vernacular origins of new construction

When touring new homes or multiplexes, it helps to look beyond finishes and appliances and instead ask how the building participates in its setting. Does the porch feel like a true living space rather than decoration? Do the rooflines and window patterns relate to nearby houses, or do they ignore them entirely? Are brick, wood, or fiber cement materials appropriate to the region, or purely synthetic cladding features that gesture toward style? Does the building respond to climate with shade, cross-ventilation, and orientation, or rely entirely on mechanical systems?

Attention to circulation is equally revealing. In well-designed single-stair buildings, entries and stairs feel residential, rather than industrial. Shared porches or small landings encourage neighborly interaction without forcing it. Light and air reach the stairway, keeping the heart of the building connected to its surroundings instead of sealed off.

Thoughtful, vernacular-inspired, multifamily housing already exists in both of the neighborhoods we walked through in Raleigh. These buildings respond well to the constraints of their sites, while integrating porches, windows, and unique rooflines that blend them in with the surrounding single-family homes. Increasing housing availability in an existing neighborhood doesn’t have to mean bulldozing a street to build a huge apartment complex… it could simply mean allowing for single-stair buildings to gently enhance your favorite, charming places.

Why vernacular matters for homebuyers and communities alike

Choosing homes shaped by vernacular principles has practical benefits. These buildings often prove more energy-efficient because they take advantage of passive cooling and shading, which was essential to comfort at the time of their construction. Their compatibility with surrounding homes supports neighborhood identity, which contributes to long-term property value. And perhaps most importantly, they help expand housing choices without sacrificing the qualities that make older North Carolina neighborhoods so loved.

As municipalities increasingly permit small-scale multiplexes and single-stair buildings, vernacular traditions provide a common language. Change will happen… new families will move in, new buildings will rise, but those changes can feel additive rather than disruptive when guided by the lessons of historic architecture.

The character and longevity of a historic neighborhood creates a strong sense of community among the residents. These residents love where they live, and find great pride in their unique, historic homes. Such neighborhoods often do not have large plots of land available for development, but there are small lots that provide opportunities for new mid-rise multifamily structures. Prospective developers may appreciate this sense of community and belonging, but to preserve it, we must allow for single-stair buildings: the building type that makes medium-scale, character-filled development feasible.

A final thought for prospective buyers

When you look for a home in North Carolina, it’s easy to focus on countertops, bedroom counts, or square footage. Those things matter, but there’s another question that’s just as important: Does this building belong to its place? Does it echo the quiet farmhouse of the Piedmont, acknowledge the winds and waters of the coast, or sit confidently into the folds of mountain land? Does its scale and character feel in conversation with the street around it?

Historic typologies are not just relics of the past; they are design tools for the future. Applied thoughtfully, they will continue to shape new single-stair homes that are comfortable, sustainable, and genuinely rooted in North Carolina’s identity. When you choose a home built with these principles in mind, you are not only finding somewhere to live; you are stepping into a living tradition of how North Carolinians build, adapt, and make a place their own.

Across the United States, cities are grappling with the same challenges: rising housing costs, limited supply, and growing demand for smaller, more attainable homes in walkable neighborhoods. Yet many local building codes silently restrict the kinds of housing that could help, especially the “missing middle” apartments that serve singles, couples, young families, and downsizing seniors. One of the most consequential barriers is the requirement for two exit stairs in low-rise multifamily buildings, a rule that makes small apartment buildings physically larger, more expensive, and often financially infeasible.

Colorado and the city of Denver, however, have emerged as national leaders by legalizing single-stair multifamily buildings. In late 2025, we spoke with architect Sean Jursnick, who played a central role in the advocacy effort that led to this breakthrough. His experience offers important guidance for any city or state hoping to expand housing choices through building-code reform.

How a Design Competition Sparked Policy Change

One of Denver’s most effective tools wasn’t a traditional policy campaign at all, it was a design competition. The contest’s goal was to explore how architecture can solve today’s housing and urban planning challenges, and to produce solutions that could balance density with livability and environmental responsibility. But as Jursnick emphasizes, the competition was never intended to be an isolated exploration of architectural ideas. Rather, it was a way to bring attention to the design concept of housing that can be modular, affordable, beautiful, and well-connected to its neighborhood. It became an advocacy mechanism that pulled policymakers directly into the conversation, sparked by innovation from firms both large and small, located around the world.

From the beginning, the organizers invited city council members to serve as competition jurors. This wasn’t a symbolic gesture: council members engaged deeply with the submissions, asked questions, debated feasibility, and emerged as enthusiastic champions for reform. Seeing international solutions helped elected officials understand that single-stair buildings weren’t speculative or fringe, they were widely tested, successful, and beloved in other cities.

The winning project of the Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge, designed by Rita Alsemaani and Anthony Barakat from Atelié Albert Barakat in Lebanon. (Source: Buildner)

Governor Jared Polis with advocates, designers, and city leaders at the Denver Single-Stair Housing Challenge awards event. (Source: SAR+)

The global nature of the submissions created powerful momentum. Policymakers realized that interest in single-stair housing wasn’t limited to a small group of architects or activists. It reflected a broad professional consensus that U.S. building codes had inadvertently created barriers to housing types that are safe, popular, and commonplace abroad. It also improved local development practices; bringing in international expertise to design this forgotten form of housing was a fantastic opportunity for local designers to enhance their knowledge.

Furthermore, the involvement of high-level leaders amplified that momentum. When Colorado’s governor announced the competition awards, the initiative gained legitimacy that helped frame subsequent code discussions as both serious and necessary.

Bridging the Gap Between Policymakers and Regulators

Once city council members became invested, they used their influence to bring building and fire departments into the conversation. According to Jursnick, this step was essential. Without pressure from council champions, the departments would not have engaged: “They just wouldn’t have come to the table.”

At first, the fire department interpreted the proposal as an attempt to weaken safety standards by removing the second required exit. But the collaborative process that followed helped both sides articulate what they actually wanted: not fewer safety tools, but different ones tailored to smaller, non-corridor buildings. Using Seattle’s code as a baseline, the group developed a series of safety provisions that allowed single-stair configurations without sacrificing life-saving safety performance.

These measures included:

• Clear ladder truck access to each floor

• Restrictions on electrical outlets in stairways to prevent e-bike or scooter charging

• Enhanced sprinkler density within stairwells

• A maximum of four units per floor to maintain occupant load limits

• A maximum travel distance of 20 feet from any apartment door to the stairs

Example of a single-stair apartment layout that includes the safety provisions noted above.

Over time, what began as a defensive regulatory posture evolved into a collaborative design exercise; one that preserved safety while unlocking new housing opportunities.

State and Local Advocacy Align

The Denver initiative built on the momentum of statewide action. Colorado passed legislation that allowed alternative multifamily configurations in non-combustible construction types. This set a regulatory floor that municipalities could work above rather than around. In turn, Denver advocates pushed for additional flexibility at the city level, eventually securing approval for Type 3A construction, which uses standard wood framing and aligned more closely with local development patterns.

Example of Type 3A construction (Source: US Framing).

Notably, public pushback was minimal during the revision process. Because the competition had framed the conversation early, and because council champions were publicly associated with it, much of the community discourse focused on expanding housing options rather than perceived reductions in safety.

Advocacy Strategies That Worked

Reflecting on the Denver experience, Jursnick emphasized several strategies that proved essential to the campaign’s success:

1. Find champions who already have strong city council relationships.

Personal credibility and trust matter. When a respected council ally vouches for an idea, other policymakers take it seriously.

2. Leverage professional organizations.

Groups like AIA’s Housing Committee, ULI, and the Downtown Denver Partnership helped broaden the coalition, demonstrating that the issue was supported across disciplines, from architects and planners, to business and civic groups.

3. Use architectural visualization to make policies tangible.

Architects are uniquely equipped to illustrate what single-stair buildings look like, how they function, and where they fit. Renderings, diagrams, and physical examples help address fear of the unknown.

