As I write this column today without loyalty to any
political party, the federal government has finally began creaking back to life
after being held hostage for 16 days by a Congress seemingly out of touch with
the country’s unique role in the global economy.
Not surprisingly, this same Congress earned
an approval rating of 11 percent from a poll taken immediately after the
shutdown during the early days of October.
While the same poll showed Republicans with an approval
rating of 28 percent (down 10 percentage points from the previous month),
Democrats also took a four-point hit, with their approval rating edging down to
43 percent. Poll respondents also showed
62 percent of them disapproving of Republicans, while Democrats split the
country more evenly at 49 percent.
Recent figures on the economic damage from the temporary closure have
been estimated at $24 billion, and fourth quarter GDP growth estimates have
been cut from 3.0 to 2.4 percent.
I only mention these figures because I’ve always been
interested in the long-standing connection between the building industry and
GOP even when their policies – especially at the national level -- didn’t
necessarily coincide with the best interests of the housing market. To be sure,
at the local level it certainly makes sense for builders to support politicians
who share their goal of making it easier to develop new communities for growing
populations, but on the national political stage it’s a far different story.
In the 2012 campaigns, just over three-quarters of the
NAHB’s BuildPac funds went to the GOP – far higher than the 55 percent from the
National Association of Realtors or the 57 percent from the Mortgage Bankers
Association. Looking ahead to the 2014
elections, while the GOP money lead from BuildPac has shrunk to 67 percent,
it’s still far higher than the 48 percent planned by the NAR.
So just what is our industry getting for all of this
money?
It’s a fair question:
Remember the $787 billion stimulus package
that President Obama wanted to pass shortly after his inauguration?
It passed without a single Republican vote in
the House, and just three in the Senate.
Soon thereafter, a separate law to allow
judges the freedom to modify mortgages on primary residences to prevent a
cascade of foreclosures was also rejected by most Republican legislators.
Meanwhile, GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s plan
for the housing market was both clear and simple:
let an unfettered free market sort everything
out on its own, even though 83 percent of the sub-prime loans which tanked the
housing market were made by mostly unscrupulous private firms.
But this concern isn’t just about money: it’s just as much about demographics. While the country continues to become
increasingly diverse along racial, ethnic and religious lines, the management
of building companies looks much like it has in the past: white, middle-aged (with a median age of 54
in 2011 according to a NAHB membership survey), 93 percent male and, given the
historic connection with the GOP, with what I assume are traditional values
handed down from previous generations.
For the overall construction and extraction industries,
however, it’s a different story: while over 97 percent of these jobs were still held by men, less than 10 percent of
them were Caucasian alone, while nearly 16 percent were Hispanic, 5.7 percent
were African American and 2.6 percent were Asian.
It’s an even larger contrast with the general
U.S. population, which as of July 2012 was 77 percent Caucasian, 17 percent
Hispanic, 13 percent African American, 5.1 percent Asian and 2.3 percent two or
more races.
By 2043, the Census Bureau estimates that the country will
no longer be a white-majority country, fueled today by significantly higher
birth rates among multi-racial couples, Asians and Hispanic immigrants. About 11 percent of the country’s counties
are currently “majority-minority” across the southwest, southeast and
northeast. As soon as next year, a
majority of children nationally under age five will be of non-Caucasian
descent.
So why is this important?
Because the GOP has a substantial image problem among minority voters,
with just 11 percent of non-white voters declaring allegiance to the Republican
party as of mid-2012.
And when the
NAHB’s primary PAC is still targeting two-thirds of its funds towards
Republican candidates, it’s hard to ignore this huge political disconnect
between supplier and buyer.
Sure, you
could always hire consultants to tell you how to market to specific minority
groups, but wouldn’t it be more practical for this industry to better mirror
the general population?
