NAHB President Discusses Housing Priorities With Leaders in Washington - 3/15/2004 - Real Estate Education Training Schools Conferences

NAHB President Rayburn Discusses Housing Priorities With Leaders in Washington

“My message to Congress and the Administration is that NAHB members are going to stand united, we are going to be heard and we are going to fight to maintain a healthy secondary mortgage market; to seek fair and balanced solutions on lumber and other environmental issues; and to pursue a strong national policy agenda for housing to open new opportunities for millions of working American families who are unable to purchase or rent a decent home,” said Rayburn.

Toward this end, Rayburn met with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Leavitt and many of the nation’s most influential lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD), Senators George Allen (R-VA), Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Trent Lott (R-MS), House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO), House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley (R-OH) and Reps. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS).

Rayburn made it clear that NAHB wants to work with Congress and the Administration to:

• Ensure that the housing mission of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac remains the central focus as Congress moves to enact meaningful regulatory restructuring of the housing government-sponsored enterprises
• Enact homeownership tax credit legislation that will result in the construction and rehabilitation of 50,000 affordable housing units for working Americans each year
• •  Achieve balance in legislation so economic factors are considered as well as environmental factors
  •  Oppose quotas on Canadian softwood lumber shipments, allow lumber consumers to be factored into trade policy discussions and permit the legal cases now pending before NAFTA and World Trade Organization panels to proceed without delay
• Reform wetlands legislation to achieve consistency in designation, shorten the decision and appeals processes and provide a statutory definition of the term, “wetland”
• Support the EPA’s land revitalization program, which is designed to clean up and redevelop brownfields and lightly contaminated petroleum sites
• Protect the general permit storm water program and reform the EPA’s storm water enforcement policies so that they are timely, focused, predictable and tied to their environmental impact
• Strengthen the link between housing, jobs and the economy, noting that robust housing production has been critical to the economic recovery, producing hundreds of thousands of jobs and pouring billions of dollars into the economy.

Photos by Herman Farrer