4. Use design competition materials as advocacy tools.

The “Austin model,” where competition boards were physically brought into city hall, proved powerful: decision-makers could see, touch, and discuss real proposals rather than abstractions.

Implications for North Carolina

North Carolina’s building code is based on the International Building Code with state amendments, which means reform can occur either at the municipal level (similar to Austin) or at the state level (as in Colorado). According to Jursnick, the most important factor will be identifying political conditions where early champions are likely to emerge.

Durham stands out as a promising candidate: it has a track record of adopting innovative housing policies, including missing-middle zoning reforms. From there, reform could expand across the Triangle or even statewide.

Regardless of the path, Denver’s experience offers a clear roadmap: build a coalition early, cultivate council champions, engage fire officials constructively, and use demonstration projects to shift perceptions from risk to opportunity.

Conclusion

Denver’s legalization of single-stair multifamily housing shows what’s possible when architects, policymakers, and community organizations work together toward a shared vision of livable, sustainable, and attainable housing. This success was not the result of a single argument or technical memo, but a multi-layered strategy that combined design, storytelling, political partnership, and technical expertise.

For cities across the country, including those in North Carolina, the lessons are clear: change is possible, but it requires early engagement, creative advocacy, and a willingness to collaborate across professional and political boundaries. With the right champions and the right tools, single-stair housing can become a vital part of the American housing landscape once again.

About Sean Jursnick

Sean Jursnick (Courtesy of Shears Adkins Rockmore)

Sean Jursnick, AIA, is an architect and Associate Principal at Shears Adkins Rockmore (SAR+) in Denver, where he specializes in housing innovation, building code reform, and design advocacy. He has led multiple initiatives focused on expanding housing choices through thoughtful regulatory change, and played a key role in Denver’s groundbreaking effort to legalize single-stair multifamily buildings. Jursnick is recognized nationally for bridging design expertise with policy leadership.

“Civitas is an urban design and landscape architecture firm that shapes cities for the better. We transform urban places into living, breathing ecosystems, seamlessly blending nature with city life. We’re expert listeners and designers, engaging residents to co-create sustainable, city-defining places.”

- Civitas mission statement

Our goal was to understand how the regulatory changes North Carolina must implement for single stair might fit into the bigger picture of urban planning. We wanted to learn as much as we could about how placemaking can be done effectively and sensitively. Throughout our call, Mark reminded us to “always remain empathetic.” People form opinions based on personal experiences, and it can be invalidating to bulldoze over those opinions without taking into account their story. Johnson advised us to, “Never tell people they’re wrong until you understand their reasoning,” highlighting that we can never accurately assume why a law or regulation was written as it is without inquiry. Our conversation with Mark exposed a key truth: Our rules came from real problems. Over time, the problems changed. The rules did not.

Historical Context and Regulatory Challenges

Historically, many housing laws and regulations were created in response to disasters, such as tenement fires in New York City, with the goal of improving safety in high-density housing types. These laws, while forming a very important foundation in our building codes, were written within the technical limitations and context of their time. Modern building materials and fireproofing measures simply didn’t exist when these laws were conceived.

For example, the requirement of two fire exit stairwells in large apartment buildings (aka dual core apartment buildings) was conceptualized following disastrous tenement fires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Tenement House Act of 1901, pushed by housing reform groups, resulted in the positive changes of requiring windows in bedrooms, private bathrooms in each unit, and the addition of fire escapes to both new and existing buildings.

However, these regulations made it difficult for property owners to construct up-to-code apartments on the extremely narrow lots commonplace in New York City. Therefore, owners pushed back in community discussions about housing regulations. One of their solutions to make new developments as financially lucrative as old ones was simply to increase building heights. But this resulted in the residents of top floor units being forced to climb six or seven stories to access their homes each day. The owners were motivated by profit, rather than actually improving the quality of housing for their residents.

The policy reforms of the early 1900s were made out of necessity, when health safety issues were essential to address. At the time, the state of technology limited what those solutions could be. Nowadays, we have improved materials and practices — better solutions for the same problems.

What Are Today’s Problems?

Housing is unaffordable. Our neighborhoods aren’t walkable. Parking lots and highways dominate our daily lives. City blocks have nothing interesting to visit and suburbs only have repeating, carbon-copy houses. Mark started our interview by reminding us that our current housing system — separation of uses, big streets, and dual-stair requirements — did not drop out of the sky. They were responses to real, sometimes horrific, public health and safety failures.

Early tenements were often eight-story walkups with a single stair, but no sprinklers, terrible sanitation, and very few windows, which meant no light or ventilation. These buildings burned and collapsed not because of their single staircase, but because of improper building materials and the lack of ANY other fire safety measures. At the macro level, industrial cities were filthy. Air and water were polluted, infectious disease was rampant, and people crowded together in unsafe buildings.

In response, reformers and engineers built a policy machine:

• zoning that strictly separated uses

• bigger streets and faster traffic to “improve safety”

• dual cores and heavy structures to reduce fire risk

Those ideas were not purely cynical. They were working to fix real problems, and many of these rules greatly improved living conditions for countless residents. But they were also products of their time: coal power, low fuel costs, primitive building systems, weak tenant protections, and no real environmental regulation. Suburban development originated as a public health initiative, known as the “Country Life Movement.” It was a Victorian Era response to dirty, industrial cities, as the neighborhoods featured winding streets and houses situated among lots of greenery. Olmstead’s Riverside subdivision was the first planned suburb, and it was designed for the wealthy to show poorer folks what “proper living” looked like. Over time, the narrative shifted in America, and it became a symbol of success to purchase a single-family, suburban home.

Fast forward to today, and our understanding of public health, fire risk, and emergency response has dramatically improved. We have:

• modern fireproof construction and sprinklers

• different disease burdens, and more tools for monitoring them

• seatbelts, air bags, and traffic-calming designs

• an obesity and loneliness crisis linked to car dependence and isolation

• a housing shortage and an affordability crisis in nearly all cities

Yet, we’re still running on the same operating system. As Mark put it, much of our current code rests on “150 years of policies, theories, attitudes, standards and regulations to avoid problems that are no longer the same.” The problems in our housing systems have evolved, but our solutions have not.

We already have today’s solutions… Lessons from Planned Neighborhoods:

Civitas’ master planned communities have piqued the interest of urban planners everywhere. Highlands Garden Village, built in Denver in the late 1990s, was the first fully-built, market-rate, neo-traditional community in the United States. The neighborhood consists of 27 acres of land, and sits on the site of a former amusement park. Half of the homes have accessory dwelling units (ADUs) over their garages, increasing density within a traditional suburban lot layout. The neighborhood was able to achieve a density of 18 units per net acre, while maintaining the character of single-family homes. This is nearly double that of Raleigh’s highest density all-residential zoning district, R-10 zoning, which allows for a maximum of 10 units per net acre.

Highlands Garden Village was successful in weaving public green spaces throughout the neighborhood layout. This means that while the individual lots may have smaller yards to consolidate density, the overall neighborhood still has prominent green space. The development was constructed in a working class area, where providing a wide variety of housing types was essential. The neighborhood features 51 single-family homes, 63 rental apartments for seniors, 54 townhouses, and 33 cohousing units, along with retail and office spaces to create a diverse, walkable community.

Diversity: the Quiet Indicator of Neighborhood Resilience

Another project that Mark was involved with is the Stapleton (aka Central Park) neighborhood in Denver, CO. Once an old airport, the land was rezoned and transformed into a vibrant, diverse community. Mark highlighted the prominence of highly desirable neighborhoods in Denver, crediting it to the work of urban planners and collaborative developers in the city.

Stapleton Development map. (Source: Denver Infill)

Stapleton is unique among subdivision developments, as it features a wide variety of housing types. Single family homes exist next to townhomes, duplexes, and small apartment buildings, creating a housing market that is appealing to a wide range of income and age demographics. This diversity of resident demographics promotes community engagement and the resilience of the neighborhood, as the rate of resident turnover is much more steady than in other communities.

