St. Johns Housing Partnership executive director Bill Lazar, a Florida contractor with 38 years in affordable housing, explains why affordability is set by what a household can carry each month rather than by what a home costs to build, and how rehab and weatherization work for low-income and senior homeowners fits in.
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Mike Collignon: And welcome to the impact series on the Green Builder Media Network. I'm your host, Mike Collignon. On this podcast, I'll have one on one conversations with leaders and innovators from a wide variety of disciplines. We'll talk about how they got into their field, the lessons they've learned, and advice they have for future generations of leaders. Today, I'm joined by Bill Lazar.
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Mike Collignon: He is the executive director of Saint John's Housing Partnership and a licensed Florida residential contractor. He's worked with affordable housing programs for 38 years. He served on the boards of the Saint John's Builders Council, the Florida Green Building Coalition, Florida Weatherization Network, Green Builder Coalition, and the Affordable Housing Advisory Council for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.
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Mike Collignon: Clearly, Bill is a strong advocate for green building but also high school vocational programs, as he currently serves on the Menendez High School Construction Academy Advisory Council. Bill. Welcome to the Impact series.
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Bill Lazar: Hi, Mike. Thanks for inviting me. The opportunity.
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Mike Collignon: Well, I'm glad you're here because affordability is the buzzword of the moment. There's so many elements.
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Bill Lazar: Yeah.
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Mike Collignon: So many elements that go into affordability. The basic economics of supply and demand. Price of materials, profit margin, interest rates. Did I miss any.
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Bill Lazar: Yeah. Because I when I see when I think of affordability, I think of the person who's using the product. Creating the product is one thing, but a in affordable housing is trying to get you to that point to where your monthly housing expenses are roughly 30% of what your gross household income is by family size. And that's that's one of the ways that I got interested in green building.
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Bill Lazar: You know, we're a weatherization agency. So for 37 plus years, I've been doing energy conservation measures under the Department of Energy's weatherization program. And a significant part of that training is how do you lower someone's electric bill? Because for a low income person, what you pay on your electricity is a much larger percentage of your household budget than anything else.
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Bill Lazar: So when everybody talks about affordability, I'm always I'm always out there going, yeah, yeah, yeah, but all of that is nice. But but ultimately it boils down to can somebody afford it or are they getting in around 30% of their income. And then you have the the two sides to it is are you talking about affordable rental opportunities or home ownership opportunities because they're very different.
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Bill Lazar: And the housing partnership is both our our primary business activity has been rehabbing substandard housing homes that people own. Most of them are seniors. Most of them are are of limited income. And they've they've owned their homes for 20, 30, 40, sometimes 50 years. Some of them are mobile homes that are 30 and 40 years old, and they need help fixing them up.
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Bill Lazar: It may be energy conservation. It may be accessibility. Making some a bathroom accessible for someone who's now in a wheelchair or mobility challenged. But you know, those are the things that when you start thinking about it, it's a very different perspective. If you're trying to rehab something, if you're trying to build something new for somebody, or if you're trying to build an affordable rental and keep the rents affordable based on whatever debt service you have on it.
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Bill Lazar: So we've we've sort of wandered through all three of those realms over the last 35 years, and they're all very different. And to a certain degree, the conversations about what you build and how you build it and everything else, take a back seat to who's it going to be affordable for. I mean, at the end of the day, Americans having a housing crisis, and it's it's for people at almost every level.
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Bill Lazar: I mean, we're I'm at a county where the median sales price is about $500,000. And what that really means is that you're not moving here and buying a house. If your household income isn't over $180,000 a year, and that leaves out a lot. It leaves out everybody in the trades. It leaves out most teachers, most firefighters, you know.
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Bill Lazar: So so it's a real challenge trying to build affordable rental property on the small scale. You think about the whole conversation about missing middle that everybody talks about as one way to deal with affordability, even that is challenging if you're competing with rental investors whose goal isn't affordability, but it's to build something just so they can turn around and rent it out, and they will pay premium for all those lots that are close to jobs, close to town, everything else, because they can charge more.
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Bill Lazar: And that that has swallowed up a lot of what I would refer to as starter home lots. I'm in a working class community that is two miles from downtown Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine is the oldest continuously settled city in America, going back to 1565. Yet people in this neighborhood are still on septic and well. But we've got rental investors that will pay $180,000 for an old trailer, because they can rent it out to somebody for $1,800 a month.
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Bill Lazar: And so now you come to this whole conversation you have about value appraisals around here aren't based on the quality of what you build. It's based on the rental investor who bought that property down the road and what they paid for the lot or the house or anything else is based on the return they're going to get. It's not based on is it energy efficient?
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Bill Lazar: You know, I mean, we build a house that's 1200ft². And, you know, based on the her score, we can pretty comfortably say the utility bill, if you operate the house normally is going to be less than 100 bucks a month. The rental investor doesn't care if it's 100 bucks or 300 bucks, but that's a big part of affordability on the side of the end user, not on the side of the producer.
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Bill Lazar: So I mean, that's why all these conversations it really makes it makes a big difference, you know, what are you talking about? Because good friend of mine was a builder. He said to me, look, at a certain point, builders will build anything. We'll build doghouse as long as we can make a living at it. But you can't expect the small builder to build something and not make a living at it, because they're trying to provide a service in the community to find a home for you or your family or something.
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Bill Lazar: And that's that's what we've kind of lost over the last 20 or 30 years. Is that capacity to keep small builders busy building affordable housing? They did more of the starter homes than the big box builders that may be out there doing small communities or something like that. Now, we lost 30 or 40% of our small builders in the last recession, and we weren't.
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Bill Lazar: And we come back to our vocational programs. We weren't feeding that pipeline. We didn't have a whole pool of young men and women that are ready to become the there's some out there, but but nowhere near and not enough.
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Mike Collignon: Well, and to your point about the, you know, investors coming in, there was mention just yesterday I saw the headline that the administration is considering a ban on investor purchases of of.
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Bill Lazar: Yeah. I mean there was there was a news story a couple of weeks ago. They said over the next couple of years that corporate America may own 20% of the single family homes in America as rentals. That's not good when you've got anybody treating shelter like a widget, and their only focus is going to be what's the return on our investment?
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Bill Lazar: It's not going to be is this house operating efficiently? Is it a healthy home? Is it a resilient home? That's not their their focus is how much money can I get out of it. And one of the ways I get money out of it is not taking care of the maintenance issues. I've seen. I've seen some of these corporate leases where they're literally saying you, as the occupant, are responsible for any major mechanical repairs.
