We have a federal housing bill. And what a long, winding journey it has been.
On Feb. 9, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Housing for the 21st Century Act by a margin of 390–9. On March 12, the U.S. Senate passed a version of its 300-page 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act by a vote of 89–10. But as we noted in April, even such large majorities didn’t guarantee that a bill would become law.
It took more than two months, until May 20, for the House to amend the Senate resolution, pass it by a vote of 396–13, and send its version back to the Senate. A summary of that amended House bill and how it compared to previous versions is here. But the revised House bill was still different enough from the Senate bill that the Senate refused to take up the House bill, stalling action for nearly another month.
Finally, on June 16, Republican and Democratic leaders of the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee in the Senate—Senators Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—and of the Financial Service Committee in the House—Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.)—all agreed on common language. The final language of the bill that the four leaders settled on is summarized here.
The Senate then quickly took up the bill and passed it on June 22 by a vote of 85 to 5. And the House followed by a vote on June 23 of 358 to 32. The bill is expected to be signed by President Donald Trump into law on June 24.
What Made It Through and What Didn’t
Back in April, David Sanchez, senior vice president of housing strategy at ROC USA, a national nonprofit that supports resident-owned manufactured housing communities, said, “We’ll see if we end up with the biggest bill, where everything gets in, or if we end up with a narrower package.” By and large, in the end, a wider package was adopted.
Approved changes include regulatory changes and banking reforms designed to incentivize housing supply; the authorization and update of numerous programs; and provisions that allow rental assistance for 400,000 rural households (Section 515 housing) at risk of losing rental assistance as the original loans mature to remain in effect. Other provisions included in the bill are a seven-year reauthorization of the Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) to support the rehabilitation of manufactured housing and the addition of a new Moving to Work cohort among public housing authorities. (For more details, see our first article on the bills.)
In some cases, the final bill adopts a middle position between the two earlier versions.
For instance, a proposal to remove the cap on the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program was rejected, but the cap was increased from 455,000 to 555,000 units. Similarly, an effort to permanently authorize Community Development Block Grant disaster recovery (CDBG-DR) funding fell short. However, the bill does include a three-year authorization of the program and establishes the Office of Disaster Management and Resiliency within HUD to administer it.
Tenant advocates, such as the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), are unlikely to mourn the maintenance of a cap on RAD placements. As Kim Johnson of NLIHC told Shelterforce in April, “We’ve always opposed any expansion of RAD … until there is a better understanding of … the program’s impact on tenants.” For its part, in a statement, the Council of Large Public Housing Agencies called the failure to remove the RAD cap “a setback.” Both organizations still support the amended bill.
An earlier version of Section 901 (now section 1001) of the Senate bill would have banned institutional investors from owning—directly or indirectly—more than 350 single-family homes. After significant outcry from housing supply advocates, the final version keeps the direct ban, but excludes a wide swath of “build-to-rent” and “renovate-to-rent” properties from that ban. The revised bill’s language defines a renovate-to-rent program as “substantially rehabilitat[ing] single-family homes that do not meet structural or core system elements of local building codes” and “mak[ing] improvements in an aggregate dollar amount of not less than 15 percent of the purchase price of the single-family home.” The section also mandates that HUD establish a “renter outreach resource that consists of a toll-free telephone number and a public website designed to assist renters of residential properties owned by a large institutional investor.”
Likely Impact
The bill has been touted in the press as the “largest housing bill in decades.” While technically true, this speaks less to how ambitious the bill is—Sanchez has called it “a package of little- to medium-sized tweaks”—and more to how long there has been federal inaction on housing policy.
Perhaps the best news is that the bill acknowledges a federal role in housing policy. That may be something on which housing advocates can build.
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