Rate of resident turnover is an important metric to observe when analyzing the health of communities. It indicates how resilient a community will be to change, as the duration of residents’ occupancy has a much wider variety than that of a neighborhood with homogenous housing types. Rented apartments often see a higher turnover rate of around 40% leaving after just one year of residency, according to the National Apartment Association. In contrast, purchased homes often have a significantly lower turnover rate of 2-5% leaving after just one year, boosting the sense of community in the area. To find a happy medium between these metrics, we could create neighborhoods that are appealing enough for rental residents to stick around longer and foster a greater sense of community, without the financially difficult requisite of homeownership.

So, what does it take to make a healthy, desirable neighborhood? What are the successful aspects of communities like Stapleton that we can learn from?

• Low HOA fees

• Dedicated space for young people

• Retail and restaurant destinations within walking distance

• Comfortable sidewalks and bike paths

• Green space integrated throughout the neighborhood

Stapleton is unique, as the city planners restricted developers’ purchases of lots to no more than 12 consecutive lots and no more than 50 apartments in the neighborhood. This facilitated the mixing of housing types and created a visual distinction between streets, which promoted a diverse community and made for a more interesting neighborhood experience. The variation in density allows for a larger number of people to be within walking distance of nearby restaurants, retail, and offices. And to top it all off, the HOA fees are under $50 per month.

So, What Can North Carolina Learn From This?

In the interview, Mark brought up the Boylan Heights neighborhood here in Raleigh. Anyone in the Triangle familiar with the area may know why this kind of neighborhood feels comfortable:

• you can walk downtown

• you can walk to parks and small businesses

• the lot sizes are modest

• the houses have a wide variety of character

• the neighborhood has many mature trees

The problem is that our current rules in North Carolina don’t facilitate building more neighborhoods like Raleigh’s Boylan Heights or Oakwood, or Durham’s Trinity Park. Our current municipal policies are much better at producing sprawling, suburban developments, or large-scale apartments on six-lane roads. Right now, Raleigh’s zoning maps don’t allow for these higher density neighborhoods, and our building code prohibits small-scale apartment development that would blend well with existing neighborhoods.

Single-stair reform is one specific way to update that antiquated policy machine that formed in New York City all those years ago. It says: if you use modern construction, sprinklers, and good layouts, you should be allowed to build small, efficient mid-rise apartment buildings on regular city lots. This is not a radical assault on safety; it’s an adjustment that matches today’s technology and urban challenges. In a city with so many of these historic neighborhoods close to our downtown area, it is essential that we find ways to increase density without ruining the character that makes these communities special.

How Can We Start the Change?

For planners and elected officials, the key point is this: you are not “breaking the rules” if you legalize single-stair housing. You are doing exactly what your predecessors did, but with better data and better tools. We can rewrite the rules to solve current problems with modern, innovative capabilities. Pilot rezonings, form-based overlays, and small city-led projects on public land can turn this theory into something real. In Denver, success came from micro-scale family home development, which naturally created diversity within neighborhoods.

The goal of single-stair is to provide the flexibility for neighborhoods to grow at a comfortable pace and increase density in appropriate locations to benefit the community. Single-stair development is tied to a pattern of small lots, alleys, and mixed uses, an urban growth pattern that has been used historically in many medium-density cities. In the present era of building technology, we have the means to do so safely. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel; we’re trying to make it both legal and safe to build more of the neighborhoods that already work.

The population is growing in NC

North Carolina’s cities are expanding, yet most of the new housing delivered today remains clustered at two extremes: very low-density subdivisions or large multifamily buildings. Many neighborhoods do not have a clear path to add smaller, mid-scale buildings that would fit comfortably within existing blocks. This missing segment limits infill development, reduces feasible housing sites, and restricts architectural and urban design options.

Other American cities have begun filling this gap by reforming their building codes to allow single-stair multifamily buildings above three stories. While the details differ, the intent is consistent. These policies enable mid-rise buildings on smaller lots while applying clear safety measures, including sprinkler systems, two-hour stair enclosures, strict distance limits from unit doors to exits, and reduced floor areas.

This article compares the technical requirements adopted in these jurisdictions and evaluates how Senate Bill 492 would place North Carolina within this national trend. The objective is to provide a structured view of what works, what varies, and how these lessons can inform a safe and functional approach for the state.

Senate Bill 492: North Carolina’s Single-Stair Building Code Reform

To put it most simply, SB 492 would amend the North Carolina State Building Code to authorize a single stairway to be used as means of egress in certain multifamily residential buildings. The bill proposes to allow for buildings up to 8 total stories and 7 stories above the grade plane to be permitted to have only one exit staircase. This amendment comes with a variety of safety precautions for the several different configurations of these referenced apartment buildings.

Mid-rise buildings, which would be up to 8 stories and no more than 7 stories above grade would have the strictest restrictions: no more than four apartment units per floor, fire ratings of 2-hour fire-resistance for the egress staircase, and a NFPA 13 rated sprinkler system throughout the building. Low-rise buildings, which would be up to 3 stories and no more than 2 stories above grade, would not allow more than six units per floor and would require either a 1-hour fire-resistance construction OR a NFPA 13 sprinkler system. There are also common requirements between the different heights, such as requiring exits to either exit to the outdoors or be pressurized, maximum travel distances from the unit’s door to the building exit, and other egress path requirements designed to keep people safe.

Single-stair buildings provide the opportunity for small lots or infill lots to be used for a mid-sized form of residential development. The International Building Code doesn’t permit their construction due to outdated fire safety concerns, yet single-stair buildings have similar fire safety statistics to other building types. Many states that have legalized single stair buildings have implemented other fire safety regulations, like requiring sprinkler systems in those buildings or implementing a maximum distance from unit doors to fire exits.

There is a sweeping wave of single-stair legislation across the United States, so how can interested municipalities create and design safe legislation based on what has worked in other locations?

What is legal now by North Carolina building Code?

Currently, North Carolina, along with the majority of other U.S. states, follows the International Building Code (IBC) when determining code restrictions for construction of residential dwellings. By that code, here are the key takeaways of what is legal right now in North Carolina with regard to single-stair construction:

This legislation only applies to small residential buildings with a low occupant load, such as condos, townhomes, single-family homes, or apartment buildings. Currently, buildings 4 stories or higher with 4 or more units per floor are not permitted under the IBC without amendments to local code language.

How are States and Cities implementing Single-Stair legislation?

A number of cities and states in the United States have already passed bills to legalize small-scale apartment buildings with a single exit stairway. Many of these bills were passed with additional fire safety requirements, which provide safety to residents in the case of a fire.

Below, we quickly compare what similar single-stair legislation in other American cities allows, and where our proposed Bill 492 fits in. The legislations permitting single-stair buildings in each respective city are linked, for further information.

All of this technical language can be confusing, but here are some key takeaways from this information that we have collected…

1. Single-stair buildings are all sprinklered. Many cities and states who have adopted single-stair buildings require sprinklers throughout their entire homes to improve safety precautions. This is unlike most townhomes and single-family homes, which often do not require sprinklers due to their small scale.

2. Construction materials determine how tall a single-stair building could be. “Construction Type,” which refers to the material makeup of a building structure, determines how flammable the building may be in the case of a fire. Building types that may be more flammable can be restricted to lower floor allowances and building heights to improve safety for the occupants.

3. Single-stair laws increase the required fire rating of fire stair rooms. The walls of an emergency exit stairwell are required to be 1-hour fire rated by IBC. Many single stair legislations require these stairwells to be 2-hour fire rated, to allow for better protection of occupants as they exit the building.

4. Allowed egress distances are shorter in single-stair construction. Most of the single stair legislation passed restricts the distance from unit doors to stairwell doors to 20 feet or less, and overall egress distance to 125 feet or less. This is drastically shorter than in a standard apartment building as allowed by the IBC, which calls for 125 feet or less from the unit door to the stairwell. By reducing the travel distance inside the building, there is less chance for occupants to inhale smoke as they wander through a hallway to the stairwell.

