Image of the day: fire safety in modern multifamily buildings
Newer housing is much safer than older housing; newer apartments are much safer than newer houses
Modern Multifamily Buildings Provide the Most Fire Protection. Liz Clifford, Alex Horowitz, and Seva Rodnyansky, Pew Charitable Trusts, September 2025.
To date, there has been little research on the relative fire safety of modern (post-2000) multifamily housing in the United States compared with other types of housing. New research from The Pew Charitable Trusts now demonstrates that multifamily buildings constructed since 2000 enjoy far better fire safety outcomes than other types of housing, because additional safety measures, such as self-closing doors, fire-safe materials, and sprinklers have been adopted widely.
This research indicates that building more new multifamily buildings would reduce fire deaths.
The key findings from Pew’s research are:
Modern multifamily housing has a fire death rate one-sixth the rate of single-family homes and multifamily housing built before 2000.
6% of Americans live in modern apartments, but only 1% of residential fire deaths in 2023 occurred in these buildings.
The fire death rate for modern multifamily buildings was less than one-fourth the rate in modern single-family homes.
The results were similar across multiple states, indicating a consistent trend.
The 2023 results show the same pattern as data examined for certain states from 2013 to 2024, demonstrating that 2023 was not an outlier.
More
Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record. Alex Horowitz, Seva Rodnyansky, and Dennis Su, Pew Charitable Trusts, February 2025.
An earlier post on fire safety: Vancouver staff report on single-stair buildings up to six storeys, February 2025.