A recent webinar hosted by Abundant Housing Illinois (AHIL) brought together four voices working at the intersection of housing policy, architecture, and advocacy to make the case for Chicago's reform. Watch the full conversation below.

Why the dual stair mandate matters — and why it should change

Current Chicago building code requires two stairways in apartment buildings above three stories. That requirement forces a long hallway to bisect every floor, which in turn forces developers to build at larger scales to make projects financially viable. (Alternatively, some developers will use three stairs to avoid the corridor, usually in buildings up to about six or eight dwelling units.)

The result is the block-long, corridor-heavy apartment building that dominates new construction — and crowds out the smaller, more neighborhood-scaled housing that Chicago's existing fabric was built around. It's often likened to a hotel. 

Single-stair buildings dedicate up to 95% of floor space to housing, compared to 70–87% in double-loaded corridor buildings. They can be built on smaller lots, fit more naturally into residential neighborhoods, and produce larger, more flexible floor plans — better suited to families, seniors, and anyone who doesn't want a studio.

The safety case

Opponents of single-stair reform often cite fire safety as their primary concern, but evidence points the other way. A February 2025 report from the Pew Charitable Trusts found that single-stairway buildings as tall as six stories are at least as safe as equivalent housing with two stairs. Single-stair buildings have shorter evacuation distances — a maximum 20-foot corridor versus up to 250 feet in double-loaded buildings — and serve far fewer households per stairway. Combined with modern sprinkler systems, fire-rated assemblies, and pressurized stairwells, a single stairway provides adequate protection.

Seattle has permitted single-stair buildings up to six stories since 1977; New York City has allowed single stair buildings for even longer. Honolulu, Austin, and a growing number of cities and states have followed since 2025.

Single stair enables family-sized apartments

Mike Eliason, Director of Design and Policy at the Seattle Social Housing Developer, opened his presentation with a stark comparison: the double-loaded corridor building type that dominates U.S. multifamily housing "primarily induces smaller units," making it "really difficult to get large, family-sized units, except on the corners."

Sunlight suites: a simple change could unlock these beautiful homes — Sightline Institute

The problem, Eliason explained, is the deep floor plate required by the double-loaded layout. Units end up with windows on only one side — what he described as living in a bowling alley. A 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom apartment in the U.S. occupies the same floor area that, in a European single-stair building, would yield a three-bedroom unit with two bathrooms, a kitchen and living area oriented parallel to the facade, and daylight in every room.

"The single-stair building, the point access block, allows us to get better units. It also kind of induces larger unit sizes," Eliason said. "I can't even remember the last time I saw an apartment in Seattle that had four bedrooms. They're almost non-existent, but they're really, really common in European housing."

Single-stair buildings also eliminate windowless bedrooms — an increasingly common feature in West Coast multifamily construction — because units wrap around a central core and receive daylight on two or three sides. If a building sits on a busy street, bedrooms can face the quiet side, protecting residents from noise while sleeping.

"The typical unit layout in a single-stair building for a family-sized unit — abundant daylight, lots of windows," Eliason said. "It's not like living in a single-family house, but it does offer a lot of those qualities — the things that people want when they're looking for something like that, while still living and being in an urban environment."

Chicago's ordinance

The ordinance introduced by Ald. Martin — co-sponsored by Ald. Bennett R. Lawson (44th Ward), Ald. Anthony J. Quezada (35th Ward), and Ald. Ruth Cruz (30th Ward) — would amend Section 14B-10-1006.3.3 of the Chicago Building Code. It has been referred to the Committee on Zoning, Landmarks and Building Standards. Track its progress in the City Clerk's office. At the time of introduction it was also co-sponsored by Ald. Bill Conway (34th Ward).

The panelists

• Steffany Bahamon, Co-lead at Abundant Housing Illinois, provided an overview of the reform effort in Chicago and facilitated the event.
• Felicity Maxwell, Executive Director of Texans for Housing and AURA, shared lessons from Austin's successful campaign to legalize single-stair buildings, including how advocates navigated opposition from the fire department.
• Alex Montero, Lead at Strong Towns Chicago, discussed the local organizing effort and what single-stair reform would mean for Chicago's housing supply and neighborhood character.
• Mike Eliason, Director of Design & Policy at the Seattle Social Housing Developer, brought perspective from Seattle, which has permitted single-stair buildings up to six stories since 1977 — the longest track record of any U.S. city.
• Ben Wolfenstein, Director of YIMBY Illinois, discussed the state-level effort to advance single-stair reform through the Illinois legislature via the BUILD plan. 

Going into this book, I thought it would be solely about gentrification and the way it happens across a city. However, “gentrification” is seldom used, likely purposefully. The authors want the reader to rethink the idea that neighborhoods can be easily summed up in a phrase. If we don’t truly understand the process by which neighborhoods change, the words we apply to neighborhoods mean nothing.

