Jerry Konter, chairman of the NAHB and a home builder and developer in Savannah, Georgia, issued a statement in opposition of the Inflation Reduction Act. Konter said the legislation, proposed by Sens. Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, fails “to ease any inflationary pressures on housing” and includes several provisions that “will exacerbate the nation’s housing affordability crisis.”
According to the bill’s summary, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 “will make a historic down payment on deficit reduction to fight inflation, invest in domestic energy production and manufacturing, and reduce carbon emissions by roughly 40% by 2030.” The bill also calls for permitting reform legislation to be passed by the end of the fiscal year.
“Housing costs account for 40% of the Consumer Price Index, and with home prices and rents rising faster than inflation, Americans are being squeezed hard,” Konter said in his statement. “And while this bill would do little to wring inflation out of the overall economy, it contains several changes to the taxation of real estate and new building and energy code requirements that will raise housing costs for millions of consumers while doing very little to provide meaningful energy savings.”
In a letter to Senate leaders, the NAHB said it opposes using federal grants “to pressure state and local governments to adopt a specific building code.”
“NAHB supports the adoption of cost-effective, modern energy codes; however, the grants provided in this bill lack flexibility and fail to consider local autonomy when adopting the 2021 edition of the IECC for residential buildings and the ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2019 for commercial buildings,” the NAHB wrote.
The NAHB said it is concerned with grant programs that promote the adoption of net-zero provisions, as the provisions do not meet “cost-effectiveness criteria for the consumer and are not appropriate or cost-effective for many jurisdictions.”
“The adoption of a federal, one-size-fits-all approach to energy codes will exacerbate the current housing affordability crisis and limit energy choices for consumers,” NAHB wrote.
