Two Industry Leaders On Legislation in 2021

Wesley Palmisano

Founder, Palmisano LLC

At Palmisano, one of our top policy priorities is the sustainable development of affordable housing. The only way to address continuing shortages of affordable housing is to meaningfully grow the supply, and this requires building significant new capacity. The economic challenges Americans have faced during the pandemic have only made the affordable housing challenge more acute.

We are glad that policymakers are focusing on challenges concerning affordable housing supply and we are passionate in our belief that successfully addressing this challenge isn’t just good from a societal perspective, it’s also good business.

Building affordable housing benefits the entire business ecosystem, as well as providing countless and obvious human benefits. Construction provides well-paying jobs directly, as well as supporting countless skilled tradesmen and businesses that provide supplies and services. In addition, new residents support local retail and other businesses, and from this evolution communities are renewed and reborn.

We wish policymakers success in their efforts to make affordable housing available to hardworking Americans.

Matt Hoglund

Management Committee Member, DPR Construction

Across the industry, everyone is curious about legislation that has a direct bearing on the labor force. Two areas we will watch closely are infrastructure and immigration, as those are two areas that, whatever action is taken, give us a clearer picture of the path forward for a business like ours in terms of where and how we recruit new employees.

As an industry facing an ongoing labor shortage, the need to bring new people into the trades is already a critical need. Anything that happens at the federal and state levels to address that is important.

As such, what’s important to our business isn’t so much the details of legislation as much as knowing what’s on the table and what the stakes are moving forward so we can adapt and keep growing.