The news piece also states: "Builders said that among buyers who are willing to pay more for green features, more than half—57 per cent – are unlikely to pay more than an additional two per cent," and that "only 11 percent of builders nationwide indicated that their customers ask about environmentally friendly features, according to the survey."
It is easy to understand why these numbers would grab my attention since surveys of builders that we have conducted on this subject have yielded significantly different results, as have numerous similar surveys by fellow media groups, green building organizations, and other interested parties. In fact, in a survey of builders that we conducted in 2008 respondents indicated that confusion with different green programs and standards posed a greater obstacle to implementing green building techniques than cost increases.
Since I found the NAHB numbers curiously inconsistent with ours I requested the survey data that the results were based on, but my request was immediately denied. The reason given was that surveys such as this are considered "internal documents," and the information in them is not shared with either the press or association members.
I found the second category particularly disconcerting since I am not only a member of NAHB but a Life Director on their Board. I believe that I (and/or any other member making such a request) should have access to survey material and results that are gathered on behalf of the members. I always thought that member-based organizations exist to serve the members. Perhaps I am missing something?
I have continued to press for the information, I am exploring whether their refusal raises legal issues but as of this of this writing I have been told again that it has been the longstanding policy of the organization to never release the raw data from surveys, and in the absence of any additional information I am left to wonder about a few of the survey details …
For example, how many builders were offered an opportunity to participate in the survey? How many actually responded and therefore how large is the base pool that the survey cites (11% of builders nationwide would imply a rather large sampling, it seems to me) in these results? What other related questions and potentially contradictory results were not revealed in the news release? Were there builders who tried to take part but were excluded?
I ask this last question because I have attempted to participate in certain industry surveys only to be shut out because my number of housing starts was below a pre-determined minimum threshold. By only selecting certain categories of responses for inclusion in the results it is amazingly easy to skew them. It is no secret that statistical information can be manipulated in a multitude of ways.
Is it possible that this "recent" survey (NAHB says it is from August, and I assume the year to be 2009 but have no confirmation of this) captured results from targeted builder categories, certain sized companies, specific market locations, and/or any number of various qualifiers while excluding others in order to arrive at a pre-determined set of conclusions designed to satisfy a particular message objective?
Without access to the background data one can only suppose. Keeping the information secret obviously fosters suspicion and mistrust since it makes questionable sense otherwise.
The news article concludes: "Whenever Congress considers how to encourage more energy-efficient construction, it must keep affordability involved …" Call me cynical but whenever I hear trade associations, including NAHB, invoke the all too familiar "affordability" refrain coupled with a call for Congress to behave in a certain way—does anyone suppose the timing of the release is an accident?—my experience has consistently been that the status quo is being shielded on behalf of one or more special interest groups.
You have to wonder, though, how much longer will this worn-out strategy survive? Is it possible that the poor old dead horse of "affordability" has been beaten for so long that nobody listens any more, and when they do hear that tired mantra, do they actually interpret it as protecting "profitability?"
The numbers cited in the aforementioned NAHB survey would appear to serve the needs of particular subsets of the Association's membership— perhaps production builders, especially certain high-production building corporations who predicate their market shares on competitive sales price more than any other factor, and who therefore oppose practically any increase in energy-efficiency since it may result in additional cost of entry, regardless how positively it may affect the ability of the homeowner to occupy and operate the home long-term.
Ironically, the same organization that so proudly points to a few hundred housing units that have been "verified" under its national program as evidence that it is the reigning champion of residential sustainability throughout the land, and trumpets the importance of having "designated" more than 4,000 of its members as "Certified Green Professionals" (an embarrassing number, which amounts to less than 3% of its total membership) can't seem to decide which side of the sustainability fence it wants to call home.
This looks to me like just another attempt to have it both ways.
If that is what has happened in this case, it would be hard to say which represents the greater transgression: the manipulative messaging of survey results to serve the profit motives of selected members, the perpetuation of myths and misinformation that discourages the uninformed from attempting to reach higher levels of performance and thus deliver a better end product, or the organizational breach of faith with the rest of us … especially those who send in an annual dues check and hope for balanced advocacy, honest information, and transparency in return.