By Mark Weiner
syracuse.com
ALBANY, N.Y. — New York is reconsidering a decades-old proposal that would require all new homes built in the state to be equipped with automatic fire sprinkler systems regardless of the cost.
An unelected panel of government, fire safety and building code officials have come up with a draft plan that would mandate the sprinklers in all new single-family and two-family homes.
The proposal has sparked a backlash from home builders, the real estate industry, affordable housing advocates – including Habitat for Humanity and Syracuse -based Home HeadQuarters – and at least 11 members of the state Assembly.
On the other side, New York fire safety and building code officials – including Syracuse Fire Chief Michael Monds – say the mandate is long overdue.
The New York Fire Prevention and Building Code Council plans to meet on Jan. 16 to consider the proposal, which home builders say would add $6,000 to $30,000 to the cost of building a new home in the state.
The 17-member council, appointed by the governor, will accept public comment before making its decision next year. But state lawmakers will have no say on any code changes.
The proposal comes at a time when New York and other states are dealing with a housing crisis marked by a severe shortage of affordable homes.
The cost of a single-family home in New York soared by more than 41% between 2019 and 2023, according to the New York State Builders Association. The average cost of a new home in the state is now more than $600,000.
The crisis led Gov. Kathy Hochul to propose allowing the state to override local zoning laws to encourage the development of new housing, a measure the governor later abandoned amid intense opposition from local officials.
Hochul’s office had no comment when asked about the governor’s position on the proposed sprinkler mandate.
Monds, the Syracuse fire chief, and other fire safety advocates argue that you can’t put a price on saving lives. Besides, he said, some of the cost estimates from home builders to install sprinklers are inflated.
“Builders want to build for the most cost-effective price so they can turn a profit,” Monds told syracuse.com | The Post-Standard. “And our job as fire service leaders is to make sure people are protected in these buildings.”
Monds said a study by the U.S. Fire Administration, part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, found automatic sprinkler systems reduce the risk of someone dying in a fire by 82%.
Five people have died in Syracuse home fires this year, and 11 people over the past three years, Monds said, exceeding the average fatal fire rate of 1.1 per year for a city the size of Syracuse.
“When you deal with the number of fires we do in a place like Syracuse, you’re always looking to make things safer,” he said. “I think residential sprinklers will save lives. Our No. 1 priority is saving lives. Sprinklers can also help prevent devastating home damage because they put fires out quickly.”
He said one fire chief in Orange County paid $1.35 per square foot to install a sprinkler system in his home, which would add less than $3,000 to the cost of a 2,000-square-foot home.
New York’s proposal to mandate the sprinklers is the latest attempt in a two-decade battle by fire safety proponents to make such systems mandatory in new homes.
In 2008, the International Code Council approved a change to building codes that would require builders to include residential fire sprinkler systems in all new homes they sell.
The council, based in Washington, D.C., is a nonprofit that recommends minimum standards used to construct commercial and residential buildings in the United States. Most states adopt building codes approved by the council.
So far, California and Maryland are the only states that have adopted the requirement. Some cities have also approved the tougher standard.
The New York Fire Prevention and Building Code Council has considered and rejected the idea in the past amid stiff resistance from home builders and the real estate industry.
In 2014, state lawmakers intervened with what some viewed as a compromise: The Legislature passed a law that requires home builders to inform buyers about the option of installing sprinklers in their new homes.
The law, amended in 2021, also requires builders to provide home buyers with a cost estimate for including automatic sprinklers in their new homes.
Mary Gohl-Thompson, chief executive officer of Home Builders and Remodelers of Central New York, said her group’s 200 members have found that few home buyers choose the option to install sprinklers.
“Over the years, people have said they don’t want it,” Gohl-Thompson said. “It’s not only the cost. There’s a lot of concern if there’s an accident” and sprinkler pipes burst.
Gohl-Thompson said state officials who are pushing for the mandate have a poor sense of timing.
“We’re trying to keep the costs of new homes affordable, and this doesn’t help,” she said. “New homes are taking a hit at a time when we need new homes so desperately in Central New York.”