5. Floor area and units per floor are limited in single-stair buildings. Most single-stair laws limit the number of units per floor to four units, reducing the occupant load on the exit staircase and reducing crowding in the event of an emergency.

We often think of adding more stairs to be safer in apartment buildings, yet the requirements are quite unspecific when it comes to large-scale, double-loaded corridor buildings. This leaves the occupant load per staircase to be significantly higher in a large apartment complex than it would ever be in a single-stair apartment. We dove deeper into that analysis in our previous article, here! (insert link)

How could Senate Bill 492 Shape North Carolina’s Cities Today?

When we think of walking down a street in an American city, we’re often greeted by walls of concrete, a private storefront, or a parking garage. These building forms do not support connection and walkability, as they often shove people right next to roads and don’t provide the ability to “wander” through gardens, hidden passageways, or small plazas.

Many European cities have small pedestrian pathways that wind through buildings and courtyards, opening up to gardens, patios, plazas, or cute shops. This “wandering” action promotes walkability and connection through place-making, which refers to the process of designing public spaces to give them more meaning and function. It gives people a sense of wonder and discovery throughout their walk, while providing moments of pause throughout the journey to rest or explore.

By opening up the fabric of our cities, we can create these moments in neighborhoods that already exist. It is a common American ideal that we all should have private yards, separated off from our neighbors with privacy fences or hedges. Public spaces are often seen as dirty and unkept, yet this is simply a reflection on how we see those spaces. In other cultures, it is common for public spaces to be kept very clean because all people in that community have a sense of ownership and belonging in that space.

Single-stair buildings provide an opportunity to create some of these semi-public garden or plaza spaces. The arrangement of the buildings allows for a shared “backyard” space, where all residents of the building can share a peaceful outdoor space. The connected sidewalks allow neighbors to access the space, similarly to a neighborhood park, yet all residents are in much closer proximity to the space.

By creating urban spaces that people in our communities are proud of and appreciate, we can unlock these places of wonder and discovery in our own neighborhoods!

What’s Working Today?

A number of cities have seen a tremendous amount of success with allowing single-stair apartment buildings in their building code. Here we will discuss the key benefits experienced in a few of those cities:

Denver

Use of an OEE (Occupant Evacuation Elevator) provides additional means of egress, while maintaining the effectiveness of single stair buildings. An elevator needs to be included in the building per ADA code (Americans with Disabilities Act), and one prototype building has found a way to make better use of that valuable space.

NYC

New York City’s unusually high story limits for single-stair buildings allow developers to meet market-rate demand while preserving open space and traditional urban fabric. Source: PageThink

So, where does this leave us?

Single-stair reforms across the country demonstrate that mid-scale multifamily housing can be legalized while preserving clear life-safety standards. Although each jurisdiction uses different thresholds for height, floor area, and construction type, the most common elements are consistent. Buildings are fully sprinklered. Egress paths are short. Stair enclosures receive higher fire-ratings. Unit counts per floor are capped. Together, these rules form a predictable and enforceable framework.

North Carolina’s proposed Senate Bill 492 follows this general structure, but its story height limits and construction-type allowances place it among the more ambitious reforms. As cities in the state evaluate the bill, the experiences of places like Seattle, New York City, Denver, Nashville, and Baltimore offer useful guidance. Their policies show what has worked, what has required adjustment, and how regulators have balanced safety with the need for new housing forms.

As advocates for our local municipality, we support the push to make single-stair housing legal, safe, accessible, and affordable to all cities in the United States (and Canada!). In order to achieve that goal, it starts with us, but it takes smart, sustainable, and thoughtful design. We can create the cities here that we take our families to visit on vacation: a walkable, comfortable neighborhood, with destinations and moments of wonder all throughout the journey.

Baltimore votes for increase housing density, availability and affordability

Baltimore narrowly passed a housing package that introduces major reforms for building family friendly housing in the city:

• 25-0062 — Building Code: Single Exit from Residential Occupancy.
  Lets certain residential buildings (up to ~6 stories) use one protected, sprinklered stair when specific life-safety conditions are met, unlocking small-lot, mid-rise infill.

• 25-0064 — Zoning: Bulk and Yard Requirements (Amendments).
  Updates setbacks/lot-coverage and related standards in residential districts—aimed at making typical Baltimore rowhouse and small-infill projects actually fit the rules.

• 25-0065 — Zoning: Eliminating Off-Street Parking Requirements.
  Repeals parking minimums and sets some maximums, reducing project costs and letting parking be right-sized by context.

• 25-0063 — Zoning Administrator: Transfer to Department of Planning.
  Moves zoning administration from Housing & Community Development to Planning to align code writing and enforcement, streamlining reviews.

Why it passed

The coalition argument was simple: let modern safety systems (sprinklers, protected/pressurized stair) govern the core; stop forcing two stairs that blow up small-lot feasibility; and remove parking mandates that add cost without guaranteeing availability. NFPA’s recent symposium and reports gave officials a credible safety frame for single-exit in mid-rise contexts.

What it means for Baltimore

Expect more 12–24 unit, light-filled infill on the city’s many odd-shaped or narrow parcels—homes with real windows and cross-ventilation instead of deep, double-loaded corridors. Pairing the code change with zoning tune-ups in 25-0066 should help those projects actually fit and pencil. Baltimore’s mayor aims to help the city become more resilient and better for families. His perspective on the changes:

“It will allow everybody to find a home in Baltimore that meets their needs. Families looking for more space, empty nesters and retirees looking to downsize, young people looking for their first place on their own or with their friends.”

- Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott

What the South can learn from Baltimore

• Fix the form bottleneck. Create a clear, safety-first single-exit path in code; publish a simple reviewer checklist.

• Unbundle parking. End minimums citywide—let projects right-size parking by context and manage the curb instead.

• Tune zoning for small lots. Follow Baltimore’s lead with low-density multifamily updates so gentle density actually fits typical Southern parcels.

Bottom line

Baltimore is showing real leadership by introducing single-stair with modern safety and clear rules, inviting growth on small lots, lowering costs, and delivering family-friendly homes with light and air. Southern cities, especially in North Carolina, can follow this practical path to solve real housing problems while strengthening neighborhoods.

This piece was written by the CITYBUILDER/Cappellacci Single Stair Student Fellows, in collaboration with CITYBUILDER and Single Stair NC. Each semester, CITYBUILDER provides fellowship opportunities for aspiring student urbanists in the Triangle. Single Stair NC is a new publication committed to advancing the pursuit of single-stair buildings in North Carolina.

If you’ve ever walked into an apartment that felt dark and gloomy, even on a sunny day, you’ve already experienced how deeply natural light affects our mood and well-being. Daylight doesn’t just make a space look good; it changes how we feel in it. The soft glow of morning light, the golden wash of afternoon sun; these are things that make a home feel alive. Yet, as more people move into cities and new housing options like condos and mid-rise apartments become the norm, one crucial question often gets overlooked: are we still getting enough sunlight in our homes?

It turns out, not all housing types are created equal when it comes to daylight. Between townhomes, condos, and single-stair apartment buildings, some designs naturally support better lighting and air quality than others. As cities across the U.S. face growing housing demands, understanding which housing types best bring in natural light isn’t just an architectural curiosity, it’s a matter of everyday comfort and health.

Why Daylight Matters

We all know plants need sunlight to grow, but so do we. Sunlight helps regulate our circadian rhythms, supports Vitamin D production, boosts mood, and strengthens our immune systems. Natural light helps reduce eye strain and can even cut down on electricity bills by reducing the need for artificial lighting during the day.

So, what exactly makes good daylighting?

In design terms, good daylighting means sunlight that fills a space evenly without glare, penetrates deeply into rooms, and provides visual comfort throughout the day. Corner windows, for example, offer some of the best daylighting because sunlight can enter from multiple angles as it moves across the sky. For everyday life, that translates to something simple: walking into your living room at noon and not needing to flip a switch. Standing at the kitchen sink with a view of the trees outside. Feeling warmth and connection to the outdoors even while inside. These are subtle but powerful qualities that shape how “livable” a home feels.