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Mike Collignon: It sounds like ownership, right?
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Bill Lazar: But they're putting they're putting it off on the on the rent or going, well, if the AC breaks, the heater breaks, it's on you don't call me. So I think what the president did I mean, I think that's a start. It's it's not going to have anything to do with the with the production of it. It's not going to change.
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Bill Lazar: It may have it may have an impact on value somewhere down the road. If we're not competing with those rental investors to buy those lots anymore because they had they had so much cheap money that they could buy stuff that, you know, we couldn't. I mean, I knew one builder, he had a he had one of the big hedge fund companies.
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Bill Lazar: They paid him to build 30 homes a year. They would fund him to go out by a lot, build a house, turn it over to them. And it was all in house financing. They then sold it to a subsidiary and marked the price up so that they would have some kind of a markup on it. And then they were renting it for 1800 to $2500 a month.
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Bill Lazar: But they don't care if they put six people on a three bedroom house as long as they're making the rent on it. So he he had a steady business, kept him busy for a year or two doing that. But it didn't help our affordable housing. It's those weren't affordable homes. You know, just because something is affordable, it doesn't mean it's getting down to that workforce.
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Bill Lazar: You know? And I think the big challenge is, what do you do with people who are making less than 50 or $100,000 a year? Those are the if they're single parent around here, they're toast. Just simply because, I mean, anything on the market is 15 to $1800 a month. You can't you can't do that if you're making $50,000 a year, you know, and with interest rates at 6%, it's, you know, it's even that becomes challenging.
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Bill Lazar: I mean, I'll I'll be honest, the thing that will fix affordability all day long is 1% money. If I want to help people under 80% of the area median income, we just need a national program that will provide financing for builders or for homebuyers who will build to a certain market of our economy.
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Mike Collignon: Well, it was something I was going to get to is, you know, interest rates because it's to me, it's one of the the factors in the equation. Huge. I guess for me, I don't know if, if or when we'll ever see sub 3% interest rates again. Yeah. It does seem that they've stabilized for the time being, and maybe they'll even inch lower this year.
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Mike Collignon: I think the impending fed chair appointment will be a very interesting decision, because I think we'll see historical norms challenged to put it nicely.
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Bill Lazar: Out the window. But but.
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Mike Collignon: In regards to affordable housing, I mean, are there programs that can help reduce mortgage rates like other programs right now that exist?
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Bill Lazar: Yeah, there I mean, and every state probably has different ones. Florida has probably one of the most, most unique funding strategies for affordable housing. It's it's a doc stamp based on real estate tax. It's called the Housing Trust Fund. And it was set up I basically built my career using this money, but it's set up back in about 1992.
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Bill Lazar: And for every real estate transaction, there's some doc stamps on the real estate transaction that go into a housing trust fund, and then the state reapportionment money out to you based on some kind of a pro rata share. So every local county government and some local municipalities get anywhere from 350 to several million dollars a year to use strictly for fordable housing programs, and that it has all sorts of convolutions to how much can be used for new construction, how much should be used for people under 80% area median income under 50%?
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Bill Lazar: How much is set aside for housing counseling? But it's a creative pot of money. And then you've got all the normal affordable housing programs, whether it's USDA or HUD. And then you have the tax credit programs, which are the big 800 pound gorilla when it comes to building density and multifamily rental housing. The tax credit programs are really designed to build apartments that look just like market rate apartments.
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Bill Lazar: And they, you know, the whole idea everybody always complains about, well, it's going to be a project like Cabrini-Green. Well, these tax credit programs, they look like just everything else down the street. They've got exercise rooms, they have playgrounds, they might have swimming pools. It's the financing structure that makes it work. And those tax credits are sold out there in the market to people who are way smarter than me.
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Bill Lazar: That figure how to do it USDA, the Rural Development Program has another tier of multifamily property that they own. They've got one of units across the country. We own two right now, and we're in the process of acquiring two others. The magic to USDA is that it's 1% money now. They only have so much of it. But we're buying an apartment complex that the owner, the he built it and developed and managed it for 40 years.
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Bill Lazar: His mortgage matured or expired. He paid it off. The USDA requirement, though, says that when you're done with your mortgage before you listed on the open market, you have to you have to offer it for six months to to a nonprofit who would buy it and keep it in the affordable housing portfolio. And so we get notices when those come up and we're in the process of buying one.
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Bill Lazar: Now the owner gets full market value. So his property that I think he owes less than $100,000 on, it's worth about 4.5 million bucks for a 54 unit property for low income seniors. We're buying that and we're borrowing 2.5%. We're borrowing about $2.5 million to rehab it. But the way we're doing it is because USDA is financing the acquisition with 1% money.
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Bill Lazar: You know, that's that's what makes it work. And even though you say you're not sure, you'll see a good down below 3% at a certain point, if we think housing our workforce and housing people in our communities is important, then we have to make it work. You know, you know, you know what? Levittown was right back up in New York after World War two.
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Bill Lazar: Mr. Levitt was approached by the federal government or the state of New York and said, we need to build housing for our returning veterans after World War Two. We owe it to them. And he said, okay, so I need I need a lower trust loan to buy the land. I need a low interest loan to finance the infrastructure, and we need more that will make this affordable for these returning veterans.
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Bill Lazar: So they put together programs that did it. And ultimately I don't care. You know, anyone will sit there and tell me, well, you know that's kind of hard to do. It's like, well, I'm sorry, you want a builder to build something and keep it under a certain price range and still make a living at it and still sell it to somebody who makes less than $100,000.
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Bill Lazar: That's awful. Damn hard to do. So it's just I think it's a matter of will. And I've always said that when it comes to really developing new affordable housing, you've got to have local government involved for regulatory relief. You've got to have builders and developers who will step up and say, I can do it. Volume. If you're not making a lot of money on individual homes, but you can do 50 at a time, now someone's interested and you've got to have lenders who will come up with the appropriate race, and then everybody's got to be working on the housing counseling side to get the buyers prepared.
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Bill Lazar: And even for the renters in many cases, you know, when we were all at least when I was a kid, that was before your time. They they taught they taught classes on balancing your checkbook. And in high school, you know, you had those sort of home type classes. We quit doing that. And years ago I asked the superintendent of our local schools why we quit those life training, you know, courses.
