EXCLUSIVE — The House Financial Services Committee is releasing an expansive and bipartisan housing bill on Thursday meant to boost the supply of homes and address the problem of affordability.
Committee Chairman Rep. French Hill (R-AR) previewed the legislation, dubbed the Housing for the 21st Century Act, in an interview on Capitol Hill this week. The legislation includes a wide array of provisions designed to lower costs and help with home ownership.
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The Housing for the 21st Century Act comes after a major bipartisan housing bill written in the Senate, the ROAD to Housing Act, was excluded from the final text of the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act. Sponsors had hoped the NDAA would be a legislative vehicle to get the bill passed quickly.
“What I hope to do is that we’ll work on a housing package that’s got a majority of the majority’s support, it’s got some priorities from the minority as well, and that we can marry that as we go into the new year,” Hill said.
At a high level, the Housing for the 21st Century Act is designed to help modernize local development and rural housing programs, further expand manufactured and affordable housing finance opportunities, and protect borrowers and assisted families. It also enhances oversight of housing providers.
The bill is the House’s response to the ROAD to Housing Act, which was passed out of the Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), in July. It later passed the full Senate.
“As much of the overlap of ROAD to Housing priorities of both Democrats and Republicans that we can get to good on in the language would be in there,” Hill said. “Meaning they have some provisions inside ROAD as attached to the NDAA that if we change some of the wording, but not gut the initiative, we could get to good on — even if we don’t think it’s the best idea on the planet.”
“So we’re going to work really hard over the next few weeks to find those landing spots,” the chairman added.
Scott had worked with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the ranking member on the Banking Committee, to include the ROAD to Housing Act in the NDAA as a way to expedite its passage. But it was ultimately left out.
One House GOP aide told the Washington Examiner that Hill wouldn’t have been able to get most of the Republican conference behind some of the provisions as they were written and included in the NDAA.
“I mean, Chairman Hill doesn’t have support for the provisions as written among a majority of the majority of members here,” the aide said.
One significantly different measure in the House bill is a provision that would overhaul the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, a major housing program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The provision’s authors, Reps. Mike Flood (R-NE) and Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), say it would modernize and strengthen the program, which provides about $1.25 billion a year in block grants to states and cities to provide affordable housing.
The legislation would provide greater flexibility for governments in allocating funding under the program, which was created in 1990 as part of a broader shift in housing policy toward giving more responsibility to states and cities. It would also provide relief from federal environmental rules that slow down projects.
“This has got clear, substantive change in the cost of producing housing under that HUD program,” Hill said.
The Housing for the 21st Century Act also touches on zoning.
“Inventorying the costs associated with local zoning decisions, I think that will lead to more affordability across the country,” Hill said. “There are 9,000 zoning commissions in the United States that make these decisions.”
It has a provision, similar to one in the Senate bill, that would have HUD create zoning guidelines and then essentially grade every locality on how its rules stacked up against the prescriptions.
During the interview, Hill also mentioned a provision for HUD to change its building codes for modular construction techniques and manufactured housing.
“And when you change a HUD building code, you change it for the country because most zoning commissions say if it’s in the HUD code, then they adopt it,” Hill said.
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“So by putting modular, which is very resilient and very good on energy efficiency, into that code, I think that produces more affordable housing,” the chairman added.
Some experts have drawn attention to a specific provision of law that requires manufactured homes to have a permanent chassis, meaning they must be able to be moved even if there is no intention of ever relocating the home. Both bills would repeal that section of the law to bring costs down.
The House bill would direct HUD to promote “point-access block” buildings, meaning buildings accessible by just one stairwell — a reform sought by many urbanists.
Such buildings are popular in many parts of the world – and some U.S. neighborhoods – but are effectively prohibited throughout much of the country because of model building codes that most cities use. Generally, apartment buildings in the U.S. are required to have two stairwells for egress in case of fire, which some designers have blamed for forcing awkward construction choices and making it harder to build small-scale multifamily.
The House legislative package, though, excludes some of the most ambitious reforms in the Senate version, such as a pilot program to incentivize housing development using Community Development Block Grant funding. It also leaves out one new grant program for localities that increase housing supply, and another one that would steer more funding to cities that make it easier to build near transit.
