"Santa Monica badly needs more housing. Workers can’t afford to live near their jobs, the elderly are being forced further afield, and young people like ourselves are being priced out of their own community. This problem comes from piling on red tape for decades, adding costly requirements without thinking about whether they work or what they’ll cost.
Last week, the City Council made progress on peeling back unnecessary bureaucracy. They updated our definition of a high-rise to match the rest of the state and approved single-stair apartment buildings, as long as extra safety features are included. These changes, endorsed by the city’s fire marshal, are common-sense reforms that will lower construction costs, enable more family-sized apartments, and allow for human-scaled development.
The data on single-stair buildings is clear. According to the Pew Charitable Trust, there is “no evidence of safety risks for single-stairway buildings with sprinklers.” In cities where single and double-stair buildings are legal, rates of fire death are the same across the two building types. The modern firefighting technologies this ordinance requires in tandem with single stair construction, such as pressurized stairwells and sprinkler systems, are the most important part of fire safety in multi-unit buildings, not how many stairwells they have. In fact, single-stair designs are safer because units are closer to an exit, reducing deaths from smoke, which is how a majority of structure-fire deaths happen.
Our housing shortage is the result of decades of decisions that make doing things more difficult. When the data supports simple, safe reforms, we shouldn’t allow an uninformed minority to block progress. The six City Councilmembers who listened to reason made the right call, and these needed changes will help make housing more affordable in Santa Monica.
Zennon Ulyate-Crow is the Santa Monica Director with Abundance Network, and Matias Fuchs-Lynch is an Administrative and Communications Intern with Abundance Network Santa Monica. ANSM is working to bring down costs and make Santa Monica a livable community for all."
Zennon Ulyate-Crow
Santa Monica