Michigan’s single-stair reform gains as housing package languishes

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer wants to “build, baby, build,” but a bipartisan housing reform package is limping in the legislature.

Nonetheless, a single-stair bill outside that comprehensive package has stepped up.

The Michigan Senate is now weighing a pair of bills that would allow multifamily buildings up to six stories to be built with a single interior exit stairway. Advocates say the change could lower costs and unlock more infill housing statewide.

The single-stair bills cleared the House with bipartisan support. They weren’t part of the Housing Readiness package legislators filed this year or part of Whitmer’s agenda. But they speak directly to the same crisis.

“It’s still part of the cutting regulations to build more housing,” Lauren Strickland, Abundant Housing Michigan’s executive director, told HousingWire TBD.

Climbing onto the single-stair trend

Michigan’s single-stair legislation mirrors the height threshold most states have adopted as the new benchmark. Colorado, Texas, Montana and New Hampshire have already made the switch. Washington, D.C., council members are one step from final approval on a similar six-story allowance. California is weighing legislation that would direct the state to develop its own single-stairway standards for buildings up to six stories.

Many states passing single-stair reform have also pre-empted local zoning authority to encourage density and accelerate building.

Michigan’s Housing Readiness package could meet the same fate as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s sweeping housing reform plan. Lawmakers slow-walked the measure and declined to vote on it before their legislative session ended.

Despite major industry support, Michigan’s legislative package has been bottled up in the House Committee on Government Operations since spring. It would reduce minimum parking requirements, modernize lot-size and setback rules, expand access to accessory dwelling units, and allow multi-unit buildings in more locations.

Housing advocates and industry supporters have modeled omnibus housing reform packages to spur new supply and bring down housing costs on Austin, Texas‘ successful example.

But Michigan’s effort is running up against the same friction among local governments that Pritzker and lawmakers in other states have faced when trying to strip away or supersede local zoning powers.

The Michigan Municipal League introduced a competing legislative proposal dubbed the MI Home Program. It is sitting in the same committee, with no floor vote in sight.

More building needed

Michigan produced roughly 54,000 new housing units in 2005 and only about 15,000 in 2024. That collapse has priced out working- and middle-class families statewide.

Old zoning rules need to be changed so that housing can be developed and built at the new production levels they once were.

“Detroit cannot be rebuilt with the zoning that exists now,” Strickland said.

Planners in Akron, Ohio, for example, are examining zoning rules to reduce lot sizes. The problem extends well beyond Michigan’s borders.

Whitmer has tied her agenda to a goal of 115,000 new and rehabilitated units. The state has logged 92,583 toward that target, according to recent Michigan State Housing Development Authority data.

The one piece of Whitmer’s agenda with a clear path to her desk is a trio of bills that would create a Michigan Housing Opportunity Credit. The credit would layer on top of the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The bills passed the full Senate and were referred as of June 16 to the House Regulatory Reform Committee, where Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) projects they would produce more than 2,500 new affordable units annually.

“Housing costs are crippling family budgets and making it harder for young people to find a future in our state,” Irwin said in a statement. “This legislation will mean more housing, leading to more options and affordability.”

On a separate track, Whitmer’s proposed tax credit could aid construction of the affordable housing that single-stair reform would permit.

A two-tier single-stair approach

Michigan currently follows the International Building Code, which requires two exit stairways in any residential building taller than three stories. The state had passed no prior amendments relaxing that cap. Dozens of other states moved to expand single-stairway construction in recent years. Michigan had not.

The bills would change that in two tiers. One permits a single interior exit stairway in buildings up to four stories. The second extends the allowance to buildings between five and six stories.

The two bills are explicitly linked. “The second does not take effect unless lawmakers enact the first into law.”

Both bills include a sunset clause. Each stops applying once the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity formally incorporates the International Code Council’s own single-stairway standards into state code. That positions both as stopgaps pending an ICC update rather than permanent departures from the model code.

Strickland said the bills have strong bipartisan support and she expects them to pass.

With her term ending, Whitmer’s housing legacy may rest less on the sweeping zoning reforms her party pursued. A tax credit and a single staircase may be all she has to show for her efforts.