Nevada Current: Things Trump’s tariffs could sink: Stock market, global economy, and…Lombardo’s housing bill
- Apr 4
- 5 min read
By: Michael Lyle - April 4, 2025 5:00 am
State lawmakers question if President Donald Trump’s world-roiling tariffs will undercut Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s housing bill, which allocates $250 million in funding to build more housing and expands the definition of affordable housing to include higher incomes.
Lombardo has previously focused his attention on addressing the state’s housing crisis by calling on the federal government to release more federal land he argues is needed to build more housing – even as housing groups warn against urban sprawl and a local analysis shows significant infill land available.
Assembly Bill 540, heard Wednesday night by the Assembly Commerce and Labor Committee, seeks to use state general funds to help finance the development of housing.
The bill also expands the threshold of affordable housing to include households making 150% of area median income and allows out-of-state contractors to develop in rural areas, which is currently prohibited by state law.
Lombardo, appearing briefly before the panel Wednesday to introduce the bill, said the legislation “expedites permanent housing solutions” and described his bill as the “action plan to get this done so that significant progress is already underway in Nevada before land is even released.”
Democratic Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, citing the tariffs Trump announced on all imports from all countries Wednesday that sent financial markets into a severe tailspin Thursday, said Lombardo’s bill doesn’t match the times.
The National Association of Homebuilders, Yeager added, anticipates tariffs will drive up the cost of all housing and construction costs.
“I do think there is a twinge of irony that we as a state are asking the federal government to give us land to be able to build but at the same time we are seeing federal policies that maybe prevent us from building on that land that’s being released,” Yeager said. “I don’t know if this is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.”
Yeager asked if Lombardo’s office had talked with Trump about the newly announced sweeping tariffs, and how their economic fallout could impede the state from building more housing.
Ryan Cherry, the governor’s chief of staff, said while the office has talked with the Trump administration about housing costs, “as far as tariffs, we have not had direct conversations as of this time.”
Asked earlier in the week, before the scope and scale of Trump’s tariff proposals announced Wednesday were known, about the impacts of tariffs and Trump’s other economic policies, Lombardo said Nevada will “make adjustments on the fly.”
Nevada Housing Division Administrator Steve Aichroth, who helped present the bill on Wednesday, noted the state has already had to weather high interest rights and supply chain issues in the last few years.
Despite how Covid exacerbated the housing crisis, the state still tried to find a way to build, Aichroth said.
While everyone would prefer to “build in a perfect environment,” Aichroth said, “we haven’t seen a perfect environment in a long time. But we have to build. We have to get projects built and on the ground.”
The American Rescue Plan Act, passed and signed into law in 2021 by President Joe Biden, allocated billions of dollars of relief funds to the state.
The state directed $500 million of that assistance to the Home Means Nevada fund, which offered financing for housing projects throughout the state and helped prevent building from being stalled, Aichroth said.
“Whether it’s tariffs or higher interest rates, any of those challenges we hear from builders and laborers, all of those factor into the current housing eco-system,” he said. “There is never a perfect time to do this. We have to play the cards we are dealt.”
AB 540 would change the definition of affordable housing to “attainable housing,” creating the Nevada Attainable Housing Fund and Council, which will oversee the allocation of $250 million in funding for housing projects.
Christine Hess, the chief financial officer of the Nevada Housing Division, said that $50 million of the funds will be directed toward “loans and will remain assets of the division’s trust so that we can continue to issue the hundreds of millions of bonds annually for home ownership and multi-family rental housing.”
Hess said while financing building for buyers with more than 150% of area household median income — more than $120,000 a year in Nevada — “sounds like a lot,” it was designed to meet the changing landscape of the cost of housing.
“The median home price up and up in Reno is $600,000,” she said. “The idea was that up to 150% gives the division with input from the communities and stakeholders, to be flexible, and the amount of public funding.”
Aichroth added the state has “programs that basically focus on 60% and 80% and below.”
Though there are other resources for lower income earners, the need is far greater.
There are only 17 available homes for every 100 extremely low income households making less than 30% of AMI compared to 94 available homes per 100 renter households making 100% of AMI, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Democratic Assemblymember Brittney Miller asked how projects would be prioritized.
Aichroth said it would be a combination of community need and financial feasibility.
He added the feasibility piece was extremely important “to ensure that the projects can get built, built to fruition, and house people for a good length of time.”
Real estate interests and homebuilding firms supported the bill, saying it would alleviate issues faced when it comes to developing more housing.
Val Thomason, with the Democratic Socialists of America, said the bill “seems like a giveaway to property developers.”
No prevailing wage requirements
Lawmakers asked little about expanding households to include 150% AMI and changing the definition of affordable housing to attainable, and how that portion of the measure might come at the expense of lower income households.
Instead they directed much of their focus on the section of the bill that exempts projects from paying prevailing wages to construction workers that state law typically requires of publicly financed projects.
Under Lombardo’s bill, builders needn’t pay prevailing wage if “the qualified borrower demonstrates that the qualified project addresses a need for critical infrastructure in an area with a shortage of attainable housing.”
Tina Frias, the CEO of the Southern Nevada Homebuilders Association argued that state prevailing wage requirements “make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for home builders to construct attainable homes.”
“We’re willing to sacrifice construction workers,” said Las Vegas Democratic Assemblymember Max Carter, admonishing the provision. The state is “willing to let them work for substandard wages. In fact, incentivize them working for substandard wages.”
Reno Democratic Assemblymember Erica Roth pointed to two housing projects that received funding from the Nevada Infrastructure Bank.
“Both of those projects use prevailing wages and both of those projects didn’t have trouble securing financing or penciling out,” she said.
Despite the bill’s language exempting the prevailing wage, Cherry said it was not the intent “to be presented this way.”
“I will be clear and on the record for this committee that Governor Lombardo does support the use of prevailing wage on projects across the board,” he said.
Labor groups, including the AFL-CIO, and progressive groups, including Battle Born Progress, also opposed the bill’s provisions prevailing wage exemption.
The committee took no action on the bill.
Comments