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Congress Responds to Housing Concerns Before Passing Highlands Conservation Act

The version of “Highlands Conservation Act” originally introduced in the spring of 2003 would have placed extreme land preservation and development restrictions on more than 2 million acres in the four-state region.

NAHB worked with Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ), the House sponsor of the bill, to include compromise language designed to mitigate adverse impacts the measure might have had on housing affordability and availability in the highlands region.

The original bill would have created a new Office of Highlands Stewardship and Highlands Working Group, which would have had the authority to approve and dispense land preservation grants for the region.

In the legislative language that was negotiated with Frelinghuysen and approved by the House last year, those groups were abolished. Also, the bill now limits land preservation efforts to the most appropriate areas within the region, preserves local land use authority, reduces annual funding authorization for land acquisition from $25 million to $10 million over the next decade and protects the rights of private property owners by allowing them to opt out of any land conservation project.

Last month, just prior to recessing for the election, the Senate passed an amended version of H.R. 1964 that left intact all of the changes that had been negotiated between NAHB and Frelinghuysen.

The Senate's bill was also favorable to NAHB's position. It required a study of the Highlands region in Connecticut and Pennslyvania and also used a U.S. Forest Service map to establish the highlands region rather than relying on the less clearly defined geographical boundary in the House version.

On Nov. 17, the House agreed to the Senate’s changes.

To read the legislation, click here and enter H.R. 1964 in the box at the upper left.

For more information, e-mail J.P. Delmore at NAHB, or call him at 800-368-5242 x8412.

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