Why do so many apartments feel dark and stuffy?

If you’ve ever rented a studio apartment or lived in a condo where your kitchen sits in the center of the unit (far from any windows) you’ve probably noticed how quickly you start to crave natural light. Unfortunately, with our current building code, this is very difficult to avoid when designing a spatially-efficient, high density apartment complex.

Building codes require every bedroom to have a window, which means bedrooms typically occupy the limited wall space that faces the outdoors. Living rooms, kitchens, and other common areas often get pushed toward the interior of the unit, away from sunlight, because they are not required to have an exterior window by code.

This design approach, though efficient on paper, can make daily life feel dim and disconnected. Artificial lighting fills the gap, but it can’t replicate the warmth and energy of natural light.

So, how do we design housing that brings sunlight deeper into our homes? Let’s look at how daylighting compares across three common housing types in growing neighborhoods: condos, townhomes, and single-stair apartment buildings.

Daylighting in Different Housing Types

Condos: Density Over Daylight

Condos often aim to balance density and comfort, but when it comes to daylight, they usually fall short. Many condos are designed with shared exterior corridors or staircases for access. These hallways, though convenient, block sunlight from reaching the rooms that border them.

Because only two of the four exterior walls typically face outdoors, condos tend to have limited opportunities for natural light. Bedrooms might get some morning or afternoon sun, but living spaces often rely on artificial light most of the day. The coveted unit type in a condo building is often the “corner units”, which would have two perpendicular walls with windows, allowing daylighting to shine in throughout longer hours of the day. Unfortunately, there are only so many corners in a building, and a large percentage of the units would still have only one wall with windows.

That said, newer condo developments sometimes compensate with large windows or angled façades, but these features often come at a premium cost.

Townhomes: A Brighter Middle Ground

Townhomes provide a more balanced relationship with daylight. Each unit usually has its own front and back exterior walls, meaning residents can have windows on at least two sides. This allows for cross-lighting (and cross-ventilation), which improves both comfort and air quality.

End units in townhome rows are especially desirable. They often get three exterior walls, which means more corner windows and sunlight throughout the day. It’s no surprise that these homes sell or rent the fastest.

However, not every townhome can be an end unit. To make the most of valuable land in cities, most developments have multiple middle units that only get light from the front and back. While still better than most condos, middle townhomes can feel dimmer in larger floor plans or on narrow lots.

Single-Stair Apartment Buildings: The Best of Both Worlds

Enter the single-stair apartment, a housing type that’s gaining attention for how efficiently it balances density, light, and livability.

Instead of long double-loaded corridors (a hallway down the center with apartments on both sides), single-stair buildings use a single staircase to serve just one to four units per floor. Because there are fewer units packed around shared hallways, each one can have two to three exterior-facing walls.

Seattle, Washington has pioneered a strong argument for single-stair housing, and has recently legalized buildings up to 6 stories to have one means of egress, with other safety precautions. Many of the buildings on infill lots designed under this new law have beautiful daylighting and a large amount of windows throughout the building. Sola16, a single-stair apartment building on the lot of a single-family home. The building consists of eight two-bedroom apartments, each sized for a family to be comfortable. Even on a cloudy day, this living room is still very illuminated.

The higher “perimeter-to-area ratio” of single-stair buildings, as explained in our previous article, is what gives single-stair apartments their superpower: abundant natural light. Bedrooms, kitchens, and living rooms of all units can all have windows, something that’s nearly impossible in typical corridor-style apartments.

The result? Homes that feel open, airy, and bright all day long. Families can have enough bedrooms without sacrificing the daylight in their living spaces.

A Hidden Bonus: Better Ventilation

Sunlight isn’t the only thing that improves with more exterior walls, airflow does too. Natural ventilation can make a home feel cooler, fresher, and more connected to the outdoors. It’s especially useful on warm but not scorching days, when opening a few windows can replace the need for air conditioning altogether.

Homes that allow for cross-ventilation (air entering from one side and exiting through another) tend to stay comfortable longer and recover faster after heatwaves or power outages. This ventilation also reduces the feeling of “stuffiness” and can improve the quality of indoor air, which has health benefits as well for those with respiratory ailments.

Single-stair buildings, with their multiple exposures, are naturally designed for this. Condos and corridor apartments, by contrast, often have windows only on one side, creating stagnant indoor air and forcing reliance on mechanical ventilation.

Beyond comfort, this also has resilience benefits. When temperatures rise and energy grids strain under summer demand, buildings that stay cool naturally are safer and more sustainable for their residents.

Orientation: Why Direction Matters

You don’t need to be an architect to understand how much building orientation matters. Whether your windows face north, south, east, or west can drastically change how much sunlight you receive, and when.

• South-facing windows get the most consistent light throughout the day.

• East-facing windows capture gentle morning light; perfect for bedrooms.

• West-facing windows bring dramatic sunsets but can cause overheating in summer.

• North-facing windows provide soft, indirect light; ideal for studios or offices.

Single-stair apartments are inherently more flexible when it comes to orientation. Because they’re smaller and don’t rely on long hallways, they can be arranged on a site to take advantage of the best sun angles and prevailing breezes. Larger double-corridor apartment buildings, by contrast, are often locked into a single orientation dictated by their footprint, sacrificing sunlight for efficiency.

How Architects Bring More Light In

Good daylighting isn’t always obvious when you’re apartment hunting, but architects think about it constantly. From the angle of the building to the width of the window frames, dozens of design decisions influence how light moves through a space.

Here are a few strategies designers use to improve daylighting across different housing types:

• Setbacks and angled façades in condos allow more windows to face the sun.

• Courtyard layouts in townhome communities bring light into interior spaces.

• Skylights and light wells draw sunlight deep into central rooms.

• Single-stair layouts, when allowed by building code, ensure every unit has multiple exposures and natural ventilation.

Each of these strategies reflects a growing recognition that light isn’t just an aesthetic feature, it’s a quality-of-life necessity.

Light as a Livability Standard

The quality of daylight is one of those things that homebuyers rarely think about until after they’ve moved in. It’s easy to focus on square footage, finishes, or rent price, but a poorly lit home can quietly wear on your well-being.

As architects and developers push for smarter, more sustainable housing solutions, daylighting is becoming a core part of the conversation. Single-stair housing offers one of the most effective and equitable ways to bring natural light and air into every home, without sacrificing density or affordability.

Good daylighting shouldn’t be a luxury reserved for single-family homes. It’s a livability standard that should be accessible to everyone, from young professionals renting their first apartment to families looking for a long-term home. Single-stair apartments offer the opportunity to make daylighting more accessible and affordable to more prospective residents, so why not make it possible for our future homes to be a little brighter?

If you’re shopping for a new place to live, take a moment to stand by the window. Notice how the light moves across the room. Ask yourself: does this home let the sun in?

This piece was written by the CITYBUILDER/Cappellacci Single Stair Student Fellows, in collaboration with CITYBUILDER and Single Stair NC. Each semester, CITYBUILDER provides fellowship opportunities for aspiring student urbanists in the Triangle. Single Stair NC is a new publication committed to advancing the pursuit of single-stair buildings in North Carolina.

For generations, the “normal” American dream has meant a house, a yard, a driveway, and a car—or maybe two. Families have grown accustomed to the idea that raising children requires a detached home in the suburbs, far from downtown’s bustle. Each family has their own yard, yet we need to drive to reach somewhere engaging to walk around. Whether that’s a downtown street in Cary or Apex or a greenway trail around a lake, the vast majority of us need to drive to these nice areas. This definition of normal has come at a cost: long commutes, fewer hours in the day, and communities spread too thin to walk anywhere worth going.

Redefining “normal” means rethinking what family life can look like when we build homes at a human scale. It means designing neighborhoods that prioritize walkability, social connection, and shared spaces. What if more people could live within walking distance to a cute downtown, with fun shops and restaurants to hang out in? What if neighborhoods could be centered around community green spaces? What if your drive to drop your kids off at school could be a walk, where you also give your dogs their morning stroll? One simple building type, the single-stair apartment, could be the key to this vision.

