The ROAD to Housing Act wasn’t included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Sunday, despite speculation that it might sneak in as an attachment to the more urgent priority $900 billion defense spending bill.
Still, the bipartisan housing legislation, which enjoys widespread support in both parties, could be signed into law next year. The bill seeks to strip away regulatory barriers and streamline housing development.
Politico reported last week that the White House and both Senate leaders backed a push to include most of the ROAD to Housing Act in the NDAA. The Senate unanimously approved the housing bill in October, but it has not yet received House approval.
House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.), co-sponsor of the legislation, fought against the bill’s inclusion in the defense bill.
“Given our Conference has not seen any text, it’s unclear how we could support its inclusion in the NDAA,” he said in a statement.
The bill’s inclusion in the NDAA would likely have sped up its adoption. Hill said the House Financial Services Committee will review the legislation later this month and collaborate with the Senate on any changes or additions to the bill.
“Next year, we look forward to working with our Senate colleagues to send a bill to the president’s desk that reflects the views of both chambers and leads to more affordable choices for America’s homeowners and renters,” Hill said
Dennis Shea, Executive Vice President and Chair of the Ronald J. Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, said in a statement that he was disappointed that the legislation wasn’t included in the NDAA.
“While that’s disappointing, we’re encouraged to see Rep. French Hill signaling his strong interest in moving forward on meaningful housing solutions,” he said.
ROAD to Housing Act enjoys broad bipartisan support
The Senate version of the bill that passed in October focuses mainly on streamlining the development of both affordable and market-rate housing nationally.
During the National Housing Conference’s “Solutions for Affordable Housing” event last week, Senator Elizabeth Warren, a co-sponsor of the legislation, explained why the bill had broad — in fact, unanimous — bipartisan support in a highly divided Senate.
According to Warren, Senate representatives from across the country and the political spectrum added 38 provisions, reflecting a “more is more” approach. The assumptions underlying legislation are that what works in Boston may not be best suited for a small town in Wyoming.
“One of the secrets of success in this one is that every single member of the banking committee had something in that bill, and it was good. These were not terrible compromises, like we had to choke and say, ‘Okay, we’ll go with this.’ These are all good provisions, because they all had the same aim, and that is more access, more housing,” she said.
A carrots-and-sticks approach to streamlining housing development
The bill aims to incentivize local government land-use policies and zoning regulations by rewarding municipalities that make it easier to build housing. For example, the federal government would start allocating more Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to municipalities that have streamlined housing development.
“If you are a housing-constrained community and you’re not adding more housing, you’re going to lose some of your CDBG money. And what’s going to happen is that CDBG money is going to be reallocated to the cities that are building more housing,” Warren said.
The bill would also make getting environmental approval easier by streamlining the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process.
It also advances guidelines around plan books and pattern books, which offer local municipalities pre-approved, context-specific designs to streamline approval. These pre-approved designs can enable municipalities to approve designs in days rather than months or even years.
The bill would additionally direct a study of modular building codes, amend the statutory definition of a manufactured home, authorize a grant program to support manufactured home communities, and adjust home loan insurance programs.
According to Warren, these changes are meant to make building and financing manufactured housing easier and more cost-effective.
The bill is just one step of many that legislators on the federal level can take to address housing affordability.
“Will [ROAD to Housing Act] be everything we need on supply? Certainly not, but it’s a terrific first step and a real shift in beginning to acknowledge nationally how we’ve got to build more housing in this country,” Warren said.
Other federal legislation is in the works
The ROAD to Housing Act is separate from the Закон о реформе системы HOME 2025 года, which enjoys bipartisan support in the House. That bill would initiate the first significant reform to the HOME program since its creation in 1990.
The HOME Reform Act would reduce red tape, such as limiting duplicative environmental reviews in the HOME program. The legislation would also exempt new categories of development under the HOME program from review under NEPA, including:
- New construction and rehabilitation projects of 15 units or fewer.
- New construction on infill lots.
- Acquisition of real property for affordable housing.
It would additionally expand the income eligibility and maximum median purchase price in the HOME Investment Partnerships Program to reflect today’s current market conditions.
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