“I think this is something that can be measured in years rather than months,” Francis Torres, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s housing and infrastructure projects, told the Washington Examiner.

“But it’s hard to give you a specific prediction, because Congress is not the only actor,” Torres continued. “There’s some stuff in here that will require state and local action for the full promise of this bill to be realized.”

The bill passed the House in a 358-32 vote and the Senate in a 85-5 vote. But in a surprise, President Donald Trump abruptly canceled his plan to sign the bill on Wednesday, putting the situation in flux.

Trump said he would delay signing until the passage of the SAVE America Act, which would require voter ID and proof of citizenship when registering to vote.

Still, the housing legislation will become law unless Trump vetoes it. And it passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

But experts point out that there is no off-on switch for lowering housing prices, and that this legislation should be seen as the start of a broader process of working to boost supply.

“You’ll see the larger impact over time,” Sharon Wilson Geno, president of the National Multifamily Housing Council, told the Washington Examiner. “And really, I think the most impactful part of this bill, frankly, is the fact that we are on a path to doing more, and this is a good first step. We’ve laid the foundation now.”

Given years of red-hot inflation, affordability has become the top concern for voters heading into the midterm elections. Republicans are hoping to hold on to control of the House and Senate in November, but Democrats are pushing hard to blame high prices on Trump and the GOP.

The final version of the legislation, which came after months of negotiations and revisions between the House and the Senate, includes dozens of housing supply provisions.

The legislation streamlines environmental reviews to speed up affordable housing development and makes it cheaper and easier to build manufactured homes.

In addition to easing federal regulations, the bill also encourages states and cities to reform their land-use rules, which would mark a significant change in the federalist system of land use rules.

One provision steers federal grants to localities that permit greater housing construction and away from areas that fail to build. Another would promote zoning codes that allow for greater construction, and essentially give a grade to cities and states on their ordinances.

Some of the provisions will take longer than others, according to Wilson Geno. She pointed out that the provisions to make manufactured housing cheaper to finance and easier to build would have a quicker impact.

“The change on the manufactured housing side is something that can be implemented quickly,” Wilson Geno said. “It will have a significant impact on that one area of housing, but again, that’s one piece of a much bigger puzzle.”

One of the provisions, specifically, would lift a requirement in existing law that manufactured homes have a permanent chassis. Eliminating that could save up to $10,000 on the cost of a new manufactured home. In addition to that, Torres emphasized shorter-term benefits from specific financing provisions in the bill.

“These are provisions that will … take effect immediately once the bills become law, and the federal agencies have done the rulemaking,” he said.

But other pieces of that puzzle will take much longer — particularly ones that involve coordination and collaboration with localities and states.

“Things that involve cooperation, collaboration with other forms of government, the zoning changes, some of the changes to the [HOME Investment Partnerships] Program, it takes a minute to implement those provisions and to get states and localities on board in their coordination,” Wilson Geno said.

The HOME Investment Partnerships Program is a major housing program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that 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.

That, and other provisions that require coordination with states and cities over the course of years, could be the ones with the biggest long-term effects on the market.

“The bill is tackling a decades-long problem of undersupply of the United States, not building enough housing,” Torres said.

“And a lot of the ideas in this bill really get at that sort of longer time horizon. It’s about creating the context where housing can be developed, where changes can happen to make that easier to do,” he added.

In addition to refusing to sign the bill on Wednesday, perhaps even more notably, Trump minimized its importance. While there is debate over how much this legislation will eventually affect housing supply, Trump is suffering from low economic approval, and abandoning messaging on this bill could be difficult for Republicans on the ballot in November.

“The Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren centric housing bill, which is of minor importance compared to lower interest rates, and even FISA, pales in comparison to passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump wrote on social media.

INSIDE TRUMP’S EXPLOSIVE MEETING WITH SENATE REPUBLICANS

If Trump signs the bill, it would be one of the few legislative victories Republicans could cite on affordability.

“It’s a shame the president doesn’t want a win on an issue he himself said was a priority during his State of the Union due to poor advice from some of the loudest voices who are not seeded in reality when it comes to the SAVE America Act,” one senior GOP aide said in a text to the Washington Examiner.