CHBA and the International Housing Association
CHBA was a founding member of the International Housing Association (IHA) over 35 years ago, and still plays an important leadership role within the IHA today. The IHA is essentially the international association of home builders’ associations, allowing residential construction industry leaders from around the world to address common issues and globally significant priority areas identified by member countries. Through collaboration with other IHA countries, CHBA’s participation impacts international affairs that affect Canada’s residential construction industry, while also bringing back to Canada lessons learned from abroad to inform CHBA activities to best serve CHBA members.
CHBA CEO Kevin Lee is past chair of the IHA, and continues to serve on several IHA working groups, while also chairing the IHA Housing Affordability Working Group. CHBA staff engage with the IHA Working Groups in a variety of capacities as well. The IHA publishes Statements of Intent on these priority areas, and shares information and solutions related to them.
The IHA engages regularly with other international organizations, getting items onto the agenda at G7 summits for example, and impacting influential work by agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). CHBA’s engagement with the IMF through the IHA was instrumental in helping the IMF re-evaluate housing supply/demand situations around the globe, and in Canada in particular, ultimately leading to the IMF stating “to tackle housing affordability in Canada, build more houses” in 2019. This move to better recognizing Canada’s housing shortage, as identified by CHBA for years, was instrumental in propelling the sea-change in Canada with respect to the need to build many more homes and remove the barriers preventing that.
Through IHA engagement, CHBA has leveraged work by other countries to strengthen CHBA efforts. There is no better example of this than CHBA’s Housing Market Index (HMI), which came about through collaboration with the US National Association of Home Builders’ economists that built the NAHB HMI. CHBA’s HMI is now widely quoted by media, used in CHBA’s government relations extensively, and tracked by policy makers to inform decision making, including the Bank of Canada. Thanks to the HMI, CHBA meets regularly with Bank of Canada, helping to inform Bank policy through insights into the new housing sector.
Strategies on how to address government relations, government-imposed costs like development charges, excessive regulation, building code issues, labour shortages, and much more, are all discussed and shared at IHA meetings. Through these discussions, new approaches are found for CHBA, while CHBA also helps to inform other home builder associations around the world with CHBA activities and lessons learned here in Canada.
Like membership in any association, you need to participate to glean the benefits; and while CHBA has been a very active contributor at the IHA, like any good association, the IHA has provided much more in return to CHBA and its members through the power of collaboration – in this case at a global level.