Flood, Goodlander Introduce Legislation to Study and Temporarily Suspend BABA for HUD Affordable Housing Programs

House Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Chairman Mike Flood (R-NE) and Representative Maggie Goodlander (D-NH) today introduced the Build Housing Affordably Act, which would require HUD to conduct a comprehensive study of the impacts of Build America, Buy America (BABA) requirements on affordable housing development assisted with HUD programs and issue a report to Congress on the findings of the study. The bill suspends application of BABA to HUD programs until 60 days after HUD submits the report. Upon BABA’s reinstatement, the bill also sets a 90-day deadline for HUD to approve or deny BABA waiver requests submitted to the Department.

For the study, HUD would need to evaluate direct costs associated with procuring construction materials; indirect compliance costs, including for administrative expenses, consultant costs, and the cost of pursuing waivers; project delays attributed to BABA; projects left incomplete due to compliance burdens; and the number of affordable housing units not built due to BABA-related compliance costs. The study would also need to cover HUD’s policies and procedures for reviewing waivers, waiver processing time, the number of waivers granted, the use and effectiveness of public-interest waivers, the efficacy of HUD’s de minimis waiver, and the materials and products most frequently subject to waiver requests.

NCSHA has endorsed the bill. Bill text, a short summary, and the section-by-section summary are available here. NCSHA expects the House Financial Services Committee to soon mark up the legislation.