Ask the KC Council not to weaken important new green standards for home builders | Opinion

Kansas City’s new energy standards for home builders, years in the making, have been in effect only since last fall. Developers want the City Council to weaken the new code by adopting an ordinance drafted by the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, and that could happen as soon as this week.

That would be a big mistake, says local builder Tony Libra, the owner of Aspen Homes, and we agree.

Wherever he’s with other KC builders, Libra told the editorial board, they “gather around” to ask how he’s managing to meet the new efficiency standards. “Everyone talks about the difficulty of implementing this code,” Libra said, so “I try to walk through it with the other builders — the HVAC portion, the insulation portion, the window portion, and take it piece by piece. It’s actually very easy to understand. I just don’t think anybody is taking the time to educate themselves and try to figure this out, because it is not difficult.”

“Sure,” he told us, “there’s going to be an increased cost, but if I look back over the last 24 months, the swing in lumber prices is greater than the cost of this energy code. We have homes built 24 months ago that because lumber went up, there was a $40,000 increase in the lumber. Now it’s come back down; it’s a commodity.

“But everyone seems to absorb those costs, and vendor costs, yet they’re singling out this energy code as a devil when these costs you put into a home, the homeowner is probably going to get back. These are the most beneficial costs you can put in a home.”

Too many of his fellow builders, Libra said, “seem to want the easy way. The easy way is don’t make changes. They just want to keep doing the same old way” — building to codes set in 2006 to 2009 — “and it doesn’t advance anything.”

If left in place, the new standards will benefit many renters as well as home buyers. They require newly built homes and renovations on existing homes to meet energy efficiency requirements on insulation, leakage and more.

Other developers insist that the new code has all but stopped building here, forcing them to go elsewhere in the metro, where it’s cheaper to build, worsening the city’s housing crisis, particularly for affordable housing.

Only, the lack of affordable housing and of housing in general clearly wasn’t caused by this code, and won’t be eased by watering it down.

There’s no guarantee that the short-term cost savings from creating an easier path to compliance would even be passed on to consumers.

New members lacked ‘long-term perspective’

Most local builders, said former City Council member Katheryn Shields, who worked for years to enact the new code, have not taken advantage of free training on how to meet the new standards.

Instead, right before they were to take effect, “they went in and applied for building permits under the old code for a substantial amount of the houses they hoped to build in 2024. So when the new code came in effect they didn’t apply,” she said.

“They wanted to create this narrative that since this new code had passed, no one could afford to build a house and therefore all of the housing was going to switch to other areas in the metropolitan area. That was a very compelling story they told to the very new council that didn’t necessarily have a long-term perspective on how they’ve operated over the years to keep the energy code from being updated.”

“I think their fear is that if we successfully implement this updated code and the sky doesn’t fall in, then I think we’re going to see other municipalities around here” update their requirements, too, making houses more airtight and watertight, “because it’s so good for consumers,” improving both their health and the longevity of their homes.

In the past, Shields said, “they have successfully beat those back. They thought they were going to do that in 2022 and 2023, too. They were shocked” when that didn’t happen, and then just decided to wait and try again with a new council. “They planned it very well. … They basically put a freeze and told everybody, ‘Don’t file because we’ll get this rolled back.’ Another clever thing they’ve done is saying we’re not rolling back the code, we’re just providing another path to complying with it.’’

Right now, there are three ways to meet the new green standards standards. The proposed ordinance offers a fourth, easier way, by using a metric called the Home Energy Rating System. It would allow builders to leave out some items on the green checklist as long as the home still reached a certain score.

Will Ruder, executive vice president of the Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City, said there are always lots of permits issued right before a code change, and his group is doing everything it can to help local builders comply with that change.

For those who are not finding it difficult, “that’s wonderful. I’m glad they’ve got it figured out.” But for most, he told us, the new code is “having a dramatic impact. This is not a purely dollars and cents conversation, but housing costs do matter. … It’s not just blind objection.”

He acknowledged that the city has always been slow in issuing permits, and on that front, “the camel’s back was broken” before the code change.

‘Two very real crises, housing and climate’

Emily Wolfe, of the nonprofit Metropolitan Energy Center, says that because developers have been so successful in getting codes amended in the past, “it is a bigger jump” for many builders.

But “we’ve had heavily amended energy codes for years and yet home prices are outrageous, so if it’s only the energy code, then what’s been the problem before? Let’s not add more houses to the market that are going to need to be retrofitted” later.

Councilman Wes Rogers, sponsor of the ordinance that would make it easier to comply with the green building codes, which were part of the city’s Climate Protection and Resiliency Plan, told the editorial board that opposing his traditional allies on this issue has been “a crummy deal for me” as a Democrat who after serving in Jefferson City “thought it was going to be so nice to be back in Kansas City with people I agree with all the time.”

“We’ve got two very real crises, housing and climate,” he said. “I am as freaked out about climate change as anybody else.” Still, he’s been convinced by the fact that “builders say it’s too prohibitive” to build to the more stringent code.

So in his view, a compromise would help add to the city’s housing stock while still benefiting the environment by helping developers build here rather than in municipalities where the codes have not been updated.

“It’s not like we’re going that far backwards,” he said. But why go backwards at all?

We don’t doubt his sincerity, and in fact admire his willingness to differ with friends. But we just don’t agree with his conclusions.

The City Council’s Neighborhood Planning and Development Committee is expected to vote on the ordinance on Tuesday. If it passes there, it could be voted on by the full council as soon as Thursday.