Joshua Brandt
I run a construction company that specializes in building multifamily housing. I’m also a developer with a lively pipeline of deals I’m permitting, capitalizing and hopefully getting into the ground.
I’m by no means a big fish. But I’m not a small one either. I am a mid-scale housing producer. And I’m on the front lines in the fight for housing affordability.
The runaway cost of housing is the biggest existential threat to the vibrancy of our region. Solving it is straightforward: Produce more housing, and rents will come down. Housing production creates housing affordability. Look at what’s happened to rents in Austin, Texas in the last five years.
But this fight for housing affordability is truly a fight right now. The building boom that started in 2009 ended in early 2023. For the past two years, housing starts locally have cratered. And the numbers bear this out
Housing Starts Collapsing
During the peak of the building boom, developers were building about 4,400 units annually in the city of Boston. In the last two years that number has dropped to 2,100 units annually. The combination of interest rates, inflation and instability have really made it hard to build.
And it’s about to get worse. Those 2,100 units were all permitted under Boston’s prior Inclusionary Development Policy. In another couple years – once the impact of the inclusionary zoning update is measurable – I expect that number drop below 1,000 units.
Some potential solutions to increase housing production are pretty non-controversial. But these low hanging fruit also won’t boost production much – think Article 80 modernization and permitting logistics reform.
There are bigger needle-movers at the local level but those are far more fraught politically – namely a zoning rewrite and a sensible IDP. Because of the challenging politics, I’m not expecting movement on these anytime soon.
However, at the state level there are three potential regulatory changes that should be both non-controversial and high-impact. Massachusetts leaders could meaningfully boost housing production without ruffling too many feathers.
Build Four-Families Like Two-Families
The first change is expanding the application of the International Residential Code (IRC). Currently, the IRC is only used for one- and two-family buildings. The more restrictive International Building Code (IBC), currently used for projects three units and up, adds requirements such as sprinkler systems and second stairwells.
Any safety measure will appear, in a vacuum, good. However, we have a crisis in housing affordability. We need to examine our code requirements in terms of tradeoffs – namely how much does this additional safety cost us? When are buildings “safe enough”?
Were the state to expand the application of IRC to three- and four-unit buildings, they would immediately become far less expensive to build.
Especially if paired with zoning reforms that made three- and four-unit buildings “as of right,” tens of thousands of neighborhood-scale infill units would be created as existing one- and two-family buildings become three- and four-unit ones.
Legalize Single-Stair Mid-Rises
The second change is legalizing single stairwells in mid-rise buildings.
The need for two separate stairwells was codified decades ago in a different era of fire safety. Back then, buildings didn’t have sprinkler systems, fire alarms, fire rated stair enclosures and more. But they do now. And these features make modern buildings incredibly safe.
The requirement for a second stairwell is costly. A two-stairwell building typically maxes out at about 82 percent efficient: 82 percent of the total building area is housing versus hallways, stairs and elevators. The same building with a single stair? Ninety-two percent efficient.
In other words, within identical volumes, a single stair building yields 12 percent more housing.
This is a huge boost for affordability with negligible impact on life safety.
Follow – or Lead – the Nation
The third proposal is changing the definition of what a “high-rise” building is. Once a building becomes a high-rise, huge amounts of additional costs are triggered: second elevators, pressurized stairwells, etc.
Per the IBC, high-rise buildings start at 75 feet. And in 49 states, a high-rise starts at 75 feet. In Massachusetts? It starts at 70 feet, effectively capping buildings at 6 stories tall.
Why not start high rises at 75 feet, as the rest of the country does?
Better yet, why not take the lead and push the high-rise limit to 80 feet? Not only would this allow an additional story on every mid-rise building, it would also incentivize use of mass timber – a super-low embodied carbon structural system that could accommodate 8 stories inside an 80-foot building.
Of course we want our buildings to be safe. But we need to be able to afford them too. It’s time to make some measured, modest changes to our state building codes in the interest of making housing affordable for all.
Joshua Brandt is the owner of Boston-based Stack + Co.
