This Democrat and Republican Want to Help Americans in Rural Areas Buy Houses

Vermont and West Virginia have little in common politically, but they both have outsize rural populations where many people are struggling to buy a home.

That’s led to an unexpected partnership between progressive Sen. Peter Welch and Republican Sen. Jim Justice, who introduced legislation aimed at increasing homeownership in rural areas by expanding eligibility for credit through farm credit institutions.

“Whether you’re Republican or Democrat, it’s to our mutual advantage to work together in a way that’s going to help people in West Virginia and help people in Vermont with access to housing,” Welch said in an interview with NOTUS.

“It’s absolutely essential, and it’s about making credit availability and better service available to rural America, which is generally left behind and where it doesn’t have as much access to credit as urban areas, where there are many more financial institutions,” Welch said.

Housing is the rare policy area where lawmakers have been able to find some agreement in a deeply divided Congress, though passage of any major reforms, including this one, is far from certain. In particular, lawmakers have found common ground in trying to boost the numbers of people in the U.S. who own a home.

Both parties see passing housing legislation as key to their messaging ahead of the midterm elections.

“This bill is a result of Senator Welch and me working across the aisle to get a result for our rural communities because, at the end of the day, they matter more than party lines. When you do that, you can get good things done for the American people,” Justice told NOTUS in a statement.

The bill would update the Farm Credit Act of 1971 for the first time in six decades, making changes that could result in roughly 30 million homebuyers in rural America getting access to loans through the Farm Credit System.

Currently, homebuyers living in towns with a population of more than 2,500 people do not qualify for the loans. The bipartisan bill will raise that cap to 10,000 residents, which could open eligibility for the housing assistance to nearly 40% of the U.S. population. The bill’s introduction was first reported by NBC News.

“We just share, I think, a real commitment to the rural people in our states that we represent. We’ve just had a common orientation towards trying to do things that are going to be beneficial to rural America,” Welch said of his work with Justice.

While the Senate passed a now-stalled piece of housing legislation in March, Welch said he saw a better path forward in introducing this as a stand-alone bill.

“The stand-alone allows people to evaluate it on its own merits, as opposed to in the context of many, many other issues,” Welch said. “This is the kind of bill that could be an amendment to legislation that’s on its way to passage, but we think this idea is best.”

The legislation is also sponsored by Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi. A similar bill was introduced in the House of Representatives in December.

While the bill has a long way to go before it’s even considered, Welch hopes to speak with the administration about it. He was one of two Democratic senators to break ranks with his party to confirm Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Welch said he plans to reach out to Secretary Scott Turner to discuss the bill.

While the White House did not answer questions about this specific legislation, a spokesperson for the White House told NOTUS the president remains “committed to his agenda for long-term housing affordability.”

“The President will not stop fighting until the American Dream of homeownership is within reach for every American, and he continues to sign bold new executive orders and calls on Congress to pass further legislation,” said Davis Ingle, the spokesperson, in a statement.

Welch said he hopes that the White House will be “aggressively supportive” of the bill.

“Senator Justice and I are going to be bothering people constantly in an effort to get this, and we’ve always got the backup help of Babydog,” he said.

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Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with comment from the White House.