Building Industry Association Creates Jobs, Homes

Made in America, Built in Michigan
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WEST BLOOMFIELD – Building Industry Association of Southeastern Michigan is pleased to announce the launch of Made In America/Built In Michigan – The Red, White and Blueprint for Recovery. It is an effort to generate local jobs by working with BIA member companies to build new homes using as many “made in Michigan” products as possible. 100 percent of each home’s materials will be made in the United States.

Groundbreaking for the first home will take place at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday, June 5 at 59677 Twin Pines Drive, in the Twin Pines subdivision located in New Hudson. The home is being built by Elkow Homes, a Wixom-based building company and member of BIA. Other BIA members are also involved. Todd Hallett, AIA, of TK Design & Architecture in Howell, designed the home. DTE Energy’s Builder-Developer Liaison, Robert Veresan, AIA, is working toward making the home net-zero in terms of energy consumption and emissions.

Michael Stoskopf, BIA’s CEO, collaborated with home builders association executive Paul Kane of Tulsa, Okla. and Bart Fletcher of Birmingham, Ala. to conceive the program they intend to offer as a template for use by other like associations across the country.

“We were inspired by the work of Anders Lewendal, an ‘economist-turned-homebuilder’ from Bozeman, Mont.,” Paul said. Based on Lewendal’s calculations, confirmed through interviews with other economists, replacing just 5 percent of normally used materials with materials “Made in America” could create up to 220,000 jobs, if adopted nationwide.

“Housing means jobs,” Michael said. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that three new jobs are created for each new home that is built. This is true not only for builders but in the industries where lumber, concrete, lighting fixtures, heating and cooling equipment and other products and services that go into a completing and selling a home are produced.

Rick Elkow, the home’s builder, couldn’t agree more. “For me, it’s all about putting people back to work,” he said. “From the BIA members working on the project to the tree cutters working in northern Michigan, each new home built under this program will have a positive impact on our local, state and national recovery. It’s what we need to support the first steps we’ve taken toward putting our industry back to work.”