Comment by koolba
3 months ago
> …and they're about to ban windowless bedrooms which will make office-to-housing conversions impossible.
Where is this not banned?
And it’s not like offices don’t have windows or you can’t cut them. The ban on windowless bedrooms is supposed to prevent renting out a utility closet as a “rustic studio”.
No, the ban is because an architect thinks they're icky, sent in a request to ban it, and the building code people take any suggestion to ban anything that anyone sends them. Safety regulations are written in blood, you know!
https://bsky.app/profile/stephenjacobsmith.com/post/3m3xpe3n...
The ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants.
> ban on windowless bedroom is at least partly about fire safety. A window provides an escape route for low floors, or a means for firefighters to rescue the occupants
New York City's fire engines can't reach its skyscrapers' top floors. Not saying you can achieve similar resuls with office-to-residential conversions. But windowless bedrooms aren't a non-starter because of fire safety, they're a non-starter because they make wealthier residents uncomfortable.
The GP's point is that levelheaded cost-benefit analyses on things like that seem to escape regulators, and everything is greatly skewed towards "it's worth it if it saves even one life".
Sure, fire safety in homes is a good thing to have. But is it so good that we can't economically build buildings to meet them, and people end up with no home at all?
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