ABSTRACT
At the 1961 annual convention, for the first time since National Association of Home Builder's (NAHB) inception in 1942, the homebuilders dropped from the yearly "NAHB policy statement" their traditional attack on the public housing program. The homebuilding lobby has earned its high marks principally for success in two areas: pressuring the federal government to adopt monetary policies which give preferential treatment to mortgage credit; getting federal subsidies for the production of new housing. Declining to be identified by name, a top staff member for the House Banking and Currency Committee, which handles much of the authorization legislation for housing matters, recognized the NAHB's effectiveness. NAHB worked hard to kill an Administration-sponsored "bare bones" substitute bill to the Housing Subcommittee's own larger version of the omnibus 1970 housing bill. Nathaniel H. Rogg said that in lobbying the legislative branch, NAHB stresses only those issues where the small individual entrepreneurs in homebuilding can combine to speak with some degree of authority.
