Elizabeth Warren Led a Key Housing Bill. She Might Lead to Its Downfall.

Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren was key to getting a major housing bill — a top priority of the Trump White House — through the Senate earlier this month.

The legislation, which if signed into law would be the first major housing package passed by Congress in at least three decades, could notch a major victory for the progressive senator in a Republican-controlled Washington.

But her involvement is threatening to tank the bill in the House.

House Republicans are furious about how many Democratic priorities have been included. And their Democratic counterparts say Warren shut them out of the process.

NOTUS spoke with more than a dozen people familiar with discussions around the housing package under consideration in Congress. Many said that Warren and Sen. Tim Scott, the Republican lead on the bill, have refused to communicate with House lawmakers and dismissed concerns brought by housing advocates.

“Until we could sit down, you know, have a very direct conversation, we might damage something that almost every member of Congress really wants,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the top Democrat in the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, which led the House’s version of the housing bill.

It’s been more than a week since the Senate passed the legislation, but Cleaver and Rep. Maxine Waters, the House Financial Services Committee’s ranking member, have not heard from either Warren or Scott to negotiate, Cleaver told NOTUS. Waters, who did not comment, also never got an answer back on a letter outlining Democratic priorities she wanted to see in a final housing bill, as Punchbowl News reported.

“I don’t believe we’ve heard back from that. I know that our staffs, my staff and [Waters’] staff, has been engaged, or trying to get engaged, with the staffs of Warren and Scott,” Cleaver said.

Scott also, at one point, did not return calls from House Financial Services Chair French Hill, who is spearheading the House’s version of the legislation, as NOTUS previously reported.

But three sources familiar with the matter told NOTUS that Scott largely deferred to the White House on the bill, specifically the section focused on banning institutional investors from buying homes and turning them into rental properties for profit, which is a priority for President Donald Trump. This gave Warren an outsized role in negotiations and in drumming up support for the legislation.

Now housing groups and lawmakers in the House are accusing her — and Scott — of keeping them in the dark.

“This has been House versus Senate, not Republicans versus Democrats,” Rep. Mike Flood, the chair of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, told NOTUS. “The stars are aligned: the Senate wants to pass a housing bill, the House is adamant about passing a housing bill, and the president, one of his top three issues is housing affordability. So, we can’t squander this opportunity.”

House lawmakers are calling for a conference, formal or informal, to iron out differences between the Senate bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, and the House bill, which passed in February. The Senate’s legislation ignores some of the provisions from the House’s bill, and those that it does include have “substantial differences,” according to a Congressional Research Service report.

Even Senate Majority Leader John Thune told Punchbowl News that he’s open to a conference on the bill. But Scott’s team effectively opposed holding one, arguing that the best path forward is the Senate’s Trump-backed bill.

Warren has gone further.

She has discouraged housing advocacy groups and stakeholders from publicly calling for a conference or negotiations between the chambers, three sources familiar with the matter told NOTUS.

One of the sources said that Warren’s staff made it clear to stakeholders that supporting negotiations publicly “would be viewed as a red line.”

In a statement, Warren did not address specific questions from NOTUS. Instead, she praised the legislation and put the onus on Republicans.

“We’re on the cusp of enacting the most significant legislation to bring down housing costs in more than 30 years,” Warren said. “The bill already passed the Senate 89-10, includes the vast majority of both the House and Senate’s housing packages, and has strong support from the White House. House Republicans should put the bill on the floor – doing anything less will fail American families struggling with sky-high housing costs.”

But it’s not just Republicans that are against bringing the Senate bill to the floor. Waters sent a “Dear Colleague” letter on Monday to House Democrats calling for a conference.

“Unfortunately, the Senate removed several critical housing and banking provisions that House Democrats fought hard to include and that make the legislation stronger,” Waters wrote in the letter, which was obtained by NOTUS.

“We need to address stakeholder concerns that have been raised since passage in the Senate, especially about whether the bill now curtails the construction of new homes and creates other unintended consequences,” Waters continued.

What Warren’s team has been doing is holding informational meetings with House offices, such as a closed-door meeting held on Wednesday with staffers from members of the New Democrat Coalition, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. These meetings, however, have focused on explaining the contents of the Senate bill.

“There’s no negotiation in these meetings,” one of the sources familiar said.

Warren’s team did ask the House Financial Services Committee in January to outline its priorities, according to a Senate Democratic aide. The aide also said that the senator has told House lawmakers that there’s interest in doing a second housing package to address remaining concerns, though it’s unclear whether another bill would pass.

Feedback for the current package, according to three sources familiar with the matter, was also not welcome ahead of the Senate’s final vote.

Warren and Scott released the official text of the bill the same day that the Senate conducted its first procedural vote on the legislation, not giving senators or stakeholders enough time to read the more than 300-page text.

After the Senate bill text was released, housing groups took issue with how the investor ban was written. A new section stated that large institutional investors who make build-to-rent properties are required to sell these buildings seven years after being constructed. There’s concern that that would disincentivize their construction, which in turn would effectively reduce housing availability, according to a statement from a coalition of nearly 130 center-left housing advocacy groups, market-oriented policy think tanks and industry stakeholders.

Other groups also protested the inclusion of this provision.

