Editorial: Pretty Is Not a Building Standard — And Neither Is a Developer’s Pro Forma
When we trade safety codes for shareholder returns, the people who pay the price are never the ones who made the trade.
A wise colleague once wrote that “pretty is not a building standard.” It should be carved above the entrance to every legislative chamber where building codes are debated.
Because that is precisely what is happening right now — in Washington, across the country, and incrementally in every jurisdiction where a developer’s architect and a sympathetic legislator have sat down together and decided that the accumulated safety wisdom of generations is an obstacle to be optimized away.
The building code reforms making their way through statehouses in 2026 — smaller elevators, single staircases, scissor stairs in mid-rise apartment buildings — are being sold to the public as housing affordability measures. And affordability is a real crisis. Nobody reasonable disputes that. Housing costs are crushing working families across the Pacific Northwest, and the pressure to build more, faster, and cheaper is genuine and urgent.
But here is what the affordability argument carefully never mentions: the specific provision at the center of Washington’s elevator reform — the requirement that elevators be large enough to accommodate a full-sized stretcher — costs approximately $150,000 in a building that will cost $5 to $8 million to construct and generate revenue for its owners for the next 30 years.
One hundred and fifty thousand dollars. In a multi-million dollar building. Generating returns for shareholders across three decades.
That is not an affordability problem. That is a priority problem.
What Was Built Into Those Codes
Building codes are not bureaucratic whimsy. They are not the invention of regulators who woke up one morning and decided to make construction more expensive. They are the accumulated record of what happens when things go wrong — written and rewritten after fires, collapses, floods, and failures that killed real people in real buildings that someone once assured everyone were perfectly safe.
Every provision in every building code has a history. Sometimes that history is a specific disaster with a name and a date. Sometimes it is a pattern of smaller tragedies that finally reached critical mass in a committee room. Sometimes it is the testimony of a firefighter or a building inspector who had seen enough to know exactly what would happen if a particular standard was weakened — and who had the courage to say so publicly, on the record, knowing they would be outvoted anyway.
Think about what it takes for a firefighter to walk into a legislative hearing room and testify against a building code change. These are men and women who have carried people out of burning buildings. Who have gone back in when the odds were against them. Who carry images they will never be able to unsee — scenes that visit them at 3 a.m. long after the call is closed and the report is filed. The trauma they have witnessed, the losses they have absorbed, the colleagues they have buried — all of it shapes their understanding of why a particular code provision exists and what it prevents.
And they sit in that committee room, composed and professional, and they explain it. Clearly. With evidence. With experience. With the quiet authority of people who have actually seen what happens when the thing they are trying to prevent is allowed to happen.
And then they get thanked for their testimony and outvoted.
That is what is happening. That is what we should call it.
The Math Nobody Puts in the Press Release
When Washington’s SB 5156 was presented to the public, the framing was sympathetic and the numbers were selective. Elevators in the United States cost three to four times more than in Europe. Smaller elevators would make more housing financially viable. More housing means more affordability. Who could be against affordability?
Nobody put the other numbers in the press release.
Nobody mentioned that the building generating the savings will be worth tens of millions of dollars over its useful life. Nobody mentioned that the investors and developers who benefit from the reduced construction cost will collect returns on that building for the next three decades while the residents — including elderly residents, residents with mobility challenges, residents who cannot walk down six flights of stairs in an emergency — live with the consequences of the decision that was made on their behalf.
Nobody mentioned that the firefighters and paramedics who respond to emergencies in that building will now do so knowing that if a resident on the fifth floor has a cardiac event, or breaks a hip, or cannot breathe, getting them out of the building on a stretcher will require carrying them down the stairs — in the same stairwell that may be filling with smoke.
The pro forma doesn’t have a line item for that. The developer’s return-on-investment calculation doesn’t account for it. The politician’s press release doesn’t mention it. But someone in that building, someday, will experience it. And the firefighters responding to that call will know exactly when and why the decision was made that put them in that position.
Inch by Inch
No single change looks catastrophic in isolation. That is precisely the point.
A slightly smaller elevator in a small building — what’s the harm? A single staircase in a six-story building with good sprinklers — hasn’t Seattle been doing this for fifty years? A scissor stair that saves floor area and reduces construction cost — look how well they work in Vancouver and Toronto.
Each argument is made on its own terms, in its own session, in its own technical committee. Each one gets weighed against the immediate, visible, politically powerful benefit of lower construction costs and more housing units. Each one gets approved. And each one is one more brick removed from a wall that was built, brick by brick, over decades of hard experience.
The cumulative effect is only visible if you are paying attention across a long period of time. The firefighters are paying attention. The building inspectors are paying attention. The families of people who died in buildings where the code was a little bit weaker than it should have been are paying attention — though nobody is asking them to testify.
The developers are also paying attention. Very carefully. To every opportunity.
Inch by inch, anything’s a cinch.
What Pretty Buys You
The buildings being built under these new standards will look fine. They will photograph well. They will have design awards submitted on their behalf and architectural renderings that emphasize the light and the views and the efficient use of the floor plate. The press releases will talk about affordability and innovation and the courage to challenge outdated regulations.
What pretty doesn’t buy you is a stretcher that fits in the elevator. What pretty doesn’t buy you is a second stairwell that isn’t filling with smoke while residents try to figure out which way to go. What pretty doesn’t buy you is the institutional memory of everyone who understood why the rule existed before the rule was changed.
Pretty is not a building standard.
Neither is a developer’s pro forma.
Neither is a politician’s press release written the morning after a fundraiser with the building industry.
The people who built the safety standards we are now dismantling understood something that the current moment seems determined to forget: the cost of getting it wrong is never paid by the people who made the decision to cut the cost. It is paid by the resident on the fifth floor. It is paid by the firefighter at the bottom of the stairwell. It is paid, in the end, by the community that trusted that someone in authority had thought carefully about what happens when things go wrong.
Someone did think carefully about it. They testified about it. They were thanked and outvoted.
We should remember their names.
The views expressed in this editorial represent the opinion of NW Construction News. We welcome responses from readers, legislators, developers, firefighters, and anyone with a stake in how the Pacific Northwest builds its future. Write to us at nwconstructionnews.com.
