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HOME BUILDERS HOLD LEGISLATIVE BRIEFING AT STATE HOUSE ON
“PUBLIC POLICY FOR NET ZERO HOMES AND AFFORDABILITY”
More than sixty legislators, staff, HBRAMA members and interested parties attended the two-hour briefing held in room 428 of the Massachusetts State House. The event kicked off with HBRAMA President Jeff Brem welcoming the attendees followed by Rob Brennan, the associations Government Affairs Chair who provided the background for the study, noting that the HBRAMA commissioned the study as a service to the Commonwealth and its current and future homeowners in order to help solve the costs associated with the convergence of housing and climate. Rob then introduced Justin Steil, Associate Professor and Law and Urban Planning from MIT and Payam Bakhshi, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Construction Management from Wentworth Institute of Technology. Justin and Payam were the lead researchers for the study.
Professor Steil gave an overview of the study and spent time detailing the implementation of the state’s new stretch energy code and the municipal opt-in specialized stretch energy codes effect on affordability and outlined the research proposals of public policy elements suggested by the study to help mitigate costs associated with more stringent energy codes in order to maintain housing affordability while decreasing the effects of housing on the climate.
Professor Bakhshi then outlined Wentworth’s work regarding the increased costs associated with adoption of the energy codes for single-family, small multi-family and large multi-family construction detailing specific areas of construction that are impacted by code changes along with Wentworth’s methodology in crafting their piece of the final report.
Following the presentation by the academic institutions, Rob Brennan led a panel discussion with participants consisting of Alisa Magnotta the CEO of the Housing Assistance Corp., Bill Grogan, CEO of the Planning Office for Urban Affairs, Gregory Janey, President and CEO of Janey Construction Management, Michael Travaline, Director of Land Acquisition for the Pulte Group and Jeff Rhuda the Business Development Manager for Symes Associates. Each of the panelists outlined those public policy recommendations that they felt were most important to their missions and discussed the current declining state of housing in the Commonwealth.
The ”PUBLIC POLICY FOR NET ZERO HOMES AND AFFORDABILITY” study was commissioned by HBRAMA at the beginning of 2022 with the financial aid of many for profit and not for profit organizations and is being made available to state home builder associations and other interested parties throughout the country to serve as a model for their legislators as they tackle the important issues surrounding housing and climate.
The full research report is available for review and download at:
https://hbrama.com/2023/05/net-zero-homes-and-affordability/
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