Neighborhoods don’t develop as organically as we may think

Neighborhoods don’t happen by accident, a point emphasized throughout. Case in point is the construction of Pilsen and Bronzeville into the “Black Mecca” and Pilsen into the center of Mexican culture. Both neighborhoods took on those perceptions due to the migration of Black Americans into Bronzeville and Mexican immigrants into Pilsen. In addition to having been shaped by shifting demographics, gentrification, disinvestment, the commodification of culture has been integral to the story of both neighborhoods.

What I find particularly interesting is the manner in which the commodification of culture is used as a method to change the perception of community. There have been efforts for decades to remake Pilsen into a center of Mexican culture in Chicago and to minimize the crime and poverty.

Even before neighborhoods start gentrifying (which I define as the influx of higher-income, predominantly white residents into low-income communities of color), the way we talk about them can change its perception for the arrival of others. Pilsen went from an area deemed unsafe and stigmatized to a neighborhood brimming with culture. While Pilsen wasn’t considered gentrified in the early 2000s, it now “bears the marks of gentrification.”

Betancur and Smith point to how changing representations of both neighborhoods were key to facilitating gentrification even before gentrification actually began. In Pilsen, gentrification pressures started to be apparent on the east side of the neighborhood along Halsted St. starting in the late 1980s. In Bronzeville, a driving factor for gentrification was the demolition of thousands of public housing units starting in 1999. Both neighborhoods have experienced these outside pressures, but gentrification still hasn’t fully taken hold. “Despite this hoopla, Bronzeville and Pilsen are still quite poor,” they write. How much are neighborhoods shaped by the way we perceive them rather than the reality of a place?

Further south, Englewood is a good example for thinking about this question.

However, the authors argue, Englewood’s association with crime existed far before it became an African-American neighborhood.

Englewood was the well-known site of serial killer Dr. H. H. Holmes during the World’s Fair in the 1890s. Moreover, in the 1950s, a local crime prevention group formed a local police force to patrol the neighborhood. Few talk about crime in Englewood separated from its association to black criminality.

The chapter on Englewood is more than anything a history lesson and a discussion of the particularities of Englewood, such as the existence of vibrant organizations like Teamwork Englewood working to engage residents and an estimated 300 block clubs operating throughout, that make it more than just a crime-ridden neighborhood.

Taking an ahistorical view on neighborhoods, the book says, is what reproduces cycles of inequity. If we view neighborhoods less as finished products but part of a history of investment and disinvestment, we’ll be able to better identify ways to interrupt processes that create dynamics like gentrification and concentrated poverty. Neighborhood change doesn’t always happen naturally and that’s what history is able to tell us. If we see neighborhoods as unchanging, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Neighborhoods aren’t static and they can’t be broadly defined with a term.

The trajectory of Englewood’s disinvestment started when the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway sliced off the east edge. The subsequent erection of a 5-mile long wall of public housing high-rises (which included Robert Taylor Homes and Stateway Gardens) further segregated the black population.

Once a commercial center, Englewood saw the departure of big-name department stores, such as Sears and Wieboldt. Englewood went from 99 percent white in 1930 to 95 percent black by 2014, according to the most recent American Community Survey. In the midst of the challenges Englewood faces, Betancur and Smith find community organizations and residents working to create a better future for the neighborhood.

The authors argue that the final cycle of neighborhoods prior to a new cycle of investment is when it’s declared as an “unfit, dangerous, and socially disordered area” Afterwards, developers and capital can come in to “redeem” it.

We already see this influx of money making its way into Englewood, such as the Whole Foods on 63rd Street and a $50 million investment in the Southwest Corridor Collaborative to generate new businesses along 63rd St. in Englewood and adjacent neighborhoods.

Betancur and Smith warn that development in Englewood must follow another path without relying so heavily on market-based and real estate strategies to prevent displacement. Otherwise, they say, it will just lead to moving “the black underclass to new spaces of last resort.”

Betancur and Smith say some neighborhoods in Chicago are on the extremes of hyper-ghettoization and hyper-gentrification. There’s a growing need for affordable housing in Chicago, but “the market continues to develop units that are out of reach for most Americans.”

The construction boom on Milwaukee Ave. through Logan Square comes to mind, with rents going up to $3,900 for a 3-bedroom. With the challenges our city faces, Betancur and Smith leave us with key points to frame the way we view urban change and the steps we should take. Most notably, they drive home the point that we should see neighborhoods as flexible spaces that are often being shaped by processes for consumption and confinement (ex: gentrification and hyper-segregation) and that the way we perceive neighborhoods have to be informed by a historicized view of them.