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Bill Lazar: And he said it got pushed out by all the requirements for standardized testing and everything else. But that's where, you know, we have a whole generation of several generations of people that didn't understand credit, didn't understand filling out a credit application costs you points on your score, you know, how do you pay? What do you pay off? When do you pay off?
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Bill Lazar: How do you figure out how to not use credit scores? I mean, when I was in college, I must have got probably three applications a month from a credit card company that just wanted me to apply for a gas card. There is no you know, it was the easiest thing in the world. Took a long time to pay off some of them, but but that's, you know, I mean, if we're really serious, I mean, you've got to have it on all fronts, and we've got, you know, we've got both HUD and USDA at the federal side managing some of these programs.
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Bill Lazar: Sadly, you know, one of the best financing programs for first time homebuyers was a USDA 100% program. That was usually two points below whatever the current market rate was, and could extend the mortgage out to 35 years to make it more affordable for a family that had small kids. So they adjusted it to meet your budget and your family expenses.
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Bill Lazar: So it is possible. And I have to be honest, I don't care if it's possible for the entire market. I mean, I'm concerned about stabilizing our workforce. All these people, whether they're first responders, teachers, grocery store workers, we need them in our communities. Everybody wants them to serve them somehow. And if they can't live close to work, that's what creates traffic.
00:18:15:24 - 00:18:40:29
Bill Lazar: That's what creates all sorts of other, you know, issues. And eventually it ends up creating challenges with homelessness, which if you get to that point, it's a really expensive fix. I mean, we you know, I hear stories all the time from some of the nonprofits I work with. They have seniors who come and ask if they can pull up their car and sleep in their parking lot because they lost the rental property, got sold out from under them, and they don't know where to go.
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Bill Lazar: And can they at least park here in your parking lot while they, you know, it's a safe and secure place outside of Walmart or something like that? So it's there's no easy solution. And, you know, this gets us back to what you and I like talking about with green building. I mean, brought up the fact that what working class people and folks with limited incomes really need is housing that is truly affordable and is green in all the right ways.
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Bill Lazar: It's energy efficient, that's water efficient, that is low maintenance. You know, those are the critical that is healthy, you know, improved indoor air quality. Biggest thing we ever learned with the weatherization program was how to use a blower door and how important it is. We'll use it on any kind of rehab. If we're building a wheelchair ramp for somebody, we'll run a blower door test just to see how the ductwork is, because if there's something simple going on, you could save somebody, you know, $50 a month by just patching up some ductwork that the boot is torn off, or I can't tell you how many times cable guys go up in the attic to work
00:19:45:01 - 00:20:02:22
Bill Lazar: on something, and they cut a little hole in the ductwork because it's so damn hot up there. And if they if they had mastic and they mastic it back, it'd be okay. But they, they got black electrical tape and that lasts for about a week in the humid air. And then it's now you're cooling off the squirrels.
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Mike Collignon: Well then I was going to also get to that too. So let's let's do it now. You know, you do a lot of retrofits. I mean, you do retrofits and you do know construction with the housing.
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Bill Lazar: Most of what we do is retrofits.
00:20:15:29 - 00:20:31:20
Mike Collignon: That's right. Quite a bit more. So what are some easy choices that a homeowner can make when it comes to retrofits that can really maximize ROI, help drive down these operational costs that you were referencing?
00:20:31:26 - 00:21:05:16
Bill Lazar: The the hard part. The hard part always ends up being getting somebody to give you an accurate assessment. And I there's a lot of trainings that I've gone through over the years on, like aging in place and that sort of thing. Weatherization is a great program that provides training. It's the it's the exact same program as the Energy Star program, except for the fact that one's run out of the Department of Energy, the other one is run out of the EPA, and they both use different algorithms, but it's the same product.
00:21:05:20 - 00:21:26:17
Bill Lazar: And if you use a blower door now, you have to convince somebody to hire the guy with a blower door to show up. You know, you have to pay him for that test. But if he finds that, you know, and the example I use all the time is windows are not the primary reason your electric bill is going through the roof, unless the glass is missing in the window.
00:21:26:20 - 00:21:48:13
Bill Lazar: For the most part, the air conditioner is improperly sized, the ductwork is leaking. There's other leaks in the house because the building envelope isn't improved. And that one hour trip with a blower door test just to pressurize house is going to tell you more about where you ought to put your money first. If you're concerned about your electric bill.
00:21:48:15 - 00:22:07:26
Bill Lazar: When we do stuff, it used to be a couple of years ago that putting in low flow toilets or low flow faucets was more expensive, and you had to really sort of say, okay, I'm going to say now it's the same price. You know, I remember years ago we were at a trade show down in Orlando. We were building a little subdivision called Hancock Place.
00:22:07:26 - 00:22:30:05
Bill Lazar: It was 36 homes for working class families. And the and the water management district was there. And the lady had this display out about water conservation measures. And she had this toilet. It was a oh Acuna toilets or something. I forget what it was, but she said, yes, it's a really great. It's got the two little buttons up here at the top, but it's low, low consumption.
00:22:30:06 - 00:22:47:12
Bill Lazar: It's what we recommend. And she was from our area and she said, Bill, we've been trying to talk to some of the big, you know, custom home builders about doing this. And they just they don't, you know, they don't want to they don't think it's necessary. No one's asking for it or anything else. And I said, well, how much are they?
00:22:47:14 - 00:23:06:21
Bill Lazar: She says, well, the guy next door to me, that's his table. It's his Corona toilets. That's who they were. They're out of Australia, I think. And so I went over and talked to the guy, and I think it was about $60 more, a toilet to put in his toilets, as opposed to the standard one we bought from Home Depot or Lowe's.
00:23:06:21 - 00:23:23:25
Bill Lazar: And so I looked at the guy and I said, so. So for 120 bucks on a house that I'm gonna sell for $125,000, someone is telling you not, I won't do that. He says, well, yeah, most of them are saying, no, they don't want to spend the extra money. And so we said, okay, I said, I'll buy all my toilets from you.
00:23:23:26 - 00:23:42:22
Bill Lazar: You know, can we craft an agreement now? And he was great. He was thrilled. I only put two toilets in a house. It's not like, you know, it's not like I was buying them for an apartment complex or something, which is a good idea to do. But I remember the next day he called me back up and he said, well, I told Deidre over, you know Deidre Irwin.
00:23:42:24 - 00:23:46:26
Mike Collignon: That's right, that's right. She's been she's a guest on this podcast too.
