Sustainability should outweigh profitability in state building code update

If you care about the health and safety of our homes and buildings – and everyone should – you should tune into New Mexico’s routine update of its building codes. Tract house developers and some others in the building industry are attempting to stall, weaken, or roll back our standards.

Routinely updated building codes – especially our energy codes – safeguard against high energy bills, wildfire smoke intrusion, and climate-damaging pollution, along with making sure our buildings are a comfortable temperature year-round and protect against increasingly common severe weather events. Building envelope efficiency also provides the added benefit of reducing urban noise intrusion.

Cutting corners on these crucial attributes may benefit tract house builders, but not those who buy and live in these homes. Some builders claim that it costs too much to do the right thing – and are circulating outrageously over-inflated cost estimates to claim that our routine building code update will harm housing affordability – but builder profitability doesn’t equal home affordability.

New home prices are predominantly determined by location, school quality, walkability, neighborhood amenities, development fees, interest rates, size, worker shortages, and the broader market forces of supply and demand – not by building codes. Plus, these codes are cost-effective, according to an analysis for New Mexico completed by Pacific Northwest National Labs.

What’s more, if we weaken New Mexico’s building code, we become ineligible for an additional $5.3 million in new federal funding for staff support, trainings, workforce development, local grants, and more.

As New Mexico architects who have been recognized for our contributions to the profession, and who are also environmental and community advocates, we care about clean air, a stable climate, resilient homes and buildings, and affordable energy bills. When special interests fight against building code updates, they are opposing regulations that benefit not only each individual home or business consumer but also the greater community – through building healthier, more efficient, less-polluting buildings.

New Mexico’s building energy code update process works by remaining open, transparent, and considerate of all public input. The building codes themselves work by offering flexible options and trade-offs that allow designers and builders to optimize each construction project and choose the most affordable options. This is what keeps building code compliance costs low – not making these minimum standards even weaker.

Let’s keep New Mexico’s building code update moving forward so codes continue to address modern problems. Let’s work toward real solutions for true and sustainable building affordability – not just short-term profitability.

This guest column was co-authored by Ed Mazria, Beverly Spears, Bill Neuhaus, Bill Sabatini, Glenn Fellows, Roger Schluntz, Terry Brown and Don May, who are New Mexico Members of the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows.