President Joe Biden has often boasted that his policies have made housing more affordable, even as home sales drop amid record-high prices, increasing inflation, and elevated interest rates.
The National Association of Realtors reported last month that in March, the median price for an existing single-family home jumped 4.8% from a year earlier to $393,500. That was the ninth consecutive month of year-over-year price gains and the highest price ever for the month of March, the group reported.
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This week, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio slammed Biden for seeking to make a bad situation even worse by prompting left-wing green energy requirements for home builders.
In a recent opinion column for the New York Post, Rubio cited a new “energy-saving” rule by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that was floated in April.
According to Bloomberg News, the proposed mandates update building codes to set energy-efficiency targets for insulation, windows, HVAC, and other systems. The standards only apply to new housing construction built with federal financing or funding.
Rubio noted that Biden and his allies in the media are spinning this as a victory for consumers, as their power bills would be cut by $900 a year.
Yet, as Rubio pointed out, the rule jacks up construction costs by up to $31,000 per home.
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“With today’s interest rates, it could take a buyer as many as 90 years to break even on that through energy savings,” he wrote. “Young families looking to purchase starter homes with Federal Housing Agency mortgages will bear the brunt of this impact.”
“That HUD enacted this rule to celebrate ‘Earth Week’ last month reveals the reason for this absurdity: Once again, the Biden administration is putting environmentalist lip service over real human beings,” he added.
“Simply put, the president and his Cabinet are beholden to Wall Street-based interest groups and environmentalist activists,” the senator added. “HUD claims it’s advancing energy efficiency on behalf of ‘vulnerable communities,’ but it’s really throwing a bone to multinational hedge funds invested in the ‘green transition’ — as well as the fanatics who vandalized the Constitution’s display case at the National Archives Museum to ‘draw attention to climate change.’”
“HUD’s new rule is a bad deal for ordinary people,” he continued. “It aligns perfectly with nearly every other aspect of the anti-human environmentalists’ sick agenda.”
Rubio argued that Biden’s rule shows that he and his leftist advisers still don’t understand simple economics: that the way to make housing more affordable is to increase supply and reduce construction costs.
“There’s nothing wrong, of course, with wanting to increase energy efficiency,” he said. “But when our leaders prioritize meeting arbitrary environmental benchmarks over solving our nation’s housing crisis and making life more affordable for normal families, you know they’re neglecting their duty.”
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