00:23:46:29 - 00:24:08:23
Bill Lazar: Well, she, that's I, that's where I met her. And she called me up and she said, you're buying these toilets. And I go, yes. She said, why? She says, well, we just think it's great. We're going to put you in our newsletter for doing the right thing. And I was like, oh, we're just buying two toilets. But they hadn't been able to get the bigger box builders to do it, and now the cost is the same.
00:24:08:24 - 00:24:29:20
Bill Lazar: They don't even have dual flush. They're just doing low flow toilets, low flow shower and and you know those two plus accessibility pretty much how we get all of our green scores when we go when we build a new house. I don't do green certifications on our rehab just because we're always on such a tight budget with some of these houses.
00:24:29:20 - 00:24:49:20
Bill Lazar: But if we put in faucets or toilets, or if we tell a sub to do it, we just we we prescribe, we want low flow. If we use and paint on the indoors, we want low VOC or no VOC paint. You know, it's those are things that are just kind of standard for us. So we've got the blower door test.
00:24:49:20 - 00:25:18:09
Bill Lazar: We're looking at the building envelope. And then it's what can we do for electricity. The biggest thing on the electric side, it's really getting the AC properly sized. And that over and over again, you know, is not what happens in a lot of these new constructions. You find these larger homes where the AC doesn't get to the unit at the top of the second story in the back of the house, or something else, because they've they've all got one return.
00:25:18:12 - 00:25:36:24
Bill Lazar: Yes. My my father in law has a house that was built back in the 70s. There is a return in every single room in the house and I remember asking my AC contractor said so I said, what's why is, why is he got to return in every room in the house, and the house is 50 years old and we're all putting one in.
00:25:36:25 - 00:25:48:12
Bill Lazar: He says, well, Billy says the industry just decided a long time ago we could save money like, but it's a crappier product. He said yup. And no one noticed, you know, no one, no one tied the two together.
00:25:48:13 - 00:25:49:11
Mike Collignon: Oh, man.
00:25:49:12 - 00:26:07:03
Bill Lazar: So it's, you know. So you're coming back to what can people do? You've got to hire somebody who can do that blower door test to tell you, you know, what's leaking. Because most contractors don't have a blower door. They're not going to be able to tell you. They're easily going to say, well, if we replace the windows, it'll probably help.
00:26:07:03 - 00:26:27:29
Bill Lazar: But the cost of replacing those windows is never going to cover the change in your electric bill. It may have a little bit of an impact, but it's not that much. I've you know, I've struggled with that here. You know, where Saint Augustine is. You know, we're sitting on the ocean and most of the homes I build are within 2 or 3 miles of the ocean.
00:26:27:29 - 00:26:40:04
Bill Lazar: So there's a whole concern with impact rated windows. And, you know, and I've had to look at it and go, as much as I want to put hurricane impact windows in, its three times the cost, you know.
00:26:40:05 - 00:26:41:19
Mike Collignon: And they're not required.
00:26:41:19 - 00:27:07:06
Bill Lazar: They're they're not. And well, there's certain zones I don't build on the coast for obvious reasons. But where we are 2 or 3 miles out and somebody just politically drew a line and said here, because you've seen these storm damages, I mean, hell, they were damaging homes in North Carolina, you know. So yeah, but it's but it's, that's that's where you're building the code doesn't require it in the areas where we build.
00:27:07:06 - 00:27:29:29
Bill Lazar: If it did, it'd be a real challenge. We built a, a concrete block, two story building for homeless veterans. It's called Patriot Place. And I was thinking it's concrete block and I put a metal roof on. I only put metal roofs on anymore. I don't use shingles at all. Because with the insurance industry in Florida, sooner or later you're going to get pushed to do it.
00:27:29:29 - 00:27:53:22
Bill Lazar: So we just said, let's just start out with a metal roof and then never have to worry it again. So we did, right concrete block, metal roof, low maintenance and then to put impact windows in. And I only had four windows in each one of these. Or 600 square foot one bedroom units for these veterans. The cost was going to be three times as much, and I'd have to wait almost six months to get the windows delivered.
00:27:53:22 - 00:28:18:13
Bill Lazar: And I just I couldn't prolong things that much. So we just put in standard windows, and we've toyed with the idea of coming back and putting hurricane shutters up. Problem with it is either putting up shutters that are mechanically operated is one thing, but the cost of putting them up and having to have my guys put them up, take them down, put them up again, you know, so we're still struggling with what do we do there?
00:28:18:13 - 00:28:36:28
Bill Lazar: And we just keep hoping that it's not going to be a necessity. I'm gonna feel terrible if it ever happens. But you know, those those are the things that everybody's got to consider. And Florida, Florida's just a big barrier island. I mean, at a certain point, we're all fooling ourselves into thinking that hurricanes not going to hit somewhere.
00:28:37:00 - 00:28:56:11
Bill Lazar: I mean, we've seen the Gulf Coast get battered and battered 100 miles in, well, 100 miles inland from here. You're in the Gulf, you know, so it it it is climate change. You know, we've had two governors that said we shouldn't say the word climate change because it was.
00:28:56:13 - 00:28:59:05
Mike Collignon: Now you're in trouble, Bill. Now you've done it.
00:28:59:07 - 00:29:27:08
Bill Lazar: But that's but, you know, if you got the insurance industry using the word and they're kind of using it as a curse word more than anything else, you got to deal with it. You know, you can't just sit here and say, oh, I'm not because it's coming. We've got I'm seeing people move to Florida because they came here for one reason or another, and the next thing you know, they're going, you know, I didn't realize property insurance was going to be so high because of the well.
00:29:27:08 - 00:29:49:29
Bill Lazar: And the one that always gets me is I didn't realize it was so humid. I can't go outside until September going, why don't you move to Florida? But, you know, people are literally moving here and then leaving because they can't handle the hurricanes. They can't handle the humidity and the property insurance. I was talking to someone from habitat up on the Gulf Coast.
00:29:50:06 - 00:29:54:26
Bill Lazar: Their property, their homeowner's insurance was more than their mortgage was.
00:29:55:03 - 00:29:57:06
Mike Collignon: Holy cow.
00:29:57:08 - 00:30:17:25
Bill Lazar: But you know so and and they built a decent quality home. Yeah. You know so it's but that's, that's the real challenge. And so, you know, all the other green building stuff that is out there, we do okay. On some of it. You know, we we don't put I don't use carpeting anymore. You know, we either do finish we're trying a house now would finish concrete.
