Senate Advances Housing Bill After Striking Deal With House Leaders

Lawmakers have struck a long-awaited deal on what many proponents consider the most significant federal housing bill in a generation.

The Senate voted 87-to-8 Tuesday evening on a procedural motion to advance the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. It still must hold a final vote, and then the House of Representatives must pass it before it is reviewed by President Donald Trump.

An agreement struck between senators and house leaders suggests it is likely to pass.

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee both voiced support for the Senate’s latest version of the bill in a press release Tuesday afternoon. The agreement comes after a lengthy back-and-forth between the two chambers in which the wide-ranging bill was changed several times, in part due to controversy over its impact on the build-to-rent sector. 

“This bill, combining House and Senate priorities, would represent the biggest housing bill in more than 30 years.” U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in a statement.

The latest version of the bill didn't include controversial BTR regulations that were in a previous Senate version but were removed by the House last month, National Multifamily Housing Council President Sharon Wilson Géno told Bisnow.

The provision in earlier versions of the bill, which would have required BTR builders to sell properties to a single-family buyer within seven years, drew broad backlash from the commercial real estate industry. Opponents argued it would upend the build-to-rent business model, and leaders in that sector said in April the prospect of the restrictions had already frozen the market for new construction. 

But the bill still includes some restrictions on large investors buying single-family homes, provisions that Warren celebrated. 

“For the first time ever, Congress is acting to stop private equity’s housing grab,” she said.

The latest version of the bill has left some uncertainty for the BTR industry, Wilson Géno said.

“There is some ambiguity in that language about what happens to BTR properties once they are resold once,” she said. “Can they be sold again?”

NMHC is now lobbying for a “technical fix” for this part of the legislation, Wilson Géno said.

Lawmakers had a breakthrough Tuesday afternoon when U.S. Sen. French Hill, a Republican, agreed to vote in favor of the bill, according to Punchbowl News reporter Brendan Pedersen.

This reportedly came in exchange for lawmakers agreeing to sunset the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program after three years. Those funds are administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help municipalities recover from extreme weather events.

Hill also celebrated elements of the bill meant to keep institutional investors from competing with single-family buyers and several measures increasing the role of community banks in housing.

“This bill is a meaningful step toward increasing housing supply, improving affordability, and helping more Americans achieve homeownership,” Hill said in a statement. “I look forward to President Trump signing it into law.”

Elected officials, lobbyists and housing advocates have been working on this legislation for more than a year, Wilson Géno said. 

It includes a range of provisions intended to spur construction by allowing banks to lend more to affordable housing, easing local zoning rules and making other regulatory changes. Because it is so diffuse and technical, Wilson Géno said it is hard to make broad statements about its potential impact but added that it will be significant nonetheless.

“This bill is a conglomeration of small things,” she said.

“Will any one of those suddenly open the floodgates and make us start building housing more affordably? No,” she added. “But I think, more importantly, it's an opening to doing more in the housing space.”

Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit focused on increasing housing supply, also celebrated the deal.

The legislation will equip lawmakers and builders to create more homes, Enterprise CEO Shaun Donovan said. He praised expansions of the Rental Assistance Demonstration program and the Rural Housing Service Reform Act.

“But passage is only the beginning,” Donovan said. 

“This legislation's impact will depend on how effectively federal agencies, state governments, localities, and housing practitioners put these tools to work. The real measure of success is results — more homes built, greater affordability, and meaningful improvements for families across the U.S.”