As housing challenges deepen and families search for more sustainable, livable solutions, it’s time to ask a different question: What would it take for a family to be comfortable in an apartment? Could the kinds of homes we build actually give families more freedom, more time, and more community, not less? We think that building small-scale apartments with a single staircase can help families have the space they need and take back their time.

The Time Cost of Distance

Commuting by car to work every day is “normal” to the majority of people in North Carolina. In fact, nearly 96.8% of North Carolinians rely on a car to get to work. The average commute time is 25 minutes each way, not counting school drop-offs, daycare runs, sports practice or errands. That’s roughly an hour a day—five hours a week—just spent getting from one place to another.

Time, for families, is a precious commodity. Every extra minute in traffic is a minute not spent at home spending time with loved ones, catching up with friends, or being out in the neighborhood. But the way our housing is built continues to push people farther out. Large, single-family subdivisions stretch ever deeper into the outskirts of cities like Raleigh and Charlotte, consuming land and locking residents into longer commutes.

The result is a tradeoff that feels inevitable: space for distance, affordability for time. Yet the truth is, it doesn’t have to be this way. We can design family-oriented housing that reduces the need for a car and creates opportunity for more affordable housing, all while bringing daily life closer together.

Let’s Take a Walk: a “Normal” Neighborhood for Americans

When we talk about “walkability,” it’s easy to imagine sidewalks and crosswalks. But true walkability is not about infrastructure—it’s about experience. People choose to walk when the journey feels safe, pleasant, and interesting.

Think about a memorable walk in a city or town you’ve been to. Chances are, you remember what you passed along the way: shop windows, porches, trees, street corners buzzing with people. These small, sensory details make walking enjoyable. Conversely, walking through a parking lot or beside a four-lane road feels monotonous and unsafe.

Currently, our cities are built around the logic of roads and sidewalks follow alongside where cars go. But what would happen if we flipped that logic? What if our street networks were guided first by the paths people naturally want to take, and cars were secondary?

That’s what walkable design seeks to do: to build places where people, not vehicles, set the scale of movement. And that shift has the potential to reshape how families live, move, and connect.

Living at a Human Scale

“Human scale” is a phrase urban designers use often. A human-scaled neighborhood is one you can understand and enjoy at walking speed. It’s made up of shorter blocks, narrow streets, ground-floor windows, and front doors that open right to the sidewalk. It feels alive, and promotes people interacting with each other.

By contrast, a car-scaled environment is oversized: wide lanes, deep setbacks, and vast parking lots. These spaces might work for traffic flow, but they make walking uncomfortable and even dangerous in some areas. As we are all forced into our cars to travel anywhere outside of our houses?

One of the most powerful ways to return to human scale is to rethink parking. Imagine a large asphalt parking lot, which would be empty for most of the day. If that land were used instead for homes, small shops, or green courtyards, it could house dozens of families and create public spaces worth walking through. A parking deck could still serve the same number of cars, but the surface area around it would become an attraction in the neighborhood.

When people can walk to a corner store or café, retail thrives, foot traffic grows, and there’s less need for widespread surface-level parking. A simple reallocation of space, just replacing asphalt with activity, can fundamentally shift how people experience their neighborhood.

Visualizing this change helps: picture a downtown Raleigh street in two frames. One shows the existing car-dominated layout; the other, a tree-lined pedestrian route with housing, stoops, and storefronts. The distance stays the same, but the experience transforms.

Single-Stair: The Perfect Apartment for Families

Enter the single-stair apartment: a modest but game-changing idea in housing design.

In most large apartment buildings, long hallways connect dozens of units, all served by two or more enclosed stairways. These corridors take up valuable space that could otherwise be used for living areas, balconies, or courtyards. A single-stair design removes that excess, connecting just two apartments per floor to one light-filled stairway.

The result is smaller buildings, typically three to five stories, that fit comfortably on a neighborhood block. They feel more like townhomes than towers. Each home gets more light, ventilation, and privacy. And because these buildings are compact, more of them can fit on the same parcel of land, increasing housing supply without overwhelming existing neighborhoods.

Single-stair housing naturally supports walkability. With more doors opening directly to the street, neighborhoods gain rhythm and variety. Instead of one massive apartment complex set behind a parking lot, you get multiple entrances, stoops, and shopfronts lining a block. These are the kinds of details that make walking interesting, and make streets feel safe.

A rendering of a single-stair community might show what’s possible: clusters of mid-rise homes around shared courtyards, with trees, gardens, and a café or daycare on the ground floor. It’s a modern reinterpretation of what neighborhoods once were: dense, mixed, and human-centered.

“Hey kiddo, time to walk to school!”

Despite the demand for family housing, most urban construction in North Carolina focuses on smaller units: studios, one-bedrooms, and two-bedrooms. Meanwhile, 64.5% of households in the state are families, and 65.3% of all homes are single-family, detached structures. That means the majority of families have little choice but to live far from city centers, where larger homes are available.

As the demand for homes in proximity to those city centers increases, the cost of homes everywhere continues to increase, and the affordable homes get pushed farther and farther away.

If we want families to return to urban areas, we need to offer the right types of housing: homes with three or four bedrooms, access to outdoor play areas, and safe streets for kids.

Single-stair buildings are especially well suited to this. With only a handful of apartments per stair, they can be designed for families:

• Shared courtyards become play areas where children can interact safely.

• Ground floors can host small shops, daycares, or cafés that make daily life more convenient.

• Front doors that open to the street build connection among neighbors, the same way front porches once did.

When families can live in walkable, mixed-use areas, the benefits multiply. Parents can walk to work or errands; kids can walk to school or parks. The entire rhythm of daily life changes. By avoiding car travel, we can reclaim time for socializing and commuting time is spent exercising rather than sitting. Diversifying housing types doesn’t just change who can live in a neighborhood, it changes how the neighborhood functions. When less land is needed for parking, more people can be within walking distance to their work and school.

Take a look at this school: a prime example of how much valuable land is wasted on space for carpools. Currently, school zoning requires there to be space for the majority of the cars that would be picking up children at dismissal to be on the site of the school. This land could be used for new classrooms, an upgraded playground, or outdoor gardens to eat lunch, if only the cars didn’t need to be there. These updated amenities could be possible if we planned the surrounding neighborhoods better, putting more families within walking distance to school.

When we build only one kind of housing (like single-family homes or luxury towers), we also limit who can afford to live there. But when we mix townhomes, single-stair apartments, and small mixed-use buildings, we attract a broader demographic: students, seniors, families, and professionals. This mix of ages and incomes strengthens communities and makes local businesses more resilient. The space to incorporate these diverse, medium-scale building types already exists within our cityscapes; it’s just a matter of allowing these building types within our building code to make it possible.

Economically, increasing the supply of homes in desirable areas also lowers the cost per unit. That’s one of the simplest, most powerful tools for addressing affordability. Rather than pushing families to the fringe, moderate-density housing can bring them back into walkable neighborhoods without sacrificing livability.

What Could Be Possible?

So, what would a neighborhood look like if we allowed more single-stair buildings by code?

Imagine a large suburban parking lot: flat asphalt, ringed by retail stores. Now rework it: consolidate the parking into a deck and fill the freed land with a mix of apartments, cafés, and green courtyards. Sidewalks wind between shaded seating areas, a daycare opens onto a play lawn, and small shops face the street.

Architect Robert Orr, FAIA, calls this approach “creating small blocks where none existed.” It’s about stitching together neighborhoods at a finer scale, not replacing them. These buildings can coexist comfortably with older homes and streetscapes, offering more housing without overwhelming the character that residents value.

Single-stair communities are different. They don’t look or feel like high-rises. They don’t cast long shadows or bring massive parking structures. Instead, they allow more people to fit into the neighborhoods we already know and love. A family-owned coffee shop could move into your street corner, or a community garden could be in your neighbor’s backyard. By altering our mindset of starkly separating residential and commercial areas, we can make a neighborhood that benefits all of us.