00:30:17:25 - 00:30:43:04
Bill Lazar: But normally we just put down some level of vinyl flooring that has got a green score to it. Low VOC paints low, you know, low flow. Whatever. We put in what's called Florida friendly landscaping. So once it's established and doesn't need it, I don't put in sprinkler systems. I've gotten into arguments twice. We built two infill rental properties.
00:30:43:07 - 00:31:08:01
Bill Lazar: I'm just one with six units. The other was four units. And in both of them, the city utility department required me to have an irrigation meter. And I said, I'm not going to water anything. I'm not putting in a sprinkler system. I'm putting in Florida from the drought tolerant plants so I don't have to. Yeah, you know, but you still have to have an irrigation meter, which means they have me as a customer for life for $35 a month.
00:31:08:02 - 00:31:39:16
Bill Lazar: So one of my tenants uses it occasionally. He calls me up. I've got a garden out front. You mind if I use it for my garden? Oh, he's never going to use the minimum charge that I have for water, so. But it's just one. We don't even have that connection between the water management district that encourages, encourages, you know, drought tolerant landscaping and utility companies that even though they're in the business of selling water, they'd also like you to conserve it so they don't have to have those major capital improvements to often.
00:31:39:21 - 00:32:06:03
Mike Collignon: Wow, wow. Well, and on a future episode, I'm going to be talking to Doctor Jim White, and part of what he focuses on is sea level rise. And I'm sure we're going to be talking about Florida and the effects and the projections and the insurance ramifications will be we'll be getting to that. I want to go back to something, though, Bill.
00:32:06:05 - 00:32:34:10
Mike Collignon: You know, we know that there's a demand for affordable housing. What do you see in regards to the supply landscape out there? And I'm not saying just in your area, but I mean, you are you know, for those who don't know, Bill, I mean, Bill's list of awards is as long as my arm his, his organization. And he himself is just racking up the awards like crazy.
00:32:34:10 - 00:32:58:16
Mike Collignon: So it's not just Bill in Florida. I mean, he he knows people who know people. And so that's where my questions kind of coming from is, what are you kind of seeing out there in regards to the supply currently. Because obviously things can change one way or the other going forward. But right now what's the supply looking like?
00:32:58:18 - 00:33:18:07
Bill Lazar: I don't I don't even pay attention to all the forecasts and stuff because of anything we can do. It'll keep us busy. You've got to look at it, Mike, at a certain point and start from the point of view that whoever is building something has to remain in the black when they build it. Being a nonprofit builder is kind of interesting.
00:33:18:07 - 00:33:38:17
Bill Lazar: I've 2 or 3 times I've been chairman of our local builders and council. Usually it was when the economy was in the dumps and I think everybody was like, yeah, let Bill don't because you know, but you know, nonprofits are small businesses. Yes. We're nonprofit. That only means that I can't take all the money and buy a motorcycle with it.
00:33:38:17 - 00:34:14:25
Bill Lazar: But nonprofits have to remain in the black. We have to, you know, we we we can't run in the red. We can't build a house and lose money on it. So when you look at these things and you have people talking about it all, you've got to sit there and say, so if I've got a small builder and he or she wants to support their family and they're starting out, if they can build a 1200 square foot house and say they make, I don't know, 30 or $40,000 profit, if they can build a 2400 square foot house, they may double that profit.
00:34:14:25 - 00:34:34:06
Bill Lazar: It's going to take them the same amount of time. You know, the only difference is going to be the cost of labor, materials and other stuff. But but why is that builder going to build five houses a year and only make $150,000? If he can build five, he or she can build 5 or 6 houses and make twice that to support their family.
00:34:34:09 - 00:34:58:19
Bill Lazar: Why are they going to do it? So you got to figure out some way to incentivize them. When when we built our first subdivision, Hancock Place, we basically had vendors that said, well, you know, you're doing it for all the right reasons. I got to make a living at it. But I'll tell you what, I'll if I get all the work, if I get all 36 homes for whatever my trade is, I'll give you my rock bottom price.
00:34:58:19 - 00:35:26:07
Bill Lazar: And they stuck to that price for the three years it took us to build. That's that's a huge help. You know, when you when you look at some of these things and, you know, 40 years ago I had to make another political point. But 40 years ago, when Ronald Reagan started his revolution on property, on taxes and stuff, a lot of local governments took that to heart and said, the public wants us to spend less on property taxes and taxation.
00:35:26:08 - 00:35:59:22
Bill Lazar: So at a certain point they've got to maintain what they have. But it used to be that government was involved in bringing infrastructure to new areas, roads, water, sewer. Now, the only folks that finance new construction roads, water and sewer are bigger developers, Lennar Homes, D.R. Horton, because they're told if you want to build it, you have to, you have to you have to put the infrastructure into you can't fund the infrastructure for affordable housing, not, not and pass it on to the end user.
00:35:59:27 - 00:36:22:02
Bill Lazar: So the small build and small builders, I mean, we're a good example. I mean, we're only building 4 or 5 new homes a year. But if we went to a bank and said, I've got a subdivision and I want to build, I'm going to the subdivision we built was 36 homes. We built that because we put two 600ft streets in the county stepped up.
00:36:22:02 - 00:36:41:26
Bill Lazar: The county said, I got your back. We'll help you with the infrastructure. They went to Congress, got a couple turkey projects that funded the infrastructure, two different years to bring water and sewer through this neighborhood to the edge of our subdivision. And then they help with some of these affordable housing dollars to fund the impact fee and the infrastructure on site and everything else.
00:36:41:26 - 00:37:02:20
Bill Lazar: And in return, we gave them a concrete block house with a single car garage that was 1200ft². And it was at the time it was an energy star home. By the time we got done, we were doing green certified homes. So I said, we'll give you a better product if we don't have to ask the homeowner to pay for the infrastructure made perfect sense to me.
00:37:02:20 - 00:37:31:00
Bill Lazar: But most local governments have gotten out of that infrastructure business, because when you look at trying to keep taxes down, if they build it, it's got to come out of general revenue or some other kind of financing mechanism. And so that commitment hasn't been there. You know, it's just, well, the marketplace will take care of it and the marketplace will, but not on the lower end of affordable housing, not for folks that are making less than 50 or $60,000 a year.
00:37:31:00 - 00:37:36:21
Bill Lazar: Those folks can't handle the cost of infrastructure.
00:37:36:23 - 00:37:56:07
Mike Collignon: And is that is that partly an issue there in Florida where you don't have state income tax and they're looking to drive general taxes down in general like that? There's just not as much money available for that kind of stuff. Or would we see that in other places too?
