Putting the apartment industry’s issues in front of national policymaker organizations that shape state and local legislative agendas has long been a priority for NAA’s Government Affairs Department. But because the industry’s issues are both broad and deep, we recently surveyed affiliate government affairs contacts to find out which ones are of paramount importance to their members.
While noting the importance of all of the surveyed issues, participants ranked (in order) bed bugs, taxes/fees, general landlord/tenant, building code/retrofitting and protected classes (including source of income, domestic violence victims, etc.) as policy issues that were most important to their local affiliate (determined by the percentage of participants that rated the issue as either very important or extremely important).
Interestingly, when asked to rate the same issues on their importance to the industry as a whole, the issues were the same, but the order was different: bed bugs, building code/retrofitting and taxes/fees (tied), protected classes, general landlord/tenant and energy efficiency/green and inspections (tied).
These ranking variances indicate that because of differing political environments, affiliate members around the nation have varying views regarding which issues are most important to their members compared with the industry as a whole.
By way of background, the State and Local Division of NAA Government Affairs has been exploring whether to expand our already proactive participation and idea exchange with national policymaker organizations, including, among others, the National Conference of State Legislatures and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Our specific goal is to increase the quality and quantity of apartment industry education on how the implementation of specific regulatory policies affects the apartment industry, as well as position NAA and its affiliates as the nation’s premier authorities on apartment industry knowledge.
Survey participants were provided with a list of nine state and local policy issues and asked to rate them on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being least important and 5 being extremely important), according to the degree of importance each issue is to both their local affiliate members and to the multifamily housing industry as a whole.
Additionally, members were asked if they believe NAA further expanding its efforts with organizations such as those named above would be a sound use of the association’s time and resources. Ninety-six percent said that they believe NAA’s expansion of educational outreach efforts to state and local policymaker organizations would be a good use of association resources.
In addition to guiding NAA’s outreach to policymaker organizations, NAA will use this survey to guide other affiliate support initiatives, such as adding new issue topics to the NAA state and local government affairs website, preparing new issue documents and conducting policy research. As NAA further develops state and local issue projects, we will continue to ask for feedback from the membership to ensure that our efforts are providing affiliates with the best possible resources to assist them with their daily policy efforts across the nation.
Scot Haislip is NAA’s Director, State & Local Government Affairs. He can be reached at 703/797-0623.