The House Finally Found a Policy Area Most Members Agree On

The House of Representatives passed the Housing for the 21st Century Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at increasing available housing across the country, in a 390-9 vote on Monday.

The bipartisan housing package, led by the House Financial Services Committee’s chair, Rep. French Hill, and its ranking member, Rep. Maxine Waters, would enable the federal government to address the severe housing shortage facing the nation by fast-tracking housing construction and giving greater flexibility to existing programs within the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“I feel like the Democrats feel respected in this process, and as Republicans, we should celebrate the conservative policy wins that are in this package that, quite frankly, people have waited literally decades for,” Rep. Mike Flood, the chair of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, told NOTUS just before voting on Monday.

“And now the White House wants to get involved,” Flood said of future negotiations.

The package is now headed to the Senate for a vote, where a similar proposal is in the works. But that the House was able to pass the package so easily shows there is appetite among lawmakers from both parties to find solutions to the nation’s housing crisis.

“I’ll work with the devil himself to get something on housing passed,” Waters told NOTUS of future negotiations.

The bipartisan effort is also testing Congress’ willingness to negotiate between chambers.

“The legislation that we are going to probably approve very shortly, you know, is not going to be in perfect harmony with the Senate bill,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, the ranking member of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, told NOTUS right before the House voted. “However, I do believe that there is this, this joy over the fact that we can get something done, something major done in this country, within our government.”

Cleaver said that while he understood that the legislation had a long path ahead, he was willing to negotiate with the Senate.

“Those of us over here on the House side stand ready to sit down and work out any differences that our legislation might have with the Senate, and figure out how we can make it even a better piece of legislation,” Cleaver said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Housing costs have soared beyond the reach of millions of American families thanks to Bidenflation, while outdated and burdensome red tape has constrained our nation’s affordable housing supply and limited our ability to expand it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. “Today’s House passage of the Housing for the 21st Century Act is a critical step toward addressing this shortage by reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers, modernizing HUD programs, and giving banks flexibility to deploy capital to increase our housing supply.”

The legislation, however, raised concerns among Senate Democrats, who said it could result in too much deregulation to small and local banks.

“We have a bipartisan bill with unanimous support in the Senate that will help build more housing and lower costs for the American people,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, said in a statement to NOTUS. “I’m glad to see the House move forward on housing proposals, but House Republicans should not hold housing relief hostage to push forward several bank deregulatory bills that will make our community banks more fragile while harming consumers, small businesses, and economic growth. Americans need relief from the housing crisis now.”

House Republicans pushed back.

“It’s the small banks we’re trying to help here, not the big banks. If you regulate a small bank like they are Bank of America, they can’t afford compliance, they can’t afford any of that,” Flood told NOTUS.

The Senate also has another piece of bipartisan legislation that Warren and Sen. Tim Scott have lined up behind, known as the ROAD to Housing Act.

If enacted, the House’s bill would notably transform some of HUD’s programs, such as the HOME Investment Partnerships Program and the Community Development Block Grant Program.

Both programs provide state and local governments with federal funding aimed at developing affordable housing for low-income households. The bipartisan bill that passed the House on Monday would update the criteria on how those funds can be used.

Eligibility for the HOME program would be expanded, and there would be “greater flexibility to use HOME funds for housing-related infrastructure,” a blueprint released by Hill states. And the Community Development Block Grants would also see their criteria updated. The legislation would allow the use of CDBG funds for affordable housing construction and for communities to “direct up to 20% of their CDBG resources toward increasing their local housing supply,” according to the same document.

While the bill allows for HUD to overhaul some environmental requirements for small-scale housing development, the package proposes more stringent oversight of HUD and public housing agencies. HUD’s secretary and other regulators would be required to testify before Congress annually.

Other changes the bill would make to HUD include requiring the agency to modernize local zoning codes and to implement pilot programs to fast-track housing construction.