George Amedore Jr ., a former state Assembly and Senate member, is a home builder who says it’s also clear from his experience that buyers don’t want to pay the added expense for sprinklers.
Amedore’s company has built more than 400 homes in the Capital Region since 2018. None of the buyers opted to include sprinklers, Amedore wrote in an op-ed last week.
Mike Kelly, a lobbyist for the New York State Association of Realtors, said his group has no statewide data on the number of home buyers opting to include sprinklers with their purchase.
He pointed to a recent poll the group commissioned through the Siena College Research Institute. The poll found 70% of New Yorkers want sprinkler systems to be an option, not a requirement, for their new homes.
“The fact of the matter is that when consumers are given that information about sprinklers as required by the state, they’re resoundingly saying no,” Kelly said.
He said home buyers cite the added cost as the reason behind their decision.
A study by the National Fire Protection Association in 2013 found installing sprinklers would add $6,000 to $21,000 to the average cost of a home.
More recently, the New York State Builders Association said it found sprinklers would add $30,000 to the average cost of a home.
For those homes built in rural areas on water wells, the costs would escalate because homeowners would have to add high-pressure pumps and storage tanks to the sprinkler systems, Kelly said.
He said studies have shown that most fatal fires occur in older homes that have no working smoke or carbon monoxide detectors.
The New York State Association of Realtors commissioned a study that reviewed fatal residential fires in the state between 2019 and 2023. None of those fires occurred in single-family or two-family homes built after 2000.
In Central New York, affordable housing advocates oppose the sprinkler mandate and say that higher costs will set back their efforts to build more homes that people can afford.
“It’s already difficult to build affordable housing, but any increased cost just makes it that much harder,” said Sarah Bruce, executive director of Syracuse Habitat for Humanity. “We’re having an affordable housing crisis, and now is not the time to make construction more expensive.”
Bruce said her group, which plans to build or renovate 20 homes in Onondaga County over the next three years, would also have to pass along the increased maintenance cost of sprinkler systems to their home buyers.
“It adds one more system to the house that our homeowners would have to take care of,” Bruce said. “And we do everything to make their costs as low as possible because most of our customers are low-income.”
Home HeadQuarters, a nonprofit housing agency in Syracuse, views a sprinkler mandate as a threat to its goal of building 40 new affordable homes in the next year.
The agency typically spends $375,000 to $400,000 to build a new, 1,600-square-foot home in Syracuse. Those homes are sold for less than half the cost to income-qualified buyers.
“There is already a tremendous cost associated with building new homes, whether they be affordable or not,” said Kerry Quaglia, the group’s CEO. “Anything that increases a new single-family home construction budget, especially in the affordable housing market, means that homes become less affordable, less houses get built, or an unwanted combination of both scenarios.”
State Sen. Joe Griffo, R- Rome, is among those sounding the alarm about the potential chilling effort of the sprinkler mandate on new home construction.
Griffo is among at least four state lawmakers from Central New York and the Mohawk Valley who oppose the mandate. The others are state Assembly members Bill Magnarelli of Syracuse, Al Stirpe of Cicero and Pam Hunter of Syracuse – all Democrats.
Magnarelli, Stirpe and Hunter were among 11 Assembly members who signed an open letter Friday that called the sprinkler proposal “an unduly burdensome mandate on families at a time when affordability is a top priority in households and there is a shortage of affordable housing.”
Griffo has proposed a bill that would place a moratorium on unfunded state mandates and require stakeholders to come up with funding solutions.
“From a safety perspective, it makes sense,” Griffo said of residential sprinkler systems. “It’s understandable. But the problem becomes the cost and options and flexibility. Is there a different method where we can look at implementing this?”
He said one possible solution is to offer a state tax credit to new home buyers who install sprinklers.
Monds, the Syracuse fire chief, said he’s confident the state can find a way to improve fire safety without setting back the development of affordable housing.
“I’m hopeful that this ordinance will get passed,” he said. “There has to be common ground so that we can make it a benefit for everybody. Ultimately, there’s no price on the safety of civilians and our firefighters.”
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