Page 8 - Builder Brief July 2024

2024 PRESIDENT
GSABA GOES TO WASHINGTON
Last month, members of the Greater San Antonio Builders Association (GSABA) traveled to Washington, DC to meet and engage with our elected officials about the nation’s housing affordability crisis. Carl Harris, 2024 president of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) spoke to members from across the United States at breakfast on June 12th. He shared the information he wanted us to take to Capitol Hill and outlined the top reasons for the nation’s critical housing shortage.
President Harris discussed the current nationwide shortage of 1.5 million housing units, noting that the lack of housing has surpassed an inflection point. NAHB has released a 10-point plan to help with this shortfall and improve the business climate so that builders can increase the nation’s housing supply. Eliminating burdensome regulations, easing permitting roadblocks and overturning inefficient zoning rules are just a few critical points of the plan that will help move the ball forward. You can find NAHB’s 10-point plan online at www.nahb.org.
The GSABA delegation met with six members of Congress and their staff, urging them to adopt reasonable and cost-effective building codes, help ease the shortages of distribution transformers, and promote careers in the skilled trades—to help builders make homeownership and renting more affordable and attainable.
Here are a few of the key facts we shared in our meetings:
Building codes. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have rammed through a mandate that will require new single-family and multifamily construction financed through both agencies to be built to the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) or ASHRAE 90.1- 2019. This nationwide code mandate will significantly raise housing costs—particularly in the price-sensitive entry-level market for starter homes and affordable rental properties—and limit access to mortgage financing while providing little benefit to new home buyers and renters.
Studies have shown that building to the 2021 IECC can add as much as $31,000 to the price of a new home and that it would take up to 90 years for a home buyer to realize a payback on the added upfront cost. That’s not a reasonable trade-off for a new home buyer.
Congress can reverse this ill-conceived policy that will exacerbate the housing affordability crisis by putting a provision in the fiscal year 2025 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill that will prevent HUD from using federal funds to implement these costly national codes mandate.
Transformers. A shortage of electric transformers distribution is delaying housing projects across the nation and the cost of the
TIM PRUSKI
electric transformers has soared by more than 70 percent since the start of the pandemic. Wait times for distribution of electric transformers can often extend 12 to 24 months.
Congress can help ease the severe shortage of electric transformers by fixing supply chain disruptions and by providing additional funding in the fiscal 2025 appropriations process, specifically targeted at boosting the domestic manufacturing capacity, to produce sorely needed distribution transformers. This will help home builders to construct more homes, satisfy unmet demand and ease America’s housing affordability crisis.
Workforce development funding. A severe labor shortage in the construction industry is worsening the housing affordability crisis through higher home building costs and construction delays. In any given month, there is a shortage of roughly 400,000 construction workers, and home builders will need to add 2.2 million new workers over the next three years just to keep up with demand.
Congress can help ease this chronic workforce shortage by keeping Job Corps— which is a vital source of skilled labor for the housing industry—fully funded at $1.76 billion in the fiscal year 2025 Labor-HHS appropriations
8 JULY 2024 | GREATER SAN ANTONIO BUILDERS ASSOCIATION