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This comment may be slightly low-effort and/or non-culture-war, but it seems relevant to past discussions of housing affordability from @grendel-khan. See also my past comment on actual culture war in building codes.
The current round of proposed amendments to ICC (International Code Council) codes can be found through this page (both group A and group B). Committee decisions regarding acceptance of the amendments are in the separate "ROCAH" documents.
E24-24 (group A, IBC egress) was submitted by the Center for Building in North America. The current edition of the IBC (International Building Code) permits an apartment building to have a single exit only if the building contains no more than three stories and four apartments per story (for a total of 12 apartments). This amendment would increase the maximum to either six stories and four apartments per story (for a total of 24 apartments) or three stories and six apartments per story (for a total of 18 apartments). The submitter estimates that this amendment would reduce "the cost of constructing multifamily buildings on small lots" by 7 percent. At the first hearing, the committee unanimously rejected the amendment, citing various safety-related reasons. However, at the second hearing, a modified amendment prescribing a maximum of four stories and four apartments per story (for a total of 16 apartments) was approved by the committee in an almost-unanimous vote.
G154-25 (group B, IBC general) was submitted by the same organization. The current edition of the IBC requires elevators to comply with several ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) standards. This amendment would permit elevators to alternatively comply with the equivalent ISO (International Organization of Standardization) and EN (European Norms) standards, and thereby invite competition from European elevator manufacturers that generally don't bother with American standards, possibly reducing the extremely high elevator costs that prevail in the US. The committee rejected it almost unanimously.
G158-25 was submitted by the same organization. The current edition of the IBC requires an elevator in a building with at least four stories to be large enough to accommodate an ambulance stretcher. This amendment would eliminate this requirement in apartment buildings with no more than six stories. The committee rejected it unanimously.
RB121-25 (group B, IRC building) was submitted by the NAHB (National Association of Homebuilders). The current edition of the IRC (International Residential Code) prescribes a maximum stairway slope of 77.5 % (7.75-inch risers and 10-inch treads). This amendment would increase the maximum to 91.7 % (8.25-inch risers and 9-inch treads). The NAHB points out that similar slopes were permitted by predecessors to the IRC and still are permitted by 46 percent of state codes, by the federal manufactured-house code, and by multiple foreign codes (90.0 % in UKGBNI and 90.9 % in Spain). The NAHB estimates 150 dollars of savings per stairway, not including the reduction in floor area of 5.75 ft2. The committee accepted this amendment by a bare vote of six to four.
RB115-25, submitted by the government of New York, would require locks on the exterior doors of a house. The committee unanimously rejected it as out of scope for the IRC.
Disclaimer: I did not look through all the literally thousands of proposed amendments. Rather, I looked through the PCH (public comment hearing) documents for stuff that actually drew public comment. So I probably missed other relevant proposals.
I see you are getting lazy in your old age. The ToaKraka I knew would have at least read 500 of them.
I realize that this is a joke, but just to clarify:
The bold numbers indicate the ones that I checked. Perhaps I should have checked more, but I saw this page only yesterday, and I didn't feel like spending a zillion hours on this random task.
In comparison:
Okay, I take it back, that is the OG ToaKraka I know, love and am slightly perplexed by, in a good way.
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I don't have much to add beyond that I like posts like this as much if not more than 'actual' culture war posts. And that when somewhere I lived had a ~90% stairway slope, I thought it was a bit steeper than I'd prefer in terms of safety, but not so steep I think it shouldn't be allowed. Hm, now I want to read a good blog post about the history of building codes.
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You have cited these international building codes in a lot of discussions. It's never been clear to me, however, how they relate to real world construction. What countries actually follow these regulations? Are they effectively law in the US? Would a general contractor in Southern California know/care about these changes? Would my city's building inspector? An architect?
Almost all states in the US, and a few countries, use the ICC codes as bases for their own codes (residential building, commercial building, energy efficiency, etc.). Even after a jurisdiction adds its own modifications, the unmodified ICC code still forms the nationwide baseline, and is considered in the jurisdiction's periodic code-updating process.
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