NAHB Provides Legal Action Funds for Builders in Six States
During last month’s spring board of directors meeting in Washington, the NAHB Legal Action Committee recommended that the NAHB Executive Board provide financial support in six states through its Legal Action Fund.
The NAHB Legal Action Fund helps home builders associations involved in litigation that is of importance to the home building industry. The cases must address issues that are of common concern to builders or of national significance.
Applications for NAHB Legal Action Funds are reviewed three times a year during the association’s board meetings.
A variety of issues were reviewed at this meeting, and NAHB chose to provide Legal Action Fund assistance involving:
- Impact fees. Home builders associations in Mississippi and Nebraska that are challenging the statutory enabling authority of local governments to enact impact fees. The associations say that the fees amount to illegal taxes that the localities have no authority to enact.
- Environmental designations. An HBA in Cape Cod, MA, is fighting in appellate court to preserve a trial court ruling that voided a town-wide environmental designation prohibiting building because it went beyond the scope of the town’s legal authority.
- Down-zoning. A builders associatioin is challenging a down-zoning ordinance near Fredericksburg, VA, that, if allowed to stand, would cut in half the number of residential building lots permitted by right.
- Fair Housing. A builder alleging in a Fair Housing Act case that the town of Pomona, NY, is using regulations to discourage racial minorities from becoming residents in one of the town’s subdivisions.
- Contracts. An NAHB friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Texas Supreme Court in a case that will decide whether minor children in a family can be held to an arbitration provision in a contract signed by their parents.
For more information on these cases or on how to make an application to the Legal Action Fund, e-mail Mary Lynn Pickel or call her at 800-368-5242 x8485.