The Canadian Home Builders’ Association of Alberta (CHBA-Alberta) has been the recognized voice of the residential construction industry in the province for more than 60 years
Submitted by the CHBA-Alberta
It represents approximately 1,500 member companies including new homebuilders, renovators, developers, trade and supply companies, and professional services organizations. Headquartered in Edmonton and operating as a not-for-profit association, CHBA-Alberta has six regional offices across the province in Grande Prairie, Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Medicine Hat and Lethbridge.
Alberta’s residential construction industry contributes more than $16 billion to Alberta’s economy and employs more than 110,000 Albertans directly and indirectly. With such a large piece of the economic pie at stake, CHBA-Alberta ensures the industry’s voice is heard at the provincial government table when it comes to issues that affect its members. CHBA-Alberta has a number of goals based on the philosophy of having “one voice for one industry”. This is accomplished through government relations work that influences improved building codes and standards, encourages greater workplace health and safety, promotes development of skilled labor, and supports environmentally sustainable housing and waste reduction.
AN INFLUENTIAL VOICE
Recent examples of CHBA-Alberta’s successful influence on these types of issues include changes to the Alberta building and fire codes in concert with the provincial government’s High Intensity Residential Fires working group; discussions on the development of new energy efficiency codes for future residential housing; as well as the creation of new legislation for the effective management of construction and demolition waste. 2010 will see CHBA-Alberta engaging the provincial government on issues surrounding the regulation of building envelope requirements; upcoming changes to the Safety Code Act; and the recommendation for mandatory new home warranty coverage by builders.
CHBA-Alberta also works diligently at increasing the level of knowledge and professionalism for its industry members through various educational, training and networking venues. Members realize tremendous advantages over non-members through these types of opportunities, as well as tangible benefits from other services offered by CHBA-Alberta such as the Built Green program. This program is the recognized standard for the construction of energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly residential buildings in Alberta. This industry-driven voluntary program was launched in 2003 and has over 12,500 homes enrolled as certified by Natural Resources Canada in accordance with the EnerGuide Rating System. The Built Green program accommodates single-family, multi-family, high-rise and renovation residential projects. More information on the program can be found at www.builtgreencanada.ca.
INFRASTRUCTURE CONCERNS
One of CHBA-Alberta’s core strategic goals is to mitigate the rising government imposed costs and policies that cause harm to industry members. A growing concern for CHBA-Alberta is government’s direction to download infrastructure costs for community development onto the industry, which inevitably erodes the affordability of homes for consumers.
Alberta communities have fallen behind in the provision of infrastructure due to provincial funding cuts since the 1990’s and the increased rate of growth due to the economic boom experienced in recent years. Economic growth in Alberta has created an increased demand for infrastructure and services in its communities, and civic leaders have had to be creative in order to meet funding requirements or else fall behind in the provision of arterial roads, water treatment and municipal services. As a solution to address inadequate funding, numerous levies have been imposed by municipal governments on new residential developments in virtually all communities, causing increases in the cost of housing across the province by over $20,000 per door. As the cost of new homes increases it also impacts the cost of all housing types along the continuum. Consequently, people in rental accommodations are slower to move into entry level home ownership due to inflated costs. Low vacancy rates stimulate higher rental costs and more people have trouble meeting their housing needs at a price they can afford. Finally, people who can’t afford it are simply left without a roof over their head.
Interestingly, in 2007 the Alberta government introduced the Municipal Sustainability Initiative (MSI) which is a 10-year funding commitment to provide significant long-term funding to enhance municipal sustainability and to enable municipalities to meet the demands of growth; however, the municipal levies to the industry have remained in place, and in fact increased each year. Municipal leaders seem to be continually drawn to the residential construction industry to pay for shortfalls in resources to meet the needs of consumers without homes. In the recent past, these same civic leaders have asked the provincial government to support legislative changes allowing municipalities to demand the industry to “contribute” land in residential developments to support social housing….sounds kind of like expropriation, doesn’t it? If this type of legislative change is allowed, it will have the same inflationary impact on the cost of housing as charging of levies currently has. Unfortunately, this issue is not unique to Alberta as most other parts of the country are negatively affected by this same type of politics.
A PROMISING OUTLOOK
Despite some of the challenges faced by the residential construction industry in the past, the future does look very promising in Alberta! As other parts of Canada were crippled by the global economic downturn, Alberta has weathered the storm. For many CHBA-Alberta members the slowdown in new home sales and construction activity in late 2007, throughout 2008 and for the first half of 2009 was a blessing in disguise. It has allowed companies to re-evaluate their business plans, to make necessary changes to their expenditures and overhead, and to re-invest time, money and energy back into things that had long been put on the “back-burner” due to the busyness of the past decade. The slow-down brought the pace of construction back to manageable levels and allowed the industry to take a deep breath before entering another exciting growth trend in 2010.
For more information on the Canadian Home Builders Association of Alberta, www.chbaalberta.ca
View Digital Corporate Profile of CHBA in Construction Digital February 2010