“It seems almost no one was consulted, because this doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for renters. It actually hurts renters. And if the goal is to help renters and help all Americans have housing more affordably, this is not the way to do it,” said Sharon Wilson Géno, president of the National Multifamily Housing Council, which advised the senators on the legislation.

Sen. Brian Schatz, a progressive who is normally aligned with Warren, expressed his discomfort with the language on the Senate floor.

“You have to kick out the tenants,” Schatz said of when build-to-rent communities are sold. “This idea that it is virtuous to try to get people into single-family homes with a mortgage, but somehow there’s something nefarious about providing rental housing to people who are not in possession of a down payment.”

“If you don’t have a down payment, you don’t have a down payment, and we have decided, for no particular reason other than what I think is a drafting error, to demonize people who want to build rental housing for folks,” Schatz continued.

Warren reportedly responded to this criticism by saying it’s a policy “to block private equity from taking over the single-family home, and that is quite deliberate.” Build-to-rent communities differ from single-family homes that are turned into rentals because companies explicitly build them to rent out.

The weekend before the Senate bill was introduced, the White House circulated draft language of the investor ban to housing stakeholders, Ken Wingert, chief advocacy officer for the National Association of Home Builders, an industry group, told NOTUS. He said the seven-year forced sale provision was not part of what the White House had sent out.

“This language kind of caught everybody by surprise,” Wingert continued, adding that Warren was one of “the bigger drivers behind it.”

A Senate GOP aide, who was granted anonymity, pushed back on the idea that housing stakeholders would be surprised by the seven-year forced sale provision. The aide said the Senate Banking Committee was “explicitly told” by housing stakeholders “that seven years was an acceptable or sufficient period of time.”

“If there was no period of time in which they’re required to sell, then it wouldn’t be a ban on institutional investment. So the provision would be toothless,” the aide said.

A senior White House official called the Senate’s bill a “priority for the president.”

“He is strongly seeking this provision, and you know, this bill meets that muster,” the official continued, emphasizing that the White House supports the Senate’s legislation overall.

Several stakeholders quickly reached out to Scott and Warren with feedback on the section, which the senators worked on with the White House, but were instead shut down by their staff, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

“The Banking Committee took in feedback from stakeholders before, during, and after the legislative process for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” Jeff Naft, a spokesperson for Scott, told NOTUS in a statement. “Given limited floor time, the focus has been on advancing the Senate-passed bill, which contains the vast majority of the housing provisions in the House’s legislation. The strong bipartisan vote for final passage in the Senate reflects a product that incorporates the priorities of Republicans, Democrats, and the White House, and delivers results for the American people.”

That wasn’t enough for some of the stakeholders.

“It was very shocking to see that especially Warren didn’t respond,” one of the sources said. They added that Warren’s staff indicated that it did not want to change the text because it had approval from the White House on the investor-ban language.

“They thought that they would give the White House what they wanted, and the White House would endorse this bill and force it down [Speaker Mike] Johnson’s throat as a housing supply win for the White House before the election,” the source continued.

The senior White House official dismissed housing stakeholders’ concerns and shut down the possibility of a conference between the House and the Senate.

“This is the most pro-home builder administration in American history, as well as pro-housing availability and pro-deregulatory agenda. I would urge any housing-related group or entity to consider that approach as it evaluates its posture on the bill,” the official added.

Meanwhile, House lawmakers from both parties don’t see a way forward if the two chambers of Congress don’t discuss the forced-sale language.

“That is an area that I believe should have some changes made to it,” Hill told NOTUS.

“Members in the House have expressed concerns about the concept, and is it drafted in the right way?” Hill continued. “There’s a wide variety of stakeholders who seem opposed to that section, including [the Mortgage Bankers Association] and the National Association of Home Builders. So it’s an opportunity, I hope, to improve it.”

A senior House Democrat, a moderate who was granted anonymity to speak about private conversations, told NOTUS that “there is a lot of heartburn” among House Democrats about the seven-year forced sale provision.

“There’s a lot of people who fear that that will actually slow the construction of new units,” the House Democrat said.

Privately, House Republicans are indicating that if the Senate continues to, as they see it, steamroll the House, they’ll continue to push for their own version of the bill. At a House Republican conference meeting last Tuesday, Hill told his colleagues that “he’s very intent in seeing the House version passed,” according to a source in the room.

Hill told NOTUS that he told colleagues in that meeting that “we were going to work with the Senate to find a path towards a bicameral housing bill that both chambers can support.”

The Senate’s bill passed in a bipartisan 89-10 vote. Schatz was the only Senate Democrat to vote against the legislation.

“I don’t think people are kind of clocking how bad this is going to be on the supply side,” Schatz said on the Senate floor. “That is why 100 organizations that have all been very engaged in the developing of the individual provisions of this bill … are all saying, ‘We like this bill,’ because they want to be polite, because they don’t like to insult people in power, but they’re urging us to fix this particular section.”

“There is literally no reason to do it this way, and it would take, like, a two-line fix,” Schatz said. “But what we were told last week was, ‘I’m sorry, the bill is closed.’”

When asked by NOTUS whether he or his staff were shut down by Warren and Scott, Schatz simply responded: “I said what I said.”