In The Rush To Build Affordably, We Can’t Undermine Building Safety
Jackson Morrill
President & CEO of the American Wood Council
As housing continues to pose affordability challenges across the country, state governments have been pursuing legislation that, while well-intentioned, threatens the safety of wood construction. This year, for example, New York and North Carolina each considered legislation that would have let state-specific standards for lumber grading and structural wood use bypass existing building codes and standards that ensure safe wood buildings. In both instances, the expressed rationales included reducing housing costs and increasing material sustainability, which are certainly worthy goals. However, in reality, by foregoing the consensus-based International Code Council’s model codes and well-established American Lumber Standards Committee (ALSC) lumber grading standards, the laws posed significant safety concerns that far outweighed any perceived benefits.
In New York, a 2025 salvage lumber bill would have allowed structural use of reclaimed wood outside the provisions of the building code, creating safety concerns and a troubling precedent for states setting their own technical standards. The American Wood Council (AWC) and ALSC opposed the bill, and it stalled in the 2025 session. Anticipating its return, AWC proactively engaged the bill sponsors ahead of 2026, pointing to a joint AWC/ALSC proposal already under evaluation for the 2027 International Residential Code (IRC). That proposal established sound requirements for species and grade identification of salvage lumber, creating a performance-based path for its safe use in the building codes, and it was ultimately approved for inclusion in the 2027 IRC. When the New York bill resurfaced in 2026, AWC and ALSC had something better than an objection: a technical, code-accepted solution. Sponsors adopted the IRC language, the problematic provisions were removed, and as a result New York statute now includes language that ensures salvage lumber meets the same exacting grading standards as required of all other lumber under the ALSC standard, a win for building safety.
North Carolina presented a similar test on a different issue. The state’s 2025 Farm Act carried provisions to allow self-certified lumber grading and remained live into 2026. AWC and coalition partners, specifically the North Carolina Forestry Association, spent months engaging key Senators on the safety concerns these provisions raised, and the effort paid off when the bill reached Conference Committee in early June: the Committee agreed to strip the lumber grading provisions due to the safety concerns AWC and the North Carolina Forestry Association had presented. The amended bill passed both chambers without the problematic language and was signed into law.
As our country continues to face inflation and a difficult housing market, there will continue to be pressure to address these challenges through initiatives like we have seen in both North Carolina and New York. What is often not well understood by state legislators is that in pursuing these policies, they undermine building safety. We at AWC will continue to work with partners like ALSC, North Carolina Forestry and others to make sure that safety comes first, and this means that jurisdictions across the country should rely on the consensus-based codes and ALSC grading standards to address emerging issues like ungraded and salvage lumber. Our industry takes seriously the responsibility to support safe wood construction, and AWC and our partners will continue to take that message to the states as similar bills come forward in the future.
