A Grim Reality Check

We find ourselves once again in the dire straits of a cycle where profit is paramount. Worse, many actions being taken are clearly based on nothing more than spite rather than scientific evidence or sound reasoning.

Each year, the March-April issue of Green Builder often features our reflections on the recently concluded industry trade shows, especially as a barometer for how the housing sector in general is doing and which topics are apparently top of mind.

This year being no exception, I looked back into the most recent five years of my participation in the reporting and found, not surprisingly, that while the landscape has changed dramatically in some respects, the important topics of the day resemble a familiar deck of cards that seems to be reshuffled over and over again.

In 2021, we were buoyed by optimism as we looked ahead into a season of greater environmental protection and accountability on the national stage. There was increased global emphasis on addressing climate issues and the unavoidable deliberations regarding optimized energy performance, improved indoor environment quality, and growing concerns around the availability and quality of water.

This emboldened the sustainability community to push open the door to serious discussions about resiliency in the built environment and re-examine the age-old debate of cost versus value.

Now, that playing field has, predictably, been turned upside down by a flash flood of meticulously prepared executive orders intended to gut any progress made during the previous administration. These orders also reach back as far as possible to undo all regulations and rules that are intended to provide reliable long-term responses to increasingly serious concerns.

We find ourselves once again in the dire straits of a cycle where profit is paramount. Worse, many actions being taken are clearly based on nothing more than spite rather than scientific evidence or sound reasoning.

Meanwhile, the news overflows with the reporting of national-scale disasters, natural and manmade. Unfortunately, the distinction between the two is becoming more blurred as we weave the human factor in those calculations. Shrinking polar ice and prolonged droughts are simply being assimilated into the routine record keeping of the day, failing to raise the alarms they once did. 

Deadly and devastating storms are increasing in frequency and intensity to the point where some victims are targeted multiple times within a matter of weeks—sometimes in locations that had previously been assumed low risk. The impacts on human suffering, natural systems, resources for recovery and the economy escalate regularly.    

As an industry, our attention is now tuned in to what effect all of this is having on the availability and affordability of homeowners insurance. It may even be a harbinger of challenges regarding access to all mortgages and a constrictive restructuring of the already-daunting path to homeownership. But the industry just wants to know how we are going to sell houses.  Somebody else can worry about the rest.

With all of this as a backdrop, the self-appointed “voices of the industry” don’t miss a single beat as they chorus their eternal opposition to “onerous” regulations, the unfair and crushing costs of building materials, and the endless struggle (self-inflicted, I might add) to attract a quality workforce needed to deliver an acceptable product to an increasingly skeptical generation of buyers. 

If we listen to the messages from the organizations that make millions of dollars annually from the successes of the big trade events, they would have us focus on the record number of exhibitors and impressive count of attendees—as if those metrics are all we need to know to conclude that all is well and that we can continue with business as usual, if we could only catch the ear of the administration.

I continually attempt to assess the facts and examine the evidence in order to get my arms around where we really are at this point in time. I keep getting the same vaguely uneasy feeling that creeps in when I give serious thought to the Earth’s tectonic plates and the associated fault lines that circle the globe, somewhat hidden from view by lurking mostly beneath the surface, but with the pressure mounting, however gradually, day after day.

Still, there are certain forces that are beyond our capacities to control, and others we simply choose to ignore.