00:37:56:14 - 00:38:27:08
Bill Lazar: I think I think every community is a little bit there's a big difference between trying to develop affordable housing if you're in a major urban area, if I'm in downtown New York or Chicago or Nashville or something like that, the opportunities to develop things are significantly different. You've got existing infrastructure in place, may have to be upgraded if you're in a semi-rural community where I am, where the city of Saint Augustine's got maybe 20, 25,000 people, the is 350,000 people.
00:38:27:11 - 00:38:54:07
Bill Lazar: But most of the developable, developable land does not have water and sewer in front of it. That's a completely different challenge. So it just it really depends. And then it depends on political leadership. We have one subdivision here that the county helped create. About 15 years ago. We had a housing director who was who was he was a former multifamily director from Connecticut, I think.
00:38:54:10 - 00:39:20:11
Bill Lazar: And Tom really put together a plan. He found a investor who had been buying tax deeds, and the guy was going bankrupt. So the county bought 300 tax deeds from him for $1,000 apiece. The county got clear title to the tax deeds. The county did all the environmental assessments, did all the engineering, all the planning, put in the infrastructure, roads, water, sewer, put in the stormwater pond.
00:39:20:11 - 00:39:44:13
Bill Lazar: And they had about 150 buildable lots. Immediately they gave a third of them to habitat to build habitat homes on. And the others they created a pool for about six different small builders and said, you build these five models on these different lots and we'll bring you the qualified buyers. And there was a down payment assistance program at the end of the day of about 30, $40,000.
00:39:44:17 - 00:40:04:28
Bill Lazar: That helped those builders finance that house for that working class family. So, I mean, that was real leadership. You know, the county commissioners got behind it. And at a certain point, they saw the value. They've now got over 150 homes that will be paying property taxes for the next hundred years.
00:40:05:01 - 00:40:07:20
Mike Collignon: Right? For as long as they still have property tax, they're right.
00:40:07:21 - 00:40:27:01
Bill Lazar: As long as they have. Yeah. We won't even go there because we, we we have a movement in our legislature now to get rid of property taxes. I don't know. And I think most of the local governments are freaking out because if they get rid of property taxes, we're just going to become the land of user fees. You know, you're going to call your county commissioner.
00:40:27:01 - 00:40:34:24
Bill Lazar: It's going to be a phone saying, please deposit a dollar and a half and your commissioner will call you back. I mean, it's nuts.
00:40:34:26 - 00:40:38:24
Mike Collignon: It's like Lucy's little stand for a psychiatrist. Psychiatric help.
00:40:38:24 - 00:41:00:00
Bill Lazar: For five. Yeah, but but literally that that's going to that's going to have more traction because people are just saying I'm really pinched. And if you got rid of my property taxes, that would be great. The people that move here, I send these county commission meetings all the time when there's different developments coming in. And I got these people going, no, say no, say no.
00:41:00:01 - 00:41:20:10
Bill Lazar: Well, they go, you know, I moved down there because taxes are low. They're the same person that then says there's not enough cops and firefighters in my area. My doctor doesn't have enough people working in is I'm going, you had taxes over here that help pay for all that. And they they did all that road maintenance. The stuff you're complaining about that our roads are deficient.
00:41:20:11 - 00:41:26:07
Bill Lazar: Well, you know, that's what taxes are for. You can't have it both ways, right.
00:41:26:08 - 00:41:55:16
Mike Collignon: That's. Yeah. Yeah. The math. This doesn't pencil out. I do want to hit on a couple other things. Again, sticking with the general affordability theme for just a moment. Material pricing. You know, this is something that's going to be relevant both to your retrofit and your new construction. You know, obviously, you know, tariffs are a thing. How much of a detrimental effect has that had in your area?
00:41:55:19 - 00:42:17:04
Bill Lazar: Yeah, everybody I mean anything that's an increase in material costs is going to hurt, you know on the new construction side. Well the house that we built, we're building the same size house that we built 20 years ago, which we build then for $90,000 now it's costing us about 215 for the same size. And it was concrete block then.
00:42:17:04 - 00:42:44:10
Bill Lazar: Now I'm using zip panels and hardy board siding and everything else. Okay. You know, it's the tariffs are a dumb idea, especially for the building industry. Just just because anything that increases the cost, we can't turn around and say, well, we're going to buy that plywood here. After the last recession, there was a there was a plywood plant about 100 miles away that they went belly up.
00:42:44:11 - 00:43:08:08
Bill Lazar: You know, when the recession hit, they weren't they couldn't sell it. So they just shut. They've been there for 30 or 40 years. Small rural community. The pulpwood guys brought them, you know, pulpwood all the time when they shut down. That impacted that commodity community about 12 different ways. You can't just restart apply wood factory, you know, to say, okay, well, we're going to bring that work home.
00:43:08:11 - 00:43:34:27
Bill Lazar: It's not easy to do. I keep thinking somebody needs to incentivize window manufacturers to build factories that turn out impact resistant windows here in Florida, and the state ought to give them land to do it and financing or tax credits, because that's what we need. We need impact windows. And if we could cut the cost down. But any kind of, you know, new venture creating something, it's going to cost money, it's going to take time.
00:43:34:27 - 00:43:41:06
Bill Lazar: And then the permitting part of it is half the folks don't want it in your area anyhow. So.
00:43:41:08 - 00:43:41:23
Mike Collignon: Right.
00:43:41:24 - 00:44:02:07
Bill Lazar: But you know, so I mean impacting the process of getting materials here, it's never going to help. I mean, you know, we saw during Covid it was impossible to get flooring. Some of the stuff that we bought from China. I've had to go back to several houses and replace the damn flooring because we didn't realize it. It was cheap.
00:44:02:07 - 00:44:12:05
Bill Lazar: It came up and I couldn't live with telling somebody, I'm sorry, we bought a cheap product and it didn't work. It was the only stuff we could find at the time.
00:44:12:08 - 00:44:20:10
Mike Collignon: Well, and your your point about impact windows makes a lot of sense. I'm not sure there's a more prevalent market for impact windows impact resistant windows than Florida.
00:44:20:16 - 00:44:47:02
Bill Lazar: No, no. Well, and you know, you talk about some of the impact planning and stuff. The Enterprise Foundation is one of the biggest foundations in the country that works on affordable housing. They did. They ran a that's like a charette or something, but they created a Keep Safe Florida. It was a training program for multifamily property owners on how to assess your properties and just think and plan.
