A bipartisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, is making real legislative progress, having passed a House vote last week. "The bill passed 396 to 13, and is an amended version of one passed by the Senate two months earlier," reported NPR. "The two chambers still have to agree on a single version before they can send it to the president for his signature."
Immediately before the most recent vote, President Donald J. Trump urged the House to pass the bill, according to The Hill. It's likely to take two or three months for the House and Senate to resolve differences between their two bills, but legislators have said they hope to get a final bill on the president's desk before their August recess begins.
However, passage is not a foregone conclusion. "The package, the first major legislation in 36 years aimed at creating and bolstering housing programs, passed on a lopsided bipartisan vote, reflecting a rare area of election-year consensus in the otherwise deeply divided Congress," said The New York Times on May 20. "But its fate remained uncertain amid lingering disagreements among lawmakers over its details and as President Trump, who has not made housing a priority, has expressed only lukewarm support."
An Outstanding Issue
"Both the House and Senate bills include measures to streamline environmental reviews and cut regulations for manufactured housing," said The Wall Street Journal on May 20. But it went on to highlight an outstanding issue that's particularly contentious.
The Senate bill contained a provision requiring institutional investors to sell homes they'd built as rental units after no more than seven years. But, under pressure from house builders, the House dropped that requirement.
For years, institutional investors that buy up residential homes have been a target of politicians seeking to shift the blame for the housing shortage. And there is evidence, according to the Government Accountability Office, that they have distorted markets in some large metros, especially in the Sunbelt states.
However, nationwide, they own only a tiny proportion of single-family residential units. "Large institutional investors ... own just 3% of single-family rentals, less than 0.5% of the total single-family housing stock," says the Urban Institute.
Arguments against forcing sales in this way include the risk of reducing rental housing stocks, regardless of supply and demand. Additionally, families who are model tenants could find themselves facing eviction from their homes, solely because the landlord is being forced to sell the property because those seven years are up.
Meanwhile, "Even just the threat of the requirement had frozen investment for building new single-family rental homes," according to The Journal.
Read Trump Plans to Ban Institutional Investors From Purchasing Single-Family Homes and Is It Too Late to Stop Wall Street From Buying Up Homes?
Other Differences Between House and Senate Bills
"Gone from the House bill are several Senate priorities, including one that would permanently authorize grant funding for housing-related disaster assistance in communities; another that would reward communities that build more housing with grants; a proposal that would help communities maintain and upgrade manufactured housing; and new transparency rules for some loans for veterans," said The New York Times. The House also added new community banking rules.
Those differences, together with forced sales of rental units after seven years, might yet sink the new legislation. Certainly, some on the Hill feel very strongly about them.
However, the momentum among legislators seems to be behind getting a new housing law in place before November's mid-term elections. And we'll be surprised if the president doesn't sign a bill into law before then.
