More than 900 Housing Professionals Urge Congress to Act on Affordability Crisis
Representing all realms of residential construction, over 900 industry professional made the trek to Capitol Hill to call on Congress to ease the chronic headwinds that are fanning the nation’s housing affordability crisis and impeding builders from boosting housing production.
“Members of the housing community from across the nation have come to the nation’s capital for the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) 2024 Legislative Conference to deliver a powerful message: ‘The only way to tame shelter inflation (homeownership and rental costs) and to ease the housing affordability crisis is to build more homes and apartments,’” said NAHB Chairman Carl Harris, a custom home builder from Wichita, Kansas.
According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), There is currently a nationwide shortage of 1.5 million housing units and the lack of housing has surpassed an inflection point. NAHB has released a 10-point plan to help erase 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 elements of the plan that will move the ball forward.
In more than 250 individual meetings with their representatives and senators, housing advocates urged lawmakers to act on three key issues outlined in NAHB’s housing plan—adopt reasonable and cost-effective building codes, ease severe shortages of distribution transformers, and promote careers in the skilled trades—to help builders make homeownership and renting more affordable.
