Eric Schmitt: The Kansas City Council should undo green home construction standards | Opinion

On Oct. 13, 2022, the Kansas City Council voted to adopt the 2021 IECC or International Energy Conservation Code, which is a set of building standards contrived by the International Code Council. When this new building code was adopted, Mayor Quinton Lucas observed: “These updates to Kansas City’s IEC codes are essential to ensure we reach our climate action goals. Enacting these new, more energy-efficient standards will benefit residents long term, saving families hundreds of dollars each year.”

Except none of the above has come to pass for the benefit of the broader Kansas City community. Instead, the building code adopted in October 2022 has created detrimental effects for Kansas City residents, all for the sake of pursuing a radical climate agenda that puts a misguided and bureaucratic agenda first while placing Missourians last. If these building codes are maintained as they currently are, they would continue only to obstruct and impede housing affordability for working families, who deserve better from the council.

I should also note that it is not just elected Republicans who are calling out the council’s newest building codes. Democratic council member Wes Rogers has astutely noted how, before the IECC was formally adopted, Kansas City typically issued 85 permits to build single-family homes per month. But in the entire first quarter of 2024, the city only issued nine. In fact, from February 2023 to February 2024, single-family home construction permits in Kansas City decreased by 74%, while those in the surrounding Kansas City metropolitan area simultaneously increased by 179%.

But therein lies the main problem: Working families throughout Kansas City are being put last ahead of the council’s unrealistic climate agenda. Residents have now found themselves subject to unnecessary burdens like the IECC, which regulate homes down to their selection of lighting controls, all for the sake of achieving radical climate goals.

Meanwhile working families have been priced out of the housing market as home prices continue to soar with no end in sight. The Home Builders Association of Greater Kansas City found that IECC compliance could add as much as $30,000 in additional costs toward new building construction and maintenance. In other words, it is a lose-lose for the broader Kansas City community, with working families being shut out of the increasingly unaffordable housing market. These costly effects — which are keeping residents from owning their own homes, building equity, and achieving the American dream — are the direct consequence of the City Council’s misguided actions.

Meanwhile, housing prices were already suffering from a supply shortage. Back in January, SAB Homes became the first builder to issue a housing permit in Kansas City in nearly four months, around the time that the building codes were officially adopted. Not to mention, homebuilders assert that when evaluating the cost-benefit analysis of these proposals, they would save households around only $100 per year. In this scenario, residents would never fully recoup the full costs of these regulatory costs on their households.

In the U.S. Senate, I am proud to have cosponsored the HOUSE Act, important legislation which would repeal agency rules that force these building codes on the broader population. I’m doing my part to fight for cost-effective housing and solutions that put the interests of working Missourians first and foremost.

The evidence is becoming clearer that maintaining the status quo will not achieve any of these desired outcomes. One only needs to look west toward how other states such as California have adopted similar regulations, much to the detriment of homeowners who have been saddled with the additional costs of having to comply with those mandates.

Keeping these onerous building codes might placate climate alarmists and similar parties for the time being. In the long term, however, these regulations will continue to constrain Kansas City’s housing market and ding the pocketbooks and wallets of Missouri families who are just trying to get by. It’s my hope the Kansas City Council does the right thing and undoes these green regulations so that Missouri’s working families and homebuyers can finally have some breathing room when it comes to achieving the American dream.

Eric Schmitt represents Missouri in the U.S. Senate.