Housing advocates and fire marshals are at odds over a state bill which makes it legal to have a single stairwell for apartment buildings up to five stories.
Those in favor of the bill say the legislation will help create an easier pathway to affordable housing construction, especially in inner cities, since less space is required.
However, opponents of the bill say allowing one stairwell is a safety concern.
The bill passed in the state legislature last year, but the state’s Department of Administrative Services’ (DAS) Codes and Standards Committee, which is drafting the building code, later added more restrictions.
Nick Kantor, director of housing policy group Desegregate CT, says the way the code is written makes it too restrictive.
“They've effectively made it really, really, really hard in the current implementation to actually build, both from some of the building code side, and fire requirements,” Kantor said. Which basically is going to neuter any use of this to actually do what it's intended to do.”
The draft of the building code changes were open to public comment until Oct. 11.
“The Codes and Standards Committee is now reviewing those comments,” DAS Director of Communications Leigh Appleby said. “The committee will meet on November 12 and consider any changes based on the comments received.”
The final drafts must be approved by several committees before being formally adopted, Appleby said.
Along with allowing buildings to be five stories with a single stairwell, the drafted code “imposes fire department staffing and equipment requirements so restrictive that, in practice, very few (if any) Connecticut municipalities will be able to adopt the reform,” according to testimony by the Regional Plan Association’s Connecticut Director Pete Harrison.
A recent report from the Pew Charitable Trust found the age of a building is the primary factor in determining the risk of a fatal fire. Over the last three years, Connecticut saw zero deaths from fires in residential buildings built after 2000, according to Harrison.
“This compromises safety, both for the occupants and the firefighters, we feel,” Roger Nelson, president of the Connecticut Fire Marshals Association, said.
But, Nelson said the risk isn’t worth the claims of more affordable housing construction.
Rather, the high cost of new, safe features like stormproof doors and elevators, and the cost to maintain and upkeep the safety measures would outweigh the cost benefit in constructing a single-stairway building, according to Nelson.
“I've never seen a cost benefit analysis done on any of this to show what this taking away one stairwell would actually accomplish,” Nelson said. “Cost wise, when you have to add in pressurized stairs, pressurized elevators, maintenance of all this equipment actually may put the cost higher than what the buildings are now.”