00:44:47:02 - 00:45:04:13
Bill Lazar: If it's an existing property, what can you do to make it more resilient? And it was you know, it was really they let me sit in on it. It was mostly for South Florida, where there was obvious much more of a crisis coming from. But they let me sit in on it because I've been sort of nudging them and saying, what can we do?
00:45:04:14 - 00:45:34:23
Bill Lazar: What can we do? And it was fascinating. I mean, most of it was directed at large multi-story apartment complexes. Everything we own is under, you know, it's two storeys or less. It's nothing higher than that. But, you know, those those kind of suggestions they made is like, okay. And now we start looking at building new multifamily housing. I was when I was on the Federal Home Loan Bank, I was I was invited to listen in on a panel with people from the insurance industry.
00:45:34:24 - 00:46:02:09
Bill Lazar: And one of these guys said, well, he says, you know, we're we're looking at, looking at, you know, construction standards for Florida. And we're not sure within the next 5 or 10 years we're going to finance or we're going to insure multifamily property that's built out of wood. Now, when I started 35 years ago, all the multifamily stuff I saw was concrete block, you know, or made some kind of masonry construction vest.
00:46:02:09 - 00:46:22:20
Bill Lazar: Core properties was one of the biggest property management companies at the time. They used to volunteer with us to help on our rehab programs, and I got to talking to the guy who ran their construction program, and at one point he said, we're switching to poured concrete, he says. We're just we're tired of these million dollar facelifts to deal with all the siding and everything else.
00:46:22:24 - 00:46:40:09
Bill Lazar: But you look around now, all the multifamily stuff is being built out of wood and it just it doesn't. I don't know what the insurance is going to industry, but you know, when I was talking to somebody, he said, well, Bill, he says we're building it. He says, but nine times out of ten we sell it before it's a year old.
00:46:40:10 - 00:46:49:02
Bill Lazar: So we're not worrying about the long term insurance. Somebody else will handle that part. And I don't know what that's going to do.
00:46:49:06 - 00:46:52:16
Mike Collignon: Are they doing that because of lower upfront cost?
00:46:52:18 - 00:46:55:11
Bill Lazar: Yeah okay. I don't know any other reason to.
00:46:55:12 - 00:47:05:16
Mike Collignon: Yeah I was yeah. And and to some degree I'm a little bit surprised it's allowed with the building codes. I mean I guess if you get far enough inland. But even then I would.
00:47:05:16 - 00:47:25:26
Bill Lazar: Still question the other. The other part about it is that we get back to our trades thing. Masonry is a great trade to learn. It's not an easy trade. If you've ever hauled concrete block around for a day or two. Not light. No, and it's not for everybody. But you know, the Masons make they make a good living and they build a great product.
00:47:25:26 - 00:47:58:20
Bill Lazar: But they're really, you know, they're struggling to compete. Again. You come back to that value if if the sales price for the appraisal doesn't acknowledge the quality of what you're constructing, it all goes to pot. We we were, you know, when we built our Hancock Place subdivision. You know, you and I talked about appraisals before our appraisals on an Energy Star rated home or a green certified home were pretty much the same as anybody else around us for the same square footage.
00:47:58:22 - 00:48:34:22
Bill Lazar: You know, we did have we got a little bit of a bump because with the Energy Star program, we actually got a third party certification that said, this house is worth $6,500 more than a house that is not certified built to these standards because of what it will mean for the 30 year impact on the utility bill. And that was something that the lender could take and put into his or her desktop underwriting software, and it would give the buyer more buying capacity because they were projecting that the utility bill would be lower.
00:48:34:25 - 00:48:53:16
Bill Lazar: But outside of and that that's that's my big thing when it comes to green building, resiliency and everything else. If we can't get a guarantee from the insurance industry that if I put a metal roof on it, if I put impact windows in, I want to guarantee that for the next 20 years, the insurance for this property will be 10 or 20% lower.
00:48:53:16 - 00:48:56:18
Bill Lazar: Now it really does make sense.
00:48:56:21 - 00:49:00:01
Mike Collignon: Or that they will continue to ensure it.
00:49:00:04 - 00:49:04:04
Bill Lazar: Or they'll even continue to that we don't even want to go there.
00:49:04:06 - 00:49:28:08
Mike Collignon: But it's the reality, right? I mean, we're seeing that in not just Florida, we're seeing in California, we're seeing it in Florida. We're seeing other Gulf Coast states. Like that is sadly a thing that you hope to hold on to. Yep. You know, you mentioned trades, bill and I wanted to make sure to get to that because I know vocational programs are near and dear to your heart.
00:49:28:08 - 00:49:52:20
Mike Collignon: And you and me, in the late Kim Shanahan used to talk about the not so rosy outlook for the future of the trades and, frankly, the industry's labor shortage, as you, you know, work with vocational programs. What's your kind of forecast for the next ten years as far as the the trades landscape and the labor landscape?
00:49:52:23 - 00:49:55:22
Bill Lazar: You ever listen to Mike Rowe much?
00:49:55:25 - 00:49:57:15
Mike Collignon: No, I'm aware of him.
00:49:57:16 - 00:50:18:29
Bill Lazar: I he does he does these Dirty Jobs shows and he's always talking about how these trades make you can make a decent living. Now the frustrating part for me, having grown up doing more carpentry work than plumbing or electrical, I don't know why the person who frames the house out, he figures out and make every room square, hangs all the door and stores all the window, builds the roofing frame.
00:50:19:00 - 00:50:38:12
Bill Lazar: I don't know why that person is paid 20 or $30 less an hour than a plumber or an electrician, but that's kind of the at least around here. That's what it most of its nonunion work. But you know, when you sit and look at it, you've got to sit there and say, If I've got a young person, so how do I convince them that this is a decent trade?
00:50:38:13 - 00:50:58:27
Bill Lazar: I've been on the Menendez advisory panel on and off for about 25 years, and during the recession, we had kids whose parents were making a living in construction who just flat out told me, I don't want my son or daughter going into construction, you know, I want them to find a better, you know, but now, you know, there's a shortage.
00:50:58:27 - 00:51:20:14
Bill Lazar: And sadly, because of some of our immigration policies, we're chasing off a lot of very skilled tradespeople. And we're not focusing enough on how to train, because at a certain point, the building industry's got to have help doing that. I mean, I've got I have two young men that are working for me now. Both of them are about 19 years old.
