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Today, the House Financial Services Committee is holding a Housing and Insurance Subcommittee hearing, led by Subcommittee Chair Mike Flood (NE-01), to examine how rural communities can better leverage private-sector investment and community-led solutions to meet their unique housing needs.

Read Subcommittee Chair Flood’s opening remarks as prepared for delivery:

"I’d like to thank our witnesses for being with us today, and I very much look forward to hearing their testimony on the topic of housing in rural America.

"So far this year, we have focused this subcommittee’s work on the rising costs of housing in America. We spent our hearing in March focusing on the underlying driving force behind the problem, a lack of housing supply.

"In May, we had an opportunity to examine some of the alternative building methods that can bring supply online for less cost, like manufactured housing, modular housing and even early-stage experiments with 3-D printing homes.

"Today, we are going to dig into the challenges with building housing in rural America.

"The problems in the rural parts of our country are a little different than those we see in urban areas.

"While a rural area may have lower land costs, the logistics associated with getting homes built in rural areas can introduce some unique challenges that drive up project costs:

"It’s more expensive to transport building materials to a remote part of the country. Longer supply chains mean more cost and those costs are often passed down to the homebuyer or renter.

"Rural areas may have less contractors and subcontractors nearby to do the important work needed to build the home. Labor shortages can lead to expensive delays on a project, or even stop projects altogether when an area simply doesn’t have the experts needed to do the work at all.

"Alternatively, it can mean bringing labor in from further away from the project site, which contributes higher labor costs overall. Again, these costs will be passed down to the homebuyer or renter.

"However, as we examine what drives costs in rural housing markets, we will also see some common themes we’ve already discussed in this subcommittee re-emerge. Namely, regulatory burdens from the federal government often hit smaller communities with less resources the hardest.

"Through my work thus far in this Congress, I have identified four key cost drivers in federal housing projects. I call them 'The Four Horsemen of the Housing Apocalypse:'

"Environmental Review requirements that delay a project’s start and drive up its cost.

"Build America Buy America requirements that drive up the cost of critical construction materials and appliances.

"Davis-Bacon requirements that, from what I’ve heard, are much more costly due to the associated reporting requirements than they are for the actual cost of paying prevailing wages;

"And Section 3 requirements that make it more difficult to find contractors to do the job—particularly in rural areas with some of the workforce challenges I mentioned.

"While many of these requirements are well-intentioned, their combined impact significantly drives up the cost of projects using federal dollars.

"I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about both the challenges that are unique to rural housing markets, and how some of those common federal regulatory challenges affect projects in rural areas.

"Finally, this hearing will also serve as an opportunity to explore the impact of federal rural housing programs like the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service.

"The RHS operates programs under Title V of the U.S. Housing Act of 1949.

"The Section 515 program provides affordable housing rental housing for low-income families, the elderly and people with disabilities.

"The Section 538 program provides financing to increase the supply of rural housing for low and moderate income people;

"And the Section 502 program makes direct loans to low-income borrowers to rehabilitate or purchase a primary residence.

"Ranking Member Cleaver has a draft bill noticed to his hearing that would make some changes to these programs, which I’m sure will be a subject of discussion today with our witnesses and Members.

"I am excited to dig deeper into each of these issues today, and I look forward to our witnesses’ testimony."