The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act finally passed the House

Stripped of its pesky build-to-rent provision, the bill now heads back to the Senate.

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Slow Boring spoke to Representative Josh Harder (D-CA), co-chair of the bipartisan Build America Caucus and one of the most active legislators on this bill, for his thoughts. (Photo by Bill Clark)

This past Wednesday, May 20, (while I was on vacation, of course) the House passed its amended version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act by an overwhelming 396-to-13 vote, with all dissent coming from Republicans — a rare, genuine bipartisan accomplishment.

The House package includes 56 provisions. These touch housing supply, manufactured housing, mortgage financing, rural and veteran housing, and community banking. The new version of the bill would authorize incentives to build new homes, streamline infill housing approvals, create a program to convert abandoned buildings into housing, and establish grants to modernize existing homes. In a statement, House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill (R-AR) called it proof that “Washington still works,” while Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged the Senate to “meet this moment.” A Bipartisan Policy Center poll released earlier this month found that 89 percent of voters supported legislation to make housing more affordable, which is about as close to a mandate as Congress ever gets.

The Senate version of the bill that the House amended would have forced sales of purpose-built single-family rental homes, also known as build-to-rent housing, within seven years. The National Association of Home Builders and the Urban Institute had warned that the build-to-rent provision in the Senate package could reduce rental supply by 40,000 to 72,000 units annually.

The House version instead caps corporate ownership of single-family homes at 350 properties, allowing institutional landlords to keep building new rentals but not to accumulate ever-larger existing portfolios. The White House has signaled support for the House version.

Representative Josh Harder (D-CA), co-chair of the bipartisan Build America Caucus and one of the most active legislators on this bill, told me this week about how the negotiations landed. Harder co-led the April letter signed by 76 House members calling on leadership to strip the build-to-rent provision before any final vote.

“We ended up in a very good place there,” he said.

Harder was candid about what didn’t make it through.