Long-Awaited Housing Bill Headed to Trump’s Desk

The House overwhelmingly passed legislation Tuesday aimed at speeding up housing development and increasing the number of homes available to Americans.

The bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, cleared the Senate on Monday and now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. The final passage settles a monthslong dispute that put House Republicans on a collision course with the White House and at odds with the Senate.

The president, who has supported the measure, is expected to sign it.

The compromise legislation, which passed the House 358-32, includes a limit on institutional investors’ control over single-family homes, enforced through fines on large corporations that own more than 350 of them. It also cuts regulations that Arkansas Rep. French Hill and his fellow Republicans wanted for community banks.

“This bicameral bipartisan bill before us today reflects the ideas from both chambers and demonstrates what can be accomplished when Congress focuses on solving problems for the American people,” Hill said on the House floor ahead of the final passage.

Tuesday’s vote represents a rare legislative victory for the Trump administration in a deeply divided Congress. As the midterm elections approach, the president has been eager to sign the first major housing legislation package in decades.

“The president has made it clear that he is committed to signing legislation that truly makes purchasing a home affordable again,” Davis Ingle, a spokesperson for the White House, told NOTUS earlier this year.

The final compromise was ultimately reached after Hill and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-California) secured changes to the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, the Build Now Act and the Rental Assistance Demonstration program.

“I’m pleased that after months of back and forth that we have reached an agreement on a comprehensive housing package that will finally get America back to building affordable housing,” Waters said in a statement after the final agreement was reached earlier this month.

The bill also encourages housing development through federal funding incentives such as the block grant and HOME programs, which support local governments’ ability to build and preserve affordable housing, and loosens environmental review standards to speed housing construction.

The House and Senate went back and forth on what the bill should include, but it wasn’t until the House revised the Senate’s private equity restriction — a marquee priority for the Trump administration — to exempt build-to-rent single-family homes, that the administration backed the lower chamber’s position.

House leaders say the legislation represents the rare policy issue on which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle can still agree.

“We’ve just made a statement to the United States population that Congress can still work,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Missouri), who was also heavily involved in House negotiations, told NOTUS.

Housing advocates and industry groups are eager to see the package enacted.

“For the families who’ve been priced out, squeezed out, or left behind by a broken housing market, this is a meaningful step —and it’s long overdue,” Dennis Shea, executive vice president of Bipartisan Policy Center’s Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, said in a statement.