The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) has unveiled a plan to address shelter inflation and ease the affordable housing crisis.
“The lack of homes is the primary cause of growing housing affordability challenges,” said NAHB chairman Carl Harris, a custom home builder from Wichita, Kansas. “Any policy that seeks to improve affordability without addressing the need to increase the supply of single-family and multifamily for-sale and for-rent housing is doomed to fail.”
Shelter inflation—rent and homeownership costs—is still rising well above a 5% rate, and for the past year, more than half of overall inflation in the economy has been due to rising housing costs. The only way to effectively tame shelter inflation, particularly with elevated interest rates for both mortgages and development/construction loans, is to build more attainable, affordable housing, according to the organization.
The 10-point plan outlines steps that can be taken at the local, state, and federal levels to increase the housing supply, ranging from local action to make development easier to expanding the federal low-income housing tax credit program:
- Eliminate excessive regulations;
- Promote careers in the skilled trades;
- Fix building material supply chains and ease costs;
- Pass federal tax legislation to expand the production of affordable and attainable housing;
- Overturn inefficient local zoning rules;
- Alleviate permitting roadblocks;
- Adopt reasonable and cost-effective building codes;
- Reduce local impact fees and other upfront taxes associated with housing construction;
- Make it easier for developers to finance new housing; and
- Update employment policies to promote flexibility and opportunity.
Learn more about each element of the plan at nahb.org/plan.
