D.C. pushes single-stair apartments higher with added safety rules

Washington, D.C., council members are leaning into a growing national trend by relaxing single-stairway rules to cut the cost of building small and mid-rise housing.

On Tuesday, the D.C. Council unanimously advanced the One Front Door Act. If it passes on second reading, the maximum height for residential buildings with a single stairway would double to six stories.

Single-stair residential policy is gaining momentum nationwide as lawmakers and housing advocates seek additional ways to boost housing supply. A growing list of states and cities now allow, or are moving toward allowing, single-stair apartment buildings up to roughly five or six stories, with the added condition that they strengthen fire-safety systems.

The D.C. ordinance would lift current height limits so point-access, or single-stair, apartment buildings can rise taller while still meeting modern fire and life-safety standards such as sprinklers and smoke control.

Today, D.C. generally limits single-stair residential buildings to three stories, a threshold shared by many U.S. jurisdictions that follow International Building Code provisions. Supporters say the rules push designers toward wider, bulkier buildings with double-loaded corridors or make small multifamily projects on narrow lots infeasible.

Implementation details

Under the One Front Door Act, the Construction Codes Coordinating Board would have to develop criteria that specify which building types may adopt a single enclosed stair and what additional protections they must include. That work is expected to cover issues such as maximum travel distances from units to the stairs, corridor ventilation and elevator placement, as well as requirements for sprinklers and alarms.

The ordinance frames single-stair reform as one piece of a broader effort to reduce regulatory barriers to modest-scale apartment construction in a city with constrained infill sites and high land costs.

Potential benefits and concerns

Housing and planning groups, along with researchers who have examined international codes, say these reforms can open up low- and mid-rise sites, trim construction costs, and support more naturally affordable units without direct subsidy.

Fire safety professionals often oppose changes, arguing that stairwell redundancy remains safer.

Studies, including one in Minnesota, have found that a single stairwell can be as safe, or safer, than multiple stairs in a typical fire because of sprinklers and other safety measures.

In D.C., opponents, including several neighborhood civic associations, warned about potential evacuation risks and compatibility with historic districts. The city’s Department of Buildings has pledged to release design guidelines and require additional fire-safety reviews for single-stair projects before it issues permits.

“Allowing single-stair buildings at modest heights does not create a new class of high-risk construction,” Yesim Sayin, D.C. Policy Center’s executive director, said in testimony at a January hearing on the ordinance. “It enables small walk-ups and adaptive reuse projects to be built more efficiently—projects that sit squarely between single-family homes and high-rise towers. These are precisely the housing types that many neighborhoods say they want and that the District chronically underproduces.”

If the D.C. Council approves the One Front Door Act on final reading, the District would become one of the highest-profile East Coast jurisdictions to formally embrace this approach to mid-rise housing design.