The same land now supports dozens of families, a thriving retail environment, and a walkable network of public spaces, all without adding new roads or traffic. With careful design, this vision could fit seamlessly into many North Carolina communities. We believe it isn’t too late to transform a car-oriented corridor into a vibrant, human-scaled environment.

Redefining Normal

To redefine “normal” is not to abandon tradition it’s to reimagine it for today’s realities. Families still want comfort, safety, and belonging. But they also want time —time to walk their kids to school, to know their neighbors, to spend less of life behind a windshield.

The path to that future runs through walkability, mixed-use design, and innovative housing like the single-stair apartment. Single stair building can allow us to experience a different form of “normal”; one that prioritizes community interaction and neighborhood integration. If we start to see “normal” not as detached isolation but as a connected community, we can build a world where homes, shops, and parks are all within walking distance: A world scaled to people, not cars.

And perhaps, someday soon, single-stair housing can provide a new experience of “normal” of family life.

In cities and towns across the US there is an increasing amount of multi-family buildings being built and not everyone is happy about them. According to the Institute for Family Studies, in 2024, over one-third of new housing units were in buildings with 20 or more units; the first time since 1974 that such a high share has been reached. Oftentimes communities are quick to push back on new multi-family buildings: the density is too high, there’s too much traffic or their size blocks out the sunlight. But what if there was a way to let more people live in popular areas without the downsides of big apartment blocks and towers?

When most people think about multi-family buildings the super tall towers of Miami or New York might come to mind or maybe the famous “Texas donut” buildings that seem to be popping up everywhere. These buildings can impact the character of a neighborhood and often get pushback from local residents. But what if we could make multi-family buildings smaller? Increasing the supply of housing while preserving the urban fabric we already have.

Single stair apartment buildings provide the opportunity to increase housing density while preserving the urban fabric that we already have. This method of construction allows smaller buildings to be built on smaller lots, while maximizing the usable square feet within the building.

Single-stair buildings can be a comfortable middle ground for increasing housing availability and density in neighborhoods. Vacant lots in a suburban neighborhood could be taken by a single stair apartment building, providing more housing per acre without dramatically disrupting the character of the neighborhood. LGA Architectural Partners explored some prototypes of single-stair buildings, which provides options for family-friendly homes that can be constructed in higher-density areas.

The long corridors seen in large-scale apartment buildings are not only a pain to carry your groceries through, they also waste valuable resources in the construction process. Hallways are often conditioned interior spaces that are used only for movement to and from one’s apartment unit. Considering how infrequently they are used, it doesn’t make sense for them to be in apartment buildings when rentable square footage is such a hot commodity these days.

Optimizing Interior Space: Getting more bedrooms for your dollar

The cost of building new construction is spread across all parts of a building, meaning that each buyer or tenant is essentially paying for spaces like hallways, vestibules and corridors. What if those hallways in a large-scale apartment building could be a part of residents’ apartments?

By dividing up the building across multiple lots, and each building utilizing one staircase and elevator, the long hallways in apartment complexes could be turned into rentable bedrooms. Additionally, the bedrooms and living spaces that are created would have a better quality of living, as they would have more direct sunlight due to the additional wall surface area of the building itself.

An important design metric to consider in the planning of apartment buildings is the “core-to-perimeter ratio”. This metric analyzes a building’s spatial efficiency by comparing the perimeter (or wall surface area) of a building with how much space is taken up by utility and circulation space. In a typical apartment complex, this core-to-perimeter ratio would have a large amount of core area compared to the perimeter wall length, due to the sprawling interior corridors in the building. A single-stair building would have only a couple flats arranged around a small utility core, giving it a smaller amount of core area compared to its perimeter walls. The increased wall length that each unit gains creates flexibility for window locations, providing natural daylight and cross ventilation. Stay tuned to hear more about the details of daylighting and cross ventilation in future articles!

Another useful metric to consider is the net-to-gross floor area ratio. Gross floor area is the total floor area inside a building’s exterior walls, while the net floor area is the usable, occupiable space within a building. In a multi-family residential construction, primary net floor area is the occupiable space in a building, not including common areas such as corridors and stairways, mechanical areas, and any building structure that takes up interior space. Rentable

Single stair buildings strike a nice balance of sharing utility systems and circulation space, while providing housing on small lots that fit in well with single family homes. By reducing the net to gross floor area ratio through elimination of excessive corridors, rent prices can be optimized for tenants to make the most of the space they are paying for. In practice, a developer designing a 4- to 6-story apartment on a narrow urban lot might find that requiring two stairways makes the project infeasible. The requirement of a second stair might force designers to use inefficient corridors or require land aggregation (combining multiple lots), driving the scale of the project so large that it doesn’t fit into its neighborhood. By contrast, with a single stair, the developer can build few enough units to make the math work on a smaller parcel. As a result, rent or sale costs can be lower compared to the usable space in each unit.

Another sub-benefit: illuminating, conditioning, and maintaining long, underutilized hallways is wasteful. Hallways are typically dark, unoccupied, and need climate control or ventilation. Reducing corridor length and size means less wasted electricity or HVAC load, and therefore lower utility bills for residents. Also, having more units with natural light and multiple exposures reduces the need for artificial lighting and heating within individual apartments.

By reducing the lot size of the apartment complexes to have multiple small, single-stair buildings, we can create more corners and walls exposed to open air. Current residential building codes require every room designated as a “bedroom” to have a window in it, primarily for safety purposes. By increasing the perimeter of a building and exposing more walls to open air, more rooms can have access to windows in each individual apartment unit.

Oftentimes the long corridor found in typical apartment complexes divides the building into two, either with an inner ring and an outer ring or two adjacent sides facing opposite each other. In both of these cases, only one wall is facing out to have windows on it, which would have to have the bedrooms of the unit. This arrangement reduces the quality of kitchen and living room spaces due to the reduced natural light. By eliminating the need of a corridor that divides the building, units could span across several exterior walls of a single-stair building, providing more comfortable living spaces in the unit.

Furthermore, by reducing the space taken up by corridors, the square footage that you gain could be used to create additional bedrooms in each unit.

Optimizing Exterior Space: Greenery throughout our Cities

One frequent objection to more housing is that it will overwhelm the look and feel of a neighborhood. Single-stair buildings allow “gentle density”: they can be built at a scale compatible with existing blocks (two to four units per floor, four to six stories tall) without requiring vast “superblock” developments. Jenn Truman from CITYBUILDER explored the common occurrence for neighborhoods of single-family homes to protest apartment developments, with the argument rebranded each time to be about preserving ecology, protecting wildlife, or shadows cast on houses. At the end of the day, the argument is about exclusivity, as people assume “increasing density” comes with the negative effects of traffic, noise, and crowding. By protesting apartment development, suburban families think they are preserving their community when in reality, they are blocking new neighbors from moving in that could improve and grow that community.

Community parks are an urban feature that best serve people in residences without yards of their own. Single family homes often have their own small backyards, which can give very limited flexibility in how landscapes are designed. Neighborhood parks are common, but can feel like a waste of space in an urban environment where every inch of land is of high value. Neighborhood parks offer the opportunity for winding greenways, quiet groves, and large fields, which can be shared by the community. By not delegating land to backyards and instead prioritizing shared green spaces, outdoor space can be optimized in a similar way to how circulation space is optimized in single-stair buildings.

This makes single-stairs suited to missing middle housing (duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, small stacked flats); forms that act as a bridge between detached houses and large apartment towers. These small-scale multifamily buildings can increase housing supply without drastically altering neighborhood texture. Oftentimes the introduction of a large-scale apartment complex comes with the need for extensive parking directly adjacent to the building, which can make it difficult to incorporate green space near the building.

Feasibility of Single Stair through Small-Scale Development

Because single-stair designs reduce complexity, materials, and wasted area, the up-front capital cost per unit tends to be lower. That means smaller-scale or local developers (not just large, privately owned, commercial developers) may find small multifamily projects viable. This distributes opportunity more broadly, reduces reliance on “big developers,” and could accelerate incremental infill development. When building large complexes is the only economically viable approach, many small lots remain unused or underutilized.

