Councilmember Nadeau made the following remarks at a hearing on her introduced legislation, B26-0227, the One Front Door Act of 2025. in the Committee of the Whole, Tuesday, January 27, 2026.

There’s no silver bullet to our housing crisis. This moment calls for thoughtful governing across many policy areas, one of which is our building code, and rethinking how our dual-egress requirement for multifamily housing is out of step with modern fire suppression and construction practices.

Passing this legislation will not create more affordable or more family-sized units overnight. However, it’s an important step to take if we want the fullest impact of our investments in housing and our decisions on land use policy.

I was excited to introduce the One Front Door Act of 2025 and thank my co-introducers Robert White and Brooke Pinto for their support. I also get to thank our government witnesses for their strong support of the bill, which we will hear later on today.

This bill’s potential continues to come into focus as I continue to learn from experts, practitioners, and the experiences of other cities.

From larger units to cross-ventilation, it is remarkable how many improvements to livability and housing opportunity can be unlocked by targeted updates to our building code.

What I also find compelling is the potential to make more small-scale developments both physically and economically viable – something the District desperately needs more of.

This hearing also highlights the need for District government and the Department of Buildings to take a greater leadership role in modernizing our construction codes.

While single-entry reform is a significant and impactful change, we are really just scratching the surface when it comes to how our codes and regulatory structures act as an artificial barrier to housing growth, preservation, and even to other community needs like childcare centers.

It’s important that our safety codes are guided by real-world risk assessments of modern construction techniques, not simply based on historic precedent.

We have an incredible line-up of subject-matter experts on the witness list today, so I am looking forward to hearing their testimony and will have some questions to round out our understanding of these issues.

Before we start, I want to provide three notes on the legislation itself:

First and most importantly, the bill does not directly amend the District’s building code. Instead, it sets out a policy goal – allow for single-entry residential buildings in a safe and thoughtful way – and leaves the details of implementation to the experts and rulemaking process.

Second note: This type of code reform is often referred to as “single-stair,” but I wanted to avoid using that term in the bill’s title and text. Some people who hear that term for the first time can assume that such buildings have no elevator access or other accessibility measures. As a matter of fact, the more efficient floor plates allowed by this reform often improve accessibility; we’ll hear from witnesses later today about adaptive reuse projects that add elevators where none existed before.

Finally, when we drafted this legislation, we looked closely to the city of Seattle and other jurisdictions that have pursued single-entry and egress reform. That led us to a target of six stories, where we currently only allow up to three. However, there’s robust research showing that with adequate fire suppression, single-entry buildings of eight stories or equivalent height are no less safe. I’ll be asking some of our witnesses today to weigh in on this question. I want the District to lead in this area and not just follow.

Thank you Chairman, for holding this hearing, and I look forward to today’s hearing.