
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 30, 1993                   TAG: 9308020378
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID A.VAUGHN
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOUSING RECOVERY COULD GET THE AX

THE FOREST plan for the Pacific Northwest announced by President Clinton on July 1 is a far cry from the balanced solution he promised in April. It is neither balanced nor is it a solution. The president continues to categorize this as a Pacific Northswest issue when in fact it is a national problem that could very well impact lumber consumers in the Roanoke area, driving up the cost of lumber for all consumers and pricing marginal first-time home buyers out of the market.

The drastic reduction in timber harvests called for in the president's plan may very well slow or even end the tenuous housing recovery. While builders care deeply about our precious natural resources, including the great forests of the Pacific Northwest, we also care about people and jobs. We think it is not wise policy to set the ratio of spending at 10 to 1, to putenvironment over people. To be concerned about people and jobs is not to ignore the value of saving our environment. We believe both can be done, but the policy announced by President Clinton clearly does not strike a balance.

It is time for the administration and others to stop ignoring the very real national economic implications of this issue. Allowing timber harvest levels of only 1.2 billion board feet annually from the Northwest region will cost tens of thousands of jobs, force lumber prices up, cause serious disruptions in the nation's economic recovery and could prevent the nation's home builders from constructing the homes that Americans want and need.

One billion board feet of lumber is enough wood to construct 75,000 single-family homes. When lumber is not readily available prices go up and houses bcome more expensive to buy and build. Ultimately, jobs are lost.

Each one billion board feet of lumber taken off the market in the Pacific Northwest dislocates 23,000 loggers and other workers in that region of the country. Nationally, 130,000 American jobs are at risk in residential construction, forest products and other building-material industries. National opinion polls released two weeks ago found that 75 percent of the American people would not risk even 10,000 jobs to save the spotted owl.

Timber harvests have already declined from historic levels of 5 billion board feet to less than 2 billion board feet in 1992. A shortfall of between 3 and 4 billion board feet cannot be made up by increasing timber cutting on private lands in the Northwest or in the South, which is already producing at near capacity.

The price explosion experienced in the lumber markets this spring has already slowed housing stars, perhaps keeping a sub-par economic recovery from reaching full steam.

Now that lumber prices have receded somewhat, housing starts are beginning to rebound - and we expect an even stronger recovery this summer, provided there is an affordable and ready supply of lumber for building.

Housing has led this nation out of previous recessions and is critical to the nation's economy. Residential investment, including home building and remodeling, has accounted for 17.7 percent of the total growth of inflation-adjusted gross domestic product during the eight quarters since the trough of the 1991 recession.

The Clinton administration must either seek release of a higher level of timber harvest in the Pacific Northwest for the next two years, offset the reductions with other federal timber, or face the consequences of a worsening lumber shortage.

The Clinton Forest Plan is neither balanced nor sensible, and it ignores the human and economic dismensions that President Clinton pledged to consider.

\ AUTHOR David A. Vaughn is president of Roanoke Regional Home Builders Association in Salem.

by CNB