This free event is designed to update the real estate community on the projects and initiatives now underway in Southern Dallas, including how these projects may impact land costs, relocation opportunities and other consumer analytics in that part of town. The meeting will be from 8:30 until 11:00 a.m. in the Orion Ballroom and will be hosted by the Mayor himself.

It will be free of charge to all HBA members. Please RSVP to Sylvia Davila at the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce, 214-943-4567 x16 or Sylvia@oakcliffchamber.com.

SENATE

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

COMMITTEE: Intergovernmental Relations

TIME & DATE: 10:00 AM, Thursday, May 03, 2012

PLACE: University of North TX at Dallas, Room 138 A and B

CHAIR: Senator Royce West

The Senate Committee on Intergovernmental Relations will meet on Thursday, May 3, 2012 at 10:00 AM on the University of North Texas at Dallas campus, located at 7400 University Hills Blvd. in Dallas, Texas 75241, in Room 138 A and B. The Committee will hear invited and public testimony on the following interim charges:

• Study the impact that regulatory requirements have on the price of residential housing, including costs and benefits during the development, construction, sale, and resale of housing. Consider how regulatory loads affect the ability of the housing market to return to normal economic levels, and focus on the impact on the sale of new and used homes. Include costs and benefits of individual categories or types of regulation to allow a better assessment of ways to improve the affordability of housing.

• Review state policies regarding the provision of affordable housing, including ways to better coordinate existing federal, state, county, and city resources to appropriately increase homeownership and make recommendations to address any issues. Identify any impediments that prevent local governments from using existing tools, such as land trusts, land banks, and other available incentives. Study methods to improve the provision of affordable housing to special-needs populations, such as co-location with social services and coordination with mass transit.

• Study the most effective ways to identify and report data on homeless and runaway youth, and develop recommendations for prevention and maximizing services for this population.

TAB’s Model Safety Plan and training webinar will provide you with comprehensive guidelines to help you train your employees regarding their responsibilities and to help you establish good safety procedures and systems for recordkeeping required by OSHA.

Once you have completed a brief survey at the end of the webinar that trains you on the use of the Model Safety Plan, you will receive a Certificate of Completion from TAB. In the event of an inspection by OSHA, the addition of the certificate to your safety plan helps show that you are making every effort to comply with OSHA regulations.
At a cost to TAB members* of only $249.99 (plus shipping & handling and sales tax), you will receive:

1. Texas Association of Builders Model Construction Safety Program and Jobsite Safety Standards Package© CD that      includes a User Guide and the Model Safety Plan.
2. Access to a webinar that will train you on the use of the Model Safety Plan.
3. Upon completion of the webinar, a Certificate of Completion stating that you have completed the webinar that provided you with detailed information on developing your company’s safety plan using TAB’s OSHA-reviewed Model Safety Plan.

All builders must meet the minimum safety standards set forth in 29 CFR 1926 (OSHA Health and Safety Standards for the Construction Industry). Failure to do so can result in fines greater than $36,000.

Click here for more information and to order.   

While the current rule and the proposal do not directly affect home building and development companies, it affects industries that supply raw materials, such as cement and concrete, to home builders – and as the thresholds become lower may begin to affect large multifamily buildings as well.

The Tailoring Rule became effective in January 2011 and requires that owners obtain a pre-construction permit for structures that are expected to emit more than 100,000 tons of GHGs per year. In cases where companies have existing units emitting more than 75,000 tons per year, EPA requires those firms to get a Title V permit to operate.

The Tailoring Rule also required EPA to review its progress in permitting GHG-emitting facilities and indicated the agency’s intention to ratchet down its thresholds from the current levels.

The proposal is part of EPA’s so-called “step-by-step” plan to review and amend the rule. While EPA does not seek to reduce the emissions’ thresholds in this rulemaking, it proposes a number of measures the agency believes will streamline the permitting process. Nonetheless, EPA also requested comments relating to future strategies for the GHG permitting process as it contemplates lowering the emission thresholds.

A general permit is one strategy EPA is examining. However, as NAHB pointed out in its comments, members’ experiences with EPA’s Construction General Permit and the Army Corps of Engineers’ Nationwide Permit have been arduous as the agencies have made these general permits more complex and difficult to obtain.

For more information about EPA’s regulation of GHGs under the Clean Air Act, please contact Matt Watkins at 202-266-8327.

With the strong backing of NAHB, House Transportation Chairman John Mica (R-Fla.), along with ranking member Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), Water Resources Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio), Agriculture Chairman Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) and ranking member Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) unveiled the bill to reduce the overreach of federal power under the Clean Water Act and to ease the regulatory burdens for America’s businesses, farmers and individual property owners.

NAHB is urging its members to call their representatives and ask them to cosponsor this important bill to compel the EPA and Corps to go back to the drawing board and craft a balanced approach to federal jurisdiction of the nation’s waterways.

H.R. 4965 is a companion measure to Senate bill S. 2245, the Preserve Waters of the United States Act, which was introduced by Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and 29 other senators on March 28. NAHB continues to seek additional support for the Senate legislation as well.

The nation’s home builders have long supported the goals of the Clean Water Act, which is called into play when homes are built near rivers or wetlands and when builders take steps to avoid stormwater runoff from construction sites.

But recklessly broadening the scope of the act to include virtually all waters – including roadside ditches — within its regulatory reach will severely restrict the industry’s ability to recover and make new homes more costly without a corresponding environmental benefit, said NAHB Chairman Barry Rutenberg.

In May 2011, the EPA and Corps issued this draft guidance that significantly broadens the definition of federal waters of the United States under the Clean Water Act, allowing the EPA to go from regulating oceans and rivers to even the smallest bodies of water, including mudflats, prairie potholes and roadside ditches.

The proposal, which was sent in final form to the Office of Management and Budget in February, is radically broader in scope than previous guidance documents on this topic.

By issuing a guidance document as opposed to going through the more transparent rule-making process, EPA and the Corps are bypassing the necessary public outreach required under the Administrative Procedures Act and failing to fully consider the legal, economic and unforeseen consequences of their actions.

Upon introducing the bill, Rep. Mica said in a press statement that “this guidance would allow the unprecedented regulation of waters, occasionally wet areas and land use decisions not previously subject to federal regulation. Any regulatory expansion under the Clean Water Act must follow proper, transparent rulemaking procedures – not the unlawful, backdoor conversion of publicly unvetted agency guidance into de facto federal regulation.”

On March 28, House and Senate members sent a letter to OMB pressuring the Administration to halt the implementation of this water guidance overreach.

Further, the guidance uses an overly broad interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Rapanos case that addressed the issue of jurisdiction over “waters of the U.S.” under the Clean Water Act. The guidance contends that virtually all wet areas that connect in any way to navigable waters are jurisdictional, an assertion that was rejected in the Rapanos decision.

Warning of the severe economic consequences if the EPA and Corps guidance document is finalized, Rutenberg said: “This blatant regulatory overreach would lead to many more land development, road construction and residential projects requiring federal permits and would exacerbate permitting delays. In turn, this will increase construction costs, cause job losses, drive down housing affordability and hamper economic growth.”

For more information, email Courtney Flezzani at NAHB or call her at 800-368-5242 x8459.

Risser confirmed that it is the 2009 IECC or an equivalent code that must be adopted — not the 2012 edition. DOE then followed up with an email communication to NAHB reiterating what we had been told. That communication is viewable by clicking here.

The Texas Legislative Council has a great website that illustrates the revised district lines. Just follow the instructions posted on their website to find your district and/or to see how the maps have changed.

HBA’s HOMEPAC has recently made contributions to the following candidates:

• Roger Burns, candidate for Texas House District 67
• Bill Keffer, candidate for Texas House District 114
• Jim Pruitt, candidate for Texas House District 33
• Pat Fallon, candidate for Texas House District 106
• Brent Bilhartz, candidate for Frisco City Council Place 1
• David Hillock, candidate for Mayor of Little Elm

HBA members are encouraged to identify candidates that they believe will support the housing industry in the Dallas area and to attend meetings with HBA leaders and staff.

Early voting for municipal elections runs from April 30-May 8. Most municipal general elections are on May 12.

Early voting for the Texas Primary Election runs from May 14-25. The Texas Primary Election will be held on May 29.

The plan, which was developed through a specially appointed NAHB working group and approved by NAHB’s Board of Directors at its recent meeting in Orlando, stresses that any transition away from the current housing finance system must be done in a careful and deliberate manner to avoid further disruptions to an already fragile market.

It is also built upon the recognition that, as the private market assumes a greater role in the mortgage marketplace, it is absolutely vital to maintain an appropriate level of government support to preserve financial stability, promote investor confidence and ensure liquidity and stability for homeownership and rental housing.

In keeping with these core directives, NAHB’s plan seeks to:

• Include private, federal and state sources of housing capital.
• Offer a reasonable menu of sound mortgage products for both single-family and multifamily housing that is governed by prudent underwriting standards and adequate oversight and regulation.
• Transition Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to a new mortgage securitization system for single-family and multifamily conventional mortgages.
• Consider the 12 regional Federal Home Loan Banks for this securitization role.
• Phase in the new system over time and allow Fannie and Freddie to remain operational until the alternative system is fully functioning.
• Provide a federal backstop to ensure that conventional 30-year home loans and adjustable rate mortgages are available at reasonable interest rates and terms.
• Structure the federal support to the conventional mortgage market of the future through a privately funded insurance fund similar to the FDIC’s backing of the fund that insures savings deposits. This will allow the government to be the insurer of last resort in order to reduce the risk to taxpayers.
• Continue the role of the federal government housing agencies (HUD, FHA, VA, USDA and Ginnie Mae).
• Expand the role of the Federal Home Loan Banks in the housing finance system.
• Restart a carefully regulated fully private mortgage-backed securities market through reforms to the securities ratings system to remove conflicts of interest that led to problems in the past.
• Repair other flaws that produced the housing boom and bust by closing the gaps in standards and oversight that allowed and facilitated the improper and illegal activities in financial and mortgage markets.

By including a strong federal backstop for both single-family and multifamily mortgage markets and ensuring a consistent stream of mortgage credit, NAHB believes this plan will produce a sound housing finance system that provides a stable and affordable supply of credit for home buyers and rental housing. Going forward, NAHB will be working with the Administration, Congress and policy stakeholders to make this goal a reality, and we have already begun to promote our blueprint among lawmakers and the media.

For more, read NAHB’s comprehensive plan for housing finance reform that was approved by the Board in Orlando at this link and see our recent public statement here.

For additional information, email Chellie Hamecs at NAHB or call her at 800-368-5242 x8425.