At a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) spoke about housing affordability.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I am really appreciative to Senator Reid for his willingness to tackle these tough issues
00:07and do it in a bipartisan way that we can actually achieve results for the American
00:12people.
00:13So thank you, Senator Reid, for your leadership.
00:16Thank you all for being here.
00:17This is certainly an important topic.
00:19I am particularly looking forward to hearing more about this as the chair of the Housing
00:22Subcommittee.
00:23You know, when I tackled this issue first off getting here, it's clearly an issue of
00:27supply and demand.
00:29This also has, it encumbers a lot more than that.
00:33You know, when we started looking at regulations, knowing that about 24, 25% of a new home cost
00:39is directly attributed to regulation, you think what is necessary and what is overburdensome.
00:45When you find out that, you know, Americans are no longer buying their first home, that
00:49piece of the American dream in their late 20s, but rather in their late 30s, early 40s,
00:54if then, can they achieve that?
00:56How do we make this more obtainable for every American?
01:00There's a number of approaches.
01:01Senator Reid mentioned the one that we had, you know, of government assistant programs
01:05that will help people actually achieve upward mobility, that will help them stand on their
01:09own two feet and be able to live their version of the American dream, which is so critically
01:16important.
01:17But there are other things that we've been doing that we feel like can kind of claw back
01:21on some of this stuff.
01:22You know, environmental regulations under NEPA have directly stifled housing supply.
01:28When we look at Alabama, we have a great example, I loved hearing what Senator Ricketts was
01:32saying of things that they were doing in Nebraska.
01:34In Alabama, we have a great example through our fortified roof program.
01:39It incentivizes strong home building and it's able to do that, you know, encouraging people
01:44to build homes that will withstand storms, obviously without exposing or imposing excessive
01:51environmental standards in the process.
01:53It has been a win-win and has been wildly successful.
01:57So there's certainly a way to do both and there's a balance that needs to be achieved.
02:02Mr. Glacier, can you speak to the impact of erroneous environmental and land use regulations
02:07and the ability to build homes to meet those demands?
02:12Thank you, Senator, and thank you for your leadership on this topic.
02:18It is an odd irony that often environmental regulations are counterproductive environmentally.
02:23So about 15 years ago, I wrote a paper with California environmental economist Matthew
02:27Kahn, currently at the University of Southern California, which tried to measure the carbon
02:32emissions associated with building in different parts of the country.
02:36We did this normalizing for family size, normalizing for income.
02:40We found, unsurprisingly, that by far the lowest carbon emission parts of the country
02:45naturally were coastal California.
02:47Nothing to do with the regulation.
02:48It's the weather, just to be entirely clear.
02:51It's January's that don't require you to heat like crazy and it's July's that don't require
02:54you to air condition, okay?
02:56If you cared about reducing America's carbon emissions, you should then be saying, let's
03:00build, build, baby build on the California, you know, on San Francisco Bay.
03:06Let's add in as much housing as we possibly can.
03:08And yet California housing, partially because of the famous Friends of Mammoth case, which
03:11requires a significant environmental review locally for any California project, right?
03:17They face the most onerous environmental regulations possible.
03:20And the effect of that is moving building from places where it is good for the environment
03:24to being places where it is less good to the environment.
03:27And you see that happen over and over again.
03:29And partially it's a mistake that regulators make that they think they're actually stopping
03:32the building.
03:33But it doesn't stop the building.
03:35It just moves it someplace else and it moves it to a place that is worse for the environment.
03:38No, I appreciate that.
03:39And I have a couple more follow-up questions on that.
03:42I would love to submit for the record for you, if that's okay, because I want to dig
03:45down on that.
03:46I am short on time.
03:47Mayor Johnson, I heard you say to Chair Scott, talked about a little bit of the local challenges
03:54that are occurring.
03:55I am a big believer that the best thing that the federal government can do in most situations
03:59is just get out of the way.
04:02As the daughter of two small business owners, I saw that firsthand.
04:05I think local leaders know best, their boots on the ground, and local solutions work best
04:10for the people they serve.
04:11Can you talk briefly about how we are ensuring, how we enable and equip our state and local
04:17leaders to meet the unique challenges that their communities face, or what we can do
04:22better in that regard?
04:23I appreciate that question, Senator.
04:26And I will tell you, it's interesting.
04:30We look to Washington for a couple things at the local level.
04:33One, you've all figured out, it's money, right?
04:36We always are looking for money from Washington.
04:38But the other thing is leadership, and thought leadership.
04:42And sometimes, being so close to the people, it's good.
04:47You know exactly what's going on, but it can be noisy.
04:52Sometimes the folks who are a little further away can look at a problem and see it nationally.
04:56And if you don't look at this housing issue nationally, you won't understand what's really
05:00going on.
05:02At the city level, we are competing with our other cities for people, institutional investment.
05:12We want corporate relocations.
05:14We want jobs.
05:15We want higher education institutions.
05:17We're competing for those things.
05:19So as a mayor, my job is to try to make Dallas as awesome as it can be, make the quality
05:25of life as high as it can be.
05:27The result of that, when I'm successful, is pressure on my housing market.
05:33Because we're not building enough houses, new ones, to add to the housing stock fast
05:37enough.
05:38The new folks are just adding pressure to the market in the form of more demand in terms
05:44of people and what they're willing to pay for.
05:47They're more well compensated.
05:48Again, like I said, they're coming from the coast, and our housing market looks like a
05:52bargain to them.
05:53So what we need from, I really, I'm saying this over and over again, because I was very
05:59honored to be asked to be here today, we need the understanding of Congress that this is
06:06a problem that has to be attacked nationally.
06:09Because we're just pushing the issue around.
06:13We really do need to have a build, baby, build approach to housing.
06:17And in addition to the leadership, you know, that we were looking for from our friends
06:22here in Washington, it's not always about coming and asking for money, per se, in the
06:28form of a new program.
06:30But there are ways that, and it's above my pay grade, I'll let all of these wonderful
06:34pieces of legislation I'm hearing about figure out how to incent us to do what is within
06:39our purview.
06:40I would be run out of any room back home, or in any group of mayors, if I didn't say
06:45that we do believe that the zoning issues, the process and permitting issues are going
06:51to always be best handled at the local level.
06:54That does not mean, though, that you cannot attach, as I believe Senator Kennedy was implying,
07:00you cannot attach benefits to us doing things better in the right way.
07:06If you want to reward a city that reduces their permitting time and builds X housing
07:12units per year at a goal or a rate that you set, I'm all for that.
07:18Dallas will jump in that competition.
07:20We would gladly enter that competition to increase our housing starts, to attract some
07:24sort of federal benefit.
07:26But it's not a new program we're looking for.
07:29It's a change in the narrative.
07:30Absolutely.
07:31Well, Mr. Chair, thank you.
07:32I have a question for Mr. Yelanek, and I will submit that for the record.
07:37I've run out of time.
07:40Senator Warner.
07:41Well, thank you.