00:51:20:16 - 00:51:40:24
Bill Lazar: There is a foundation that came to us and said, if you you know, I told them that we were hiring, trying to hire young people out of the construction academy. And the big challenge for anybody in construction is if I hire you and you don't know what you're doing. I've got to put you with somebody else. And so I've got that team cost, and I got to transport you.
00:51:40:24 - 00:51:58:24
Bill Lazar: And what's the learning curve and how long? And some folks are going to work out so it's not. Well, this one foundation funded us for a year to hire these two people and said, we'll pay their salary for a year, gives you gives you time to sort of kick the tires, gives them time to see if they want the job.
00:51:58:24 - 00:52:19:21
Bill Lazar: And and it's a great they call it the work starter program, but it's a great incentive to it. If you look when you think about all the hurricane damage that goes on that money comes the majority of those rehab dollars that come in for low income communities comes from federal HUD or maybe from USDA. And there is huge.
00:52:19:23 - 00:52:44:07
Bill Lazar: I mean, we're talking about billions of dollars that come to the state of Florida after a hurricane, that the amount of that money could be carved out and said, we're going to create a training program. We're going to pay people under the age of 25, you want to earn a trade, we're going to pay them $25 an hour, plus cover all the worker's comp and all of that, and we will subsidize that cost if you, the contractor will take them on and you will teach them.
00:52:44:07 - 00:53:05:26
Bill Lazar: And maybe if we're lucky, we can get an apprenticeship program that is actually close enough to where they're working, that they'll go to it. Our nearest carpentry program is 60 miles away. So as much as I've got 2 or 3 people I'd love to send to it, they're not going to leave here at 5:00 in the evening, drive traffic and then the hours in class.
00:53:05:29 - 00:53:23:13
Bill Lazar: But but that's that's the challenge we've got. We don't have enough training centers for apprenticeship programs. I don't run an apprenticeship program. Will take we are willing to take the time to hire young people and work with them, because I think of it more as like, we're a gardener, you got to nurture your garden, you got to pull the weeds out, you got to water.
00:53:23:13 - 00:53:45:17
Bill Lazar: You got to wait for the fruit to grow before you can benefit from it. And if we don't make that commitment, then it's not going to happen. But when it comes to some affordable housing programs, there could be an incentive for the builder to bring on a less experienced person. If you could underwrite that person's training and just just to give them a chance to see.
00:53:45:18 - 00:53:51:15
Bill Lazar: Do you really want to work in construction in Florida in the middle of July?
00:53:51:18 - 00:53:53:03
Mike Collignon: Is it?
00:53:53:06 - 00:54:18:28
Bill Lazar: It's a it's a 12 month premier. One of the contractors that work for me used to work. He he came from Colorado and he said, yeah, he says we try and get everything framed in and dried in before, you know, the end of September, he says. Because sometimes after that we're shoveling snow. And they literally had to figure out the cost of shoveling snow off the job site as part of their bid on a job, because they knew they're going to run into it.
00:54:18:28 - 00:54:45:14
Bill Lazar: They're going to have a tent and propane to heat the, you know, all that kind of stuff. The industry, the industry can respond to figuring out how to build in different climates. But Florida, we got year round construction, you know, so most of the southern coast lines and why we don't spend more time trying to do that, you know, and, and take that federal money and take that tax and create a program that will train people.
00:54:45:14 - 00:55:09:21
Bill Lazar: We brought it up before. The weatherization program is a small part of all your affordable housing pots and money that you have with HUD and CDBG and everything else. But I think using a blower door is the smartest damn thing in the world. If you're going to rehab any kind of a house at all. But is there any cross-pollination between weatherization and then these other affordable housing programs?
00:55:09:21 - 00:55:28:08
Bill Lazar: Rarely, but yet that's the smartest thing if you want to if you have enough money to replace all the windows in the house, that's great. But if you're trying to do the smartest thing for that homeowner and you've got limited funds and like weatherization, we're normally limited to 8 or $9000. So you think, what do you do for 8 or 9 grand?
00:55:28:10 - 00:55:29:06
Mike Collignon: Yeah.
00:55:29:09 - 00:55:59:10
Bill Lazar: But using a blower door lets you prioritize what really makes sense. And that's a that's a great tool for apprenticeship programs. You know, bring bring that in. They were doing that under some of the aura training years ago is running blower doors and and teaching apprenticeship programs. The importance of using a blower door. But it's also a lot of people in the building industry are kind of stuck with, yeah, I don't need this new stuff, you know, in a blower door.
00:55:59:10 - 00:56:24:26
Bill Lazar: I mean, a new blower doors three, two, $3,000. So if you're that contractor, unless your customer is requiring it or you're committed to a better quality product, you're going to go out and buy a $3,000 tool that then you've got to train your guys how to use properly. Maybe. Maybe not. But if it was required and Florida now has a requirement, you have to do a blower door test on all new home construction.
00:56:24:29 - 00:56:46:23
Bill Lazar: You don't have to do it. Even if I spend a half $1 million remodeling your house, don't have to do a blower door test on that, which could tell you is the ductwork leaking or the windows leaking, you know, but that's that's part of our future when it comes to energy conservation. And it's a cheap way to save money, but you got to pay someone to do it.
00:56:46:26 - 00:56:53:23
Mike Collignon: The vocational program that you're working with, are they teaching how to use the blower door?
00:56:53:25 - 00:57:19:00
Bill Lazar: No. Well, the problem is that program has suffered some setbacks since the recession. We lost some of the funding we had. We had a carpentry and a masonry program there. Now it's predominantly an architectural program. So the students are doing interesting stuff from the architect side. And I've just now started getting back with them after a couple of years of Covid, not meeting in the classrooms and stuff like that.
00:57:19:06 - 00:57:39:04
Bill Lazar: So it's it's a different challenge. I haven't really talked to the instructor that much about getting students to think about a blower door, but it's one of our conversations that we want to have is just, you know, let's make them aware of it. Because sometimes if you getting an architect to think about the building on below is a completely different story.
00:57:39:04 - 00:57:42:10
Bill Lazar: But but that's really where you want to start.
00:57:42:12 - 00:58:01:07
Mike Collignon: Well, Bill, I, we've known each other for years. I'm so glad that our paths have crossed. And thank you so much for agreeing to be on the podcast with me. And thank you, audience, for being here. And stay tuned for more episodes of the Impact Series podcast on the Green Building Media Network. I'm Michael again and I'll see you again soon.