A 10-Point Blueprint for Housing Affordability

In January 2025, the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) released Blueprint to Address the Housing Affordability Crisis. This report provides a roadmap for how local governments can align zoning, permitting, workforce development, and financing to make housing affordable in Mecklenburg County.

This blog provides an overview of the key take-aways from the report and the implications for Charlotte-Mecklenburg.  

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

• Cut Excessive Regulations: NAHB argues that many regulations are overly complex, duplicative, or outdated and costly often accounting for 25% of the cost of single-family homes and 40% of multi-family homes. In addition, regulations such as restrictive zoning and mandated design features limit construction and reduce affordability. The Blueprint recommends reviewing all new regulations for cost and supply impact. Cutting excessive regulations can lower the cost of production, encourage more builders to enter the market, and speed up development timelines.

• Rebuild the Skilled-trade Workforce: The home building industry is short 200,000-400,000 construction workers and over 2.2 million new workers will be needed over the next 3 years to meet demand. The workforce shortage is not only creating construction delays, but also increasing the costs to build homes. Lawmakers can support policies and programming that grows the skilled-trade workforce pipeline. Locally, scaling Charlotte-Mecklenburg and Cabarrus County Schools (CMS/CCS) high‑school trade academies and Central Piedmont’s Community College’s (CPCC) Construction Technologies program could help alleviate this construction and homebuilding workforce shortage.

• Fix Building Material Supply Chains: The cost of building supplies is up 34% since December 2020. In addition, lumber costs are at an all-time high and there is a shortage of transformers that are essential to home production. Boosting domestic production while ending tariffs on lumber and home building materials have the potential to not only decrease building costs which will increase affordability, but these actions will also speed up new home production.

• Expand Housing Tax Credits: The Low-income Housing Tax Credit program finances the production of affordable housing, but the program is under resourced. Additional funding is needed to expand this program. In addition, the NAHB proposes the creation of a workforce housing tax credit which has the potential to support the production of additional affordable housing targeted at middle-income households. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the city’s Housing Trust Fund could be paired with such workforce housing tax credits to incentivize and increase the production of housing for local middle-income households.

• Modernize Zoning: Many local governments have zoning laws that impact the cost and the ability to build homes. To facilitate affordable housing production, local zoning plans must increase density and provide developers with flexibility. Charlotte’s Unified Development Ordinance already introduces more duplexes and Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). Implementing by-right zoning for affordable and missing middle housing could accelerate home and unit development and minimize legal challenges.

• Streamline Permits: Permitting delays increase production costs and thereby house and unit cost. They also slow the rate at which homes and units can be completed. Builders often report 4‑ to 6‑month waits for rezoning and site‑plan reviews. Creating and adhering to permitting timelines and increasing resources to facilitate permitting could decrease costs and delays for developers.

• Adopt Cost-effective Building Codes: Reasonable and cost-effective building codes reduce construction costs which in turn allow for more homes and units to be built and for them to be more accessible to lower income individuals. All building codes should be evaluated for cost to production and short and long-term impact on both the environment and the home renter/owner.

• Right-size local impact fees: While impact fees are necessary, particularly in areas where additional infrastructure is needed to support new construction, the fee should correlate to actual infrastructure needs and should not serve as a revenue source for the locality. Excessive fees and how and when the fees are charged can be a barrier to home and unit construction.

• Increase Access to Financing for Developers: High interest rates and market conditions limit small and mid-sized builders from being able to engage in residential construction. A secondary market that could provide financing for small and mid-sized builders would expand financing options and increase the number of builders who can facilitate an increase in housing supply.

• Simplify Employment Rules: The current model of subcontracting portions of work to specialty trade independent contractors is necessary, however, there is inconsistency in wages and employment practices whether someone be an independent contractor or employee. These inconsistencies make labor cost unpredictable and disincentivizes production. Streamlining practices across worker status would allow these costs to be predictable and would allow developers of all sizes to better participate in housing production.