Don’t make sustainable affordable housing harder to build

Green amendment won’t bridge affordability-sustainability gap

Twenty-three years ago, we started Foundation for Building with a mission of “improving the sustainability, energy performance and livability of our built environment.” We recognized there was so much more that could be done to create affordable housing, and do it in a way that is much more sustainable than we had originally thought possible.

Since 2006, the Foundation for Building (FFB) has been one of only two organizations authorized by the state of New Mexico to certify new construction projects that voluntarily qualify for the Sustainable Building Tax Credit (SBTC), which has been used as a model for similar legislative initiatives across the country. To date, nearly 10,000 single-family New Mexico homes have been certified under the rigorous performance demands of FFB’s Build Green NM Standards. And the vast majority of those homes were affordable because of the economic benefits of the SBTC and the inherent efficiencies builders employ to stay competitive in the marketplace.

But, today, that affordability is being challenged by supply obstacles, skilled labor shortages, land-use restrictions and regulations, and insurance costs. The result is a daunting and growing gap between affordability and the sustainability represented by green building standards.

Both the city of Albuquerque and the state of New Mexico are proposing funding and legislative initiatives that will help address that growing gap, but not at a level that will make it possible for New Mexico families to afford a healthy and energy-efficient home in the future. Only the marketplace working within reasonable, but highperforming, building standards can build at a level to satisfy the thousands of new families coming into the housing market each year across our state.

Regrettably, there is currently an effort to implement a constitutional amendment, termed the “green amendment,” which will make these affordability challenges even worse. It’s hard to argue against a right to clean air and water, and a self-sustaining ecosystem, as is proposed with this amendment, but exactly how are those aspirations defined and determined? In the absence of objective definitions, builders and the marketplace will be left with significant unknowns, which will inevitably drive up the cost of housing further, while adding nothing meaningful to sustainability.

While a laudable goal, a constitutional amendment seeking “clean air and water” without specifics will result in the courts determining what those standards are, which will then result in untenable inefficiencies and drive up housing costs. It is substantially better and much more cost-effective if the private and public sectors together address the critical need to bridge the affordability-sustainability gap. The green amendment is simply the wrong way to go about it.