DC Council Paves Way For A New Type Of Building

• May 7th

by UrbanTurf Staff

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The DC Council unanimously approved the One Front Door Act this week, a building code change that could meaningfully shift what gets built — and where — across the District.

Introduced by Councilmember Brianne Nadeau, the legislation tasks the Construction Codes Coordinating Board with writing new rules that would allow residential buildings up to six stories tall to operate with a single shared staircase and entrance, doubling the current three-story ceiling that has been on the books for decades.

To understand why that matters, it helps to picture what these buildings might actually look like: a slender six-story structure — perhaps 20 to 25 feet wide — with a handful of apartments on each floor and one central stair core. The thinking is that kind of building fits naturally on the narrow or oddly-shaped parcels that have sat undeveloped for years in places like Petworth, Brookland, and Columbia Heights. The building would be more in keeping with the neighborhood's existing row-house rhythm.

Before any single-stair building above three stories can be permitted, the Construction Codes Coordinating Board must establish detailed safety standards covering everything from how far a resident can be from the stairwell to requirements around fire suppression systems, smoke management, and ventilation. The DC firefighters' union has raised pointed concerns throughout the process — Local 36 president David Hoagland has been vocal about the fact that the department's aerial ladders max out well below a sixth-floor window — and those objections won't simply disappear once the rules are written. Nadeau has acknowledged the safety questions directly and has committed to ensuring the rulemaking process gives fire officials what they need.

What's clear is that DC is joining a national conversation that has been picking up speed for several years. Dozens of jurisdictions across the country have taken up similar reforms, with cities like Seattle and New York already having changed their codes to permit taller single-stair construction. The District's decision to follow suit signals a growing consensus that the old rules were quietly constraining the kind of modest, neighborhood-scale housing that many city blocks could actually absorb.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/dc_council_paves_way_for_new_type_of_building_in_dc/24601.