Business View - March 2015 45
around the same time. Many formed later, obviously,
but we are one of 28 local homebuilder associations
around the state and we’re affiliated with the National
Association of Home-builders in Washington D.C.
So, it’s a federation you join at the local level – some
of the local home-builders associations are the Great-
er Austin Builders Association, the Dallas
Builders Association, and what have you,
and of course, your dues go towards the
state association, which goes to national,
and just as there’s three levels of mem-
bership, there’s three focuses. Our local
HBA’s focus on local matters – city, county,
a lot of education, social events, charity –
those kinds of activities. On the state level,
we primarily exist for state capital, dealing
with state agencies, issues of statewide
concern, and similarly, the HBA in DC han-
dles federal matters. So, it’s what we do
and where we came from and we’ve been
doing it a long time – it’s very consensus
driven. Obviously, we are a large organiza-
tion, with 10,000 companies and agencies
represented by 450-470,000 jobs and 30
something billion dollars of the economy. I
don’t know what our latest number is, but it’s north of
30 billion dollars of the state’s economy that’s for de-
veloping and remodeling and construction industries.
BUSINESS VIEW: How much has that role evolved?
Obviously times are different now than they were in
1946 – are you still essentially serving the same role
and doing the same kinds of things? Or is it drasti-
cally different than it was back then?
NORMAN:
No, I think the means of communication,
the channels of communication, the involvement,
whether that be through social media or that sort
of thing – some of that has changed, you know, you
don't have as many mail-outs or newsletters through
the snail mail and that sort of things. But, I think a lot
of the issues have remained similar. We’ve gone back
and looked at some of our archives and some of the
issues they were dealing with in the 40’s and 50’s that
affected housing affordability, transportation, future
water supply – those sorts of things, it’s a lot of the
same things we’re dealing with today. I’m dealing with
this legislative session over at the capital, how are we
going to fund our state’s highway system, what are we
going to do to make sure we have an adequate water
supply moving forward.
It’s a lot of the same issues – education, workforce is-
sues, how we are going to handle an aging workforce
and how are we going to replace these workers in the
industry. And then, of course, issues specific to us like
different regulatory matters, dealing with how cities
and counties regulate our industry, dealing with the
various effective trades and license trades that work
on our jobsite that maybe are licensed by various state
