(WND)—A scheme from the Barack Obama era in the White House that a builders group chief charges raised the cost of a new home by $95,000 is being canceled on orders from the Trump White House.
The agenda was to hold property owners liable – forever – for any original design issues that may have impacted accessibility.
A report at Fox News explains it is Jim Tobin, of the National Association of Home Builders, who confirmed nearly a quarter of the cost of a typical single-family home can be blamed on the Obama rule.
The administration of President Donald Trump now has scrapped Obama’s mandate that let “third parties” file “accessibility-related complaints over original building design flaws indefinitely, putting subsequent building owners on the hook for millions of dollars years after a project is completed, even if they were not the original builders.”
The change is being assembled by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice.
The report explained Obama’s agenda forced property owners to spend more than $112 million in accessibility retrofits over the last five years just to qualify for Federal Housing Administration refinancing—costs that HUD says directly choked off affordable housing supply.
The change will eliminate the liability by current property owners for “architectural deviations committed by original builders decades in the past.”
The time frame for filing Fair Housing Act design and construction challenges now starts on the date the building is given a certificate of occupancy.
There then is a limited time frame for actions to begin.
After that property owners are shielded from retroactive, building-wide liability for original architectural flaws, the report said. Individual tenants still will have a pathway to seek reasonable modifications for specific housing needs.
The new regulation explains that under Obama, the scope of the Fair Housing Act was dramatically expanded so that builders “in perpetuity” were on the hook.
But that “exceeded the Department’s statutory authority, failed to increase the supply of accessible housing for individuals with disabilities, and imposed an unwarranted and unduly prejudicial burden on American homebuilders,” the government said.
“For too long, unnecessary government policies have contributed to the skyrocketing cost of building, buying, and renting a home. Today’s action rescinds unnecessary and expensive liability created by legal theories that have no basis in law,” said HUD Secretary Scott Turner.