If one old house in a neighborhood was available to be sold, a developer could turn only that lot into several apartment units rather than needing to buy out the whole neighborhood. Permitting single-stair buildings potentially lowers the threshold so that small-to-medium infill becomes more attractive, and reduces the need for large plots of land for subdivisions that are a far commute away from our urban centers. By allowing single-stair apartment construction, we can create opportunities for average people to become developers and have more of a say in how our cities are shaped.

All in all, single stair housing provides a means of creating low-cost rent in areas that desperately need it, while preserving the character and feel of our favorite neighborhoods. Providing the legal flexibility to construct smaller apartment buildings allows for neighborhoods of all types to be benefited. Density increasing doesn’t have to be scary, and we can do so in a way that creates the neighborhoods that we want for our futures.

Introduction: A Housing Problem That Hits Close to Home

Across North Carolina, from Raleigh and Charlotte to Asheville and Wilmington, people are feeling the squeeze. Housing costs are climbing, traffic congestion is worsening, and more green spaces are taken over by suburban sprawl every year. The state’s population is booming, and our housing supply isn’t keeping up. According to Michael Cline, a Demographer writing for the NC Office of State Budget and Management, North Carolina is set to become the 7th most populated US state by the year 2030. In order for people of all demographics to be able to afford quality, family-oriented housing, we need to rethink how a growing American city could be structured.

Here in the beloved City of Oaks, we have beautiful greenery throughout our city and new retail coming to our downtown areas. Unfortunately though, in order to get to those lovely spaces from our suburban homes, we’re forced to drive our cars or risk walking along dangerous roads with no sidewalks.

Our question is this: how could housing options in our city be reimagined to allow us to be walking distance from our favorite attractions and essential urban amenities?

What Is Gentle Density?

Urban development in major cities of the United States has evolved to be “monolithic”. This refers to the existence of a high-density urban core, with sprawling, low-density suburbs surrounding the core. This method of urban development prioritizes profits off of land use and car-based infrastructure. Unfortunately, the experience of a space like this doesn’t feel comfortable at the human scale. The buildings are too tall and roads are too wide for us to comfortably navigate. Mark Johnson of CIVITAS focused his research on landscape planning in urban environments. He states that urban development has been designed around the 20th century ideal of separation of spatial uses, which doesn’t support us experiencing the world at a human scale. Currently, 56% of people are living in an urban environment and that number is projected to increase to 70% by the year 2030.

The introduction of gentle density could create “pocket neighborhoods,” a space with medium-rise buildings and essential amenities within walking distance. There’s an architectural idea gaining traction in cities across the U.S. that is already widely used abroad: single stair buildings. At first glance, this might sound like a technical detail tucked away in building codes. But in reality, it’s a design shift that could shape how our neighborhoods grow, how much homes cost, and how families experience daily life.

What Is a Single Stair Building?

Most of us are familiar with privately-funded, large-scale apartment buildings that have long, double-loaded hallways: a corridor in the middle with apartments on both sides, stretching on for what feels like forever. These buildings usually require at least two staircases for fire safety, one at each end of the long hallway.

A single-stair building is different. It’s a smaller, more compact apartment building (typically six stories or fewer and on a lot as small as 2,500 sqft (25ft x 100 ft)) that has just one central stairwell serving all the apartments. Think of it as a mid-rise building designed for a neighborhood block, not a skyscraper. Due to the low number of apartment units on each floor from the small footprint of the building, only one exit stairway is needed. Each floor’s apartment units open up within just a few feet of the staircase, reducing the travel time from each unit’s door to the outside of the building when exiting the building.

This approach allows architects to create more efficient floor plans. Apartments can have windows on multiple sides, meaning more natural light and better airflow. Courtyards, playgrounds, and small gardens can be tucked into the site instead of being crowded out by extra stair towers and long hallways. Instead of feeling like a giant dormitory, these buildings can feel more like a cluster of homes.

Single stair construction is common in Europe and in U.S. cities like Seattle and New York, where code changes have allowed them. The New York City walk-up is a common type of single-stair housing, traditionally made on those small 2,500 sqft lots, which allows a higher density of housing units to be built on a lot that was historically just one home. However, in North Carolina—and much of the South—our building codes still forbid this method of land use.

This large-scale style of construction is very expensive and requires a big developer who has access to those resources. By opening up single stair housing to NC, we can make small-scale developments accessible to smaller developers, providing economic opportunities to more individuals.

Why This Matters for North Carolina

According to recent census data, the state is one of the fastest-growing in the country. Cities like Raleigh and Charlotte are expanding at a rapid speed, while smaller urban centers like Durham, Wilmington, and Asheville are also attracting new residents.

The downside? Suburban sprawl. Every year, new subdivisions push residents farther out from city centers, paving over farmland and forests. This strains our infrastructure by increasing traffic into city centers, and makes nearby housing even less affordable as commuting times climb.

If we want to grow sustainably, we need gentle density: housing options that add more people per acre without overwhelming the character of neighborhoods. Single stair buildings are one way to achieve that balance. They allow three- to six-story apartment buildings to be tucked onto small lots. This gives us the opportunity to fill in the gaps of urban blocks and create walkable, family-friendly communities.

Currently in North Carolina, residential buildings with one staircase are allowed up to

Compared to our southern, urban neighbors, North Carolina is behind. Just recently, Tennessee changed their legislation to allow single-stair apartment buildings up to five stories tall. This allows developers to increase the variety of housing options in the fast-growing cities of Nashville, Memphis, and Chattanooga, while reducing the infrastructural impacts on the areas. Additionally, Atlanta, Georgia has approved single-stair apartment buildings up to four stories tall.

Weighing the Tradeoffs

So where does that leave us?

The truth is, single stair housing isn’t a silver bullet. It won’t solve North Carolina’s housing crisis overnight, and there are safety concerns that must be addressed through careful architectural design. However, it’s clear that our current approach of strict two-stair requirements in maze-like apartment complexes, sprawling suburban subdivisions, and limited housing diversity isn’t working either.

In practice, evacuation challenges faced in large-scale apartment complexes could actually be mitigated by the use of single-stair housing. When the occupant load of a floor in a single-stair building is compared to that of a large-scale apartment, the number of occupants per floor per stair is actually significantly lower in a single-stair building. Instead of forcing residents to walk down long, confusing hallways in a massive apartment complex, single-stair buildings create smaller, more direct pathways to safety while optimizing floor areas for living spaces.

Cities like Seattle and New York have already demonstrated that single stair construction can be done safely when paired with strong fire codes, sprinklers, and modern safety standards. Austin, Texas, along with nearby cities of Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee, have been actively debating the issue, with fire officials and housing advocates weighing the tradeoffs. North Carolina can learn from these examples rather than starting from scratch.

One possible path forward is to pilot single stair construction in select areas, perhaps in neighborhoods surrounding downtown Raleigh, Charlotte, or Durham, where fire departments are better equipped and demand for housing is highest. These test cases could help identify best practices and build public trust before the model is expanded statewide.

Building for a Growing Future

North Carolina is changing fast. Our cities are swelling, our neighborhoods are stretching, and our housing supply is lagging behind. If we want to grow in a way that preserves our landscapes, builds stronger communities, and keeps housing within reach, we need to consider new approaches.

Single stair buildings are a promising tool for the creation of the “missing middle” housing. This method of development could allow us to add gentle density, improve housing quality, and make better use of limited urban land. The key is to balance innovation with safety, learning from other cities while tailoring solutions to our unique context.

At the end of the day, this isn’t just about stairs. It’s about how we want North Carolina to look and feel in the decades to come. Do we want endless sprawl and sky-high rents, or walkable neighborhoods where families, young professionals, and retirees can all find a place to call home?

The conversation about single stair housing is really a conversation about our shared future. It’s a conversation worth having, before the choice is made for us by the pressures of growth.