A Quiet Villain in Our Housing Crisis: Building Codes

Housing policy watchers may want to look beyond zoning wars and start squinting at sprinklers, stairwells, and elevators. Writing for Vox, Marina Bolotnikova argues that even as some cities roll back zoning rules that banned apartments in favor of detached single-family homes on most residential land, there's a second villain: the thicket of technical regulations that make smaller multifamily buildings—like duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes—too expensive to build.

The piece focuses on how American building codes treat anything with three units or more like a commercial, not residential, structure, triggering requirements (such as full sprinkler systems and extra staircases) that advocates say aren't always backed by data and "can balloon the cost of building to crippling levels," writes Bolotnikova.

Bolotnikova walks through specific pain points—looking at why our elevators cost much more than European ones, for instance—that collectively tilt the system toward detached houses and against renters. "When you don't build something, there will be little constituency to advocate for it—and in this case, for right-sizing codes to accommodate it," she writes. Read the full piece, which also touches on the private, industry-influenced body that helps shape the codes.