PCBC Agenda Ranges Over List of Concerns

Water and wetlands, land availability and costs, dream-home desires and the threatened presidential veto of a new national housing bill topped the four-day agenda at the 29th annual Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco.

As usual, the event drew record attendance (4,200) and its exhibit area of 60,000 square feet at the Moscone Convention Center topped all previous shows.

Its popular Gold Nugget awards competition, in its 24th year, attracted 724 entries from 14 western states--and 25% of the entrants won awards and went home happier.

Dale Stuard, first vice president of the National Assn. of Home Builders, told the conference--the nation’s largest and oldest regional industry meeting--that water supply has become a primary “growth control device.”

“The water issue is no different than the energy crisis this nation and the industry faced several years ago. You’re dealing with a finite resource,” he said.

Stuard, president of El Toro-based Stuard Industries and longtime Orange County builder, other industry leaders and conservationists said concern for water and regulations governing wetlands needs the priority attention of the elected officials, industry, lenders and economists.

Don Warren, Redwood City builder and an industry leader, emphasized that federal wetlands policy (Clean Water Act) affects lands beyond estuaries, river channels, creeks and marshes.

It will create a “morass of confusion,” he added, unless the industry, environmentalists and government policy makers confer and, while reserving certain areas, allow for orderly growth and construction of affordable housing on buildable land.

Harriett Wieder, member of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, said elected assemblymen and senators in the state Legislature must resolve the continuing, wasteful, time-consuming battle for water between the “north and the south.”

“The natives are getting restless,” she said, in urging factions to seriously tackle the issue of managing the water supply, 75% of it now used in the state’s southern portion.

Wieder heads the Southern California Water Committee that recommends a water policy dealing with reliability of supply, preservation of its quality, commitment to conservation and affordability.

The 11th annual home-shopper survey of preferences for their dream homes, sponsored by Great Western Real Estate, showed that today’s serious would-be buyers want two-story houses with larger, attached garages; they prefer gas by far to electrical energy and they want more oversized bathtubs.

The self-administered survey forms were completed at new home projects throughout the state during the first quarter of this year by 1,800 consumers.

Typically, some of the desires expressed failed to match the wherewithal of would-be buyers to purchase their dream houses but then, survey officials allowed, “you have to make allowances for dreams.”

Compared with preferences in the 1977 survey, the two-story home shot up from only a 15% choice a decade ago to the current 45%. The split-level, ranked at 48% 10 years ago, dropped to 27% this year and the single-family dwelling dropped in preference from 37% in 1977 to the current 28%.

In the current sampling of preferred floor plans, 38% wanted the two-story house, 35% wanted a single-story home and only 26% opted for the once-popular split-level.

The survey found that the composite home shopper has a median age of 37 and a median income of $54,500; 64% had dual incomes; the average household contained 3.1 persons and that 75% of the participants were in the move-up (present owners) household category.

At the national level, conference attention was drawn to a $15-billion omnibus housing authorization bill, the first in six years, which is now in a Senate and House conference committee to resolve differences. President Reagan has said he will veto it, describing it in very uncomplimentary terms.

The resultant bill is expected to ask for expenditures to finance various federal housing programs and allow for inflation. Housing proponents claim that Reagan Adminstration policies have created a major shortage of affordable housing.

Congress has been unable to muster enough support during Reagan’s tenure to pass housing authorization legislation because of Administration objections to the costs and strategies of existing housing programs.

NAHB President James Fischer said a presidential veto would be “a mistake.” Builders, joining with the National Assn. of Realtors and the Mortgage Bankers Assn., by their announced joint efforts in behalf of affordable housing, plan to lobby heavily against support of the expected veto, he said.

He charged that there has been a 70% drop in housing support by the federal government since 1980, and that such actions make “no political sense” in light of declining ownership of housing among the younger population.

Fischer, a builder in Tennessee, quipped that since Howard H. Baker Jr., the White House chief of staff and former senator from Tennessee is a good friend, there is an extraordinary possibility of getting his ear and warding off the veto.

Friends of Fischer also know about his unusual forte in gaining favor--by an impromptu distribution of a confection known as the Goo-Goo candy bar--a popular and delicious product of his native state.