MAVOCKE -- Senate Majority Leader Jon Ralston (C-Asl.) is making housing his party's main focus as they take power in the Senate for the first time in more than a decade.
The chamber's top senator held a special press conference Friday morning with his Conservative colleagues to discuss the party's first steps in tackling the nationwide shortage of housing.
Declaring it "an emergency," Ralston said the party is looking to provide billions of dollars in funding to the states to build housing.
But rather than just allocating money, Conservatives also want to couple funding with incentives for builders, reducing fees and permitting, streamlining the application and approval process, and making environmental studies quicker and easier to pass.
"We got in this mess because of many reasons, but one of the main reasons is we have overly burdensome and redundant environmental laws, zoning laws, requirements for parking and greenspaces, and so on. That's why it takes builders five years or more sometimes to build an apartment complex or urban lofts. We have so many hoops for developer to jump through, and so many requirements, it just is insane," he told reporters.
Ralston announced a group of six Conservative senators to lead the party's housing push. They include: Jhana Schueler (Bie.), Scott Revard (Kln.), Frank Traetori (Rodd.), John Brandenhaus (POG), Andrew Stykes (Onk.) and Niles Gilcrest (Ver.).
Nationalists announced their own shadow group of six, with Minority Leader Debbie Madronas hand-picking Kallie Murray (Kln.), Tim Blakewell (Tri.), Serap Figaori (Ara.), John Paul Liffrey (POG), Aaron Tobias Griffith (Ver.) and Kay Hadid (Kens.) to work with their Conservative counterparts.
Ralston told reporters he never requested that Nationalists form a shadow housing group; Madronas did so on her own. However, the majority leader said the more senators working closely together, the better.
The bipartisan group of 12 will hold special hearings, conduct research into housing hindrances, and meet with housing and construction experts across the country over the coming months.
"Affordable housing is critical not just to our nation's economy, but also to basic human rights," said Madronas in a press conference last week.
Scott Revard, the newly-elected senator from Kalnier who owns a residential construction company, is expected to play a leading role in the efforts, along with fellow freshman senator John Brandenhaus, a realtor from POG.
"There are many reasons our housing situation is so upside down right now," said Brandenhaus in an interview with a local reporter. "But the point of this group isn't to just point the finger at people and blame them for the quagmire we're in. The point is to find solutions and make real progress and headway toward broadening our nation's housing supply and bringing down prices."
While the Senate's new focus on housing is welcomed by business and real estate groups, environmental groups have voiced caution.
"We all want more housing, particularly affordable housing for working-class Grassadellians and pensioners," said Emily DuFrant of the Grassadellian Environmental Council. "However, the answer isn't just to haphazardly build new houses and apartments. The answer isn't just to go on a building spree. Any construction of new housing needs to be environmentally safe and complement existing zoning and urban planning."
Meanwhile, right-wing politicians have been capitalizing on the nation's shortage of housing, with Remmington Sens. Mark Eisinger and Shaylene McCullough holding a "Build Baby Build" rally Saturday in their home state.
"For over a decade, the Nationalist Party controlled all branches of government and they allowed the housing situation to deteriorate to what it is today, where everyday, hard-working Grassadellians can't afford to buy a decent home," said McCullough. "That is changing now, because Conservatives are going to build new housing, we're going to make sure every Grassadellian family has the opportunity to own a home in a good neighborhood."
Posts
