Housing Advocacy 101: 4 Ways to Get Involved

All builders want to build and sell more homes, but zoning and approval challenges often create a bottleneck for increasing production. Take Central Ohio as an example: In 1996, the city of Columbus, with a population 663,307, issued 7,748 single-family permits. In 2024, now with nearly 1 million residents, the city issued just 4,191 single-family permits—46% fewer than 1996 amid a 41% gain in population.

Local, state, and national industry associations and others are working on the behalf of home builders and developers, but there are several opportunities for us to advocate for ourselves to build more homes and meet consumer demand.

1. Get Involved With Your Association

We expect our local, state, and national home builder associations (HBAs) to serve us, but it’s crucial that we as builders also contribute back.

Meet with your HBA leadership to find out how you and your team get involved using your various areas of expertise. HBAs always welcome volunteers for positions on their boards, committees, and councils.

Getting involved also keeps you and your company top of mind in an HBA’s advocacy efforts because they are more likely to remember your business and prioritize your issues.

Being active in your local HBA also opens new doors. For example, I recently reached out to an association chapter to ask about a new building code related to energy. The local HBA introduced me to the individual leading the issue at the state level, which is how I learned the Ohio HBA has been instrumental in keeping energy codes reasonable and cost effective for the builders they serve.

Recently, there has been some momentum around making that code more stringent, which would increase costs to build, and ultimately passed along to homebuyers. We provided one of our team members, an expert on that topic, to advocate for keeping the current code, which led to saving us, other builders, and homebuyers from the cost burden of complying with the newer code.

If you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get to work, you’ll solve more problems and find more opportunities.

2. Ask For a Meeting

Changing zoning regulations is not a quick process. The first step is always an initial meeting, and the first meeting is often informal, so over Zoom or coffee is often a great place to start. You also want to create an environment that is conducive to finding some middle ground.

Take a meeting with anyone you can. Elected officials are important, but the staff who have been around for years are equally so (if not more so), as they hold a lot of long-term knowledge and sway with their current bosses.

Most cities and counties have a master plan that is periodically revised and updated. When that’s happening, ask for a meeting with a city planner to educate them about the benefits you offer—for Epcon, we advocate for little to no impact on space in schools and to minimize rush-hour traffic while still paying property taxes—and to understand their goals as a community.

No matter who you meet with, your first meeting is just your first meeting, and that conversation leads to the next conversation, and so on. You’re building a network, laying a foundation, and developing relationships, so any meeting is a good meeting.

3. Understand How to Be a Good Partner

Once you secure a meeting, try to understand the other side’s point of view. It’s easy for builders to get frustrated and think cities are being irrational in their policymaking and enforcement. Instead, look at how you can avoid causing pain and solve their problems. 

For example, if there is a zoning restriction of one home per acre, work to understand why that regulation is in place and offer ways you can work with the zoning authority to hit that goal … or change it. Some restrictions have been in place for so long they no longer make practical sense, but you have to talk through it to find common ground.

Knowing their motivation helps you negotiate, respond, and find benefits to the municipality, not just you or the industry. If you can’t solve a conflict right away, stay engaged. It may take longer, but you must be willing to hang in there. You can always improve and make your offer even sweeter for local municipalities. Tenacity and grit are your best friends.

It's also good to learn what is important to them. Infrastructure levies on the next ballot are a good example, but it could be other things like lot size, density, and green space. Either way, look for ways to support those initiatives and open the door for future conversations and even reciprocal support of what’s important to you and the industry.

In being a good partner, you can also help the municipalities understand your point of view as a home builder or developer. Many leaders know that growth is inevitable and want to guide it. Help them see how your homes can benefit their community so they can help their constituents understand.

Better understanding your business and industry will allow them to develop a desirable, healthy community that’s better for their constituents, businesses, and schools, while allowing you to build more homes that fit the needs of that community.

RELATED: 

• Chairman's Message: NAHB’s Ideas for Federal Deregulation
• NAHB Chairman's Message: Local Advocacy With National Significance
• Why You Need a Backup Plan for a Housing Market in Flux

4. Be Patient

If you’re going to engage in advocacy, you must be comfortable with incremental progress. You are in the business of building rapport and planting seeds for future results. You are not going to change anything in one day, so patience is crucial to success.

People tend to want advocacy to be actionable, but building relationships is an invaluable part of the process. You must come to an understanding and appreciation of each other so you can work together.

Don’t jump in cold turkey and demand things. You should especially avoid going in with a laundry list of demands. Better to keep that list small and start with the most important items that keep you from being able to build homes—ideally no more than two or three issues to talk about in your early meetings, or maybe only one. Common topics are density, architecture, square footage requirements, and affordability.

Finally, in any meeting, it’s okay not to respond to a question you aren’t qualified to answer. You can always say that it isn’t your area of expertise and follow up with the member of your team who is an expert in that area … then promptly get back to your contact with that information.

Advocacy is obviously about expanding your business opportunities, but it’s also about the community your future homeowners are going to live in. Be specific in your conversations about what those future homeowners need and what you need from the municipality to provide that for them. Work with officials, not against them, to come to a consensus.

Being understanding and solution-oriented will advance your agenda (and your understanding of local politics) further and better.