Sen. King bill could speed up, reduce costs for some affordable housing projects
Maine’s junior senator has entered the fray over a federal procurement rule that developers say is grinding affordable housing construction to a halt.
Sen. Angus King unveiled the Build American Efficiency Act on Wednesday, proposing a public database of certified domestic products to simplify compliance with the Build America Buy America Act. The 2021 law requires that projects receiving certain federal funds use materials that are 95% American-made.
Advocates and builders say the paperwork burden has become crushing. Tracking down domestic suppliers can add roughly $150,000 to a project before accounting for the higher cost of U.S. materials. Laura Reading, who runs affordable housing operations for Developers Collaborative in Portland, spent more than seven months waiting for waiver approvals on two developments in Portland and Windham. Both projects were slated to close this month, but Reading learned her Portland waiver—covering a childcare center and 60 housing units—must be resubmitted because it addresses only MaineHousing funding, not city money.
“The documentation for all of this has been a bit insane because all of these vendors want to use their own form and their own letter,” Reading said.
King described the rule as “a perfect example of a well-meaning policy that turned out to have negative consequences” and said a centralized database would spare hundreds of builders from navigating the maze alone. He suggested artificial intelligence could assist in certifying the thousands of components that go into a typical affordable housing project.
But Laura Mitchell, head of the Maine Affordable Housing Coalition, warned the database is insufficient. The existing Make It American registry, which the bill cites as a model, lists roughly 68 facilities across 15 companies and about 50 products—far short of the 1,600 parts common in a single development.
“This bill doesn’t offer the extensive level of changes that are needed,” Mitchell said. She urged HUD to issue a blanket waiver for HVAC systems, raise the foreign-material threshold from 5% to 10% or 15%, or exempt affordable housing from the rule entirely. “That would be the silver bullet addressing all of this,” she said.
A separate House measure, the Build Housing Affordably Act, would impose a 90-day deadline on waiver decisions. Maine was among the first states to hit the BABA bottleneck, and developers there are pressing for a fix before the problem spreads nationwide.
King, optimistic about bipartisan support, predicted the legislation could clear Congress and become law before year’s end.
