Congress on Tuesday approved the most significant federal housing legislation in more than three decades, sending the bipartisan 21st Century Road to Housing Act to President Donald Trump’s desk at a moment when new data from Harvard University shows housing affordability has reached crisis levels across much of the United States.
The legislation passed the U.S. House of Representatives by a 358-32 vote after clearing the Senate on an 85-5 vote, marking a rare bipartisan achievement in an increasingly polarized Congress. According to national reporting, the measure represents the most comprehensive federal housing package since 1990 and seeks to address the nation’s severe housing shortage through a combination of regulatory reforms, financing changes, incentives for new construction, disaster recovery assistance and restrictions on large institutional investors.
The bill arrives as housing costs continue to outpace incomes and as both renters and prospective homebuyers face mounting barriers to obtaining affordable housing.
Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies reported last week that “housing activity remains subdued,” while “weak demand joins supply shortages as a top housing headline.” The center found that existing home sales remain near 30-year lows, household growth has slowed for the third consecutive year and economic uncertainty has increasingly sidelined both renters and homebuyers.
The Harvard report paints a stark picture of a housing market that remains inaccessible for millions of Americans despite some moderation in demand.
“Persistent affordability challenges and rising economic uncertainty are hurting housing conditions,” the report states. “Sales of existing homes sit at three-decade lows, inventories are rising amid high homebuying costs, and rents have declined as demand has slipped and vacancies have increased.”
According to national reporting on the legislation, lawmakers from both parties viewed housing affordability as one of the few policy areas where bipartisan action was still possible.
“We’re in a full-blown housing crisis,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said in an interview with the NY Times. “Home prices are sky high, rent is through the roof. The median age of a first-time home buyer is at an all-time high. So the pressure to move was almost irresistible. This bill got through because it is big.”
The scale of the affordability problem is difficult to overstate.
Harvard researchers found that the monthly cost of owning a median-priced home reached approximately $3,120 by the end of 2025, including mortgage payments, taxes and insurance. Since 2020, home prices have increased by 54 percent nationwide, and homes now cost nearly five times median household income, far above historical norms.
The Joint Center reported that a household now needs roughly $120,000 in annual income to afford a median-priced home, compared with approximately $66,000 in 2020.
Daniel McCue, a senior research associate at Harvard and author of the center’s housing analysis, summarized the current environment bluntly.
“Construction is down, home sales are flat and cost burdens are up,” McCue said during discussions surrounding the report’s release.
The federal legislation seeks to address those challenges through multiple strategies rather than relying on a single policy intervention.
Among its most notable provisions are changes intended to make manufactured housing less expensive to build. The legislation removes federal requirements that manufactured homes be constructed on steel chassis, a move supporters argue will reduce costs and allow for greater design flexibility. The bill also expands financing options for manufactured housing and creates grant programs for communities seeking to preserve existing manufactured-home communities.
The legislation further streamlines environmental review requirements, expands eligibility for federal grants supporting affordable housing development, provides infrastructure funding for communities that add housing, and loosens regulations affecting community banks and smaller mortgage lending.
Rep. French Hill, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, said the legislation is designed to stimulate production.
“This bill brings new money to the table to encourage development,” Hill said.
Housing advocates largely welcomed the legislation while cautioning that its effects will take years to materialize.
Shaun Donovan, president of Enterprise Community Partners and former secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, called the legislation historic in scope.
“It is the most important and most comprehensive housing bill of this century,” Donovan said. “It contains dozens of provisions that, taken together, go directly at the most important housing challenge of this moment, which is our housing supply.”
Housing policy experts emphasized that the measure should be viewed as part of a long-term strategy rather than an immediate solution.
“Housing affordability won’t change overnight — it took us many years to get to this point,” Tara Roche of the Pew Charitable Trusts said. “But when communities are able to build more housing, price pressures ease over time.”
That conclusion aligns with the findings of the Harvard report, which repeatedly emphasizes the importance of increasing housing supply while also acknowledging that demand has weakened because costs have become prohibitive.
One of the bill’s most politically contentious provisions addresses institutional investors in the housing market.
The final compromise prohibits corporate entities from acquiring ownership of more than 350 existing single-family homes. However, lawmakers abandoned a stricter proposal that would have forced investors to sell certain rental properties after seven years, following opposition from homebuilders and affordable housing advocates who feared it would discourage new construction.
The investor restrictions emerged from negotiations involving the White House, Warren and Sen. Tim Scott, who chairs the Senate Banking Committee.
Rep. Maxine Waters described the months-long negotiations as difficult but ultimately productive.
“It has not been easy,” Waters said. “We set out to increase our nation’s housing supply, expand homeownership, and strengthen community development programs. And even though it was difficult to agree on everything, we got it done.”
The Harvard report suggests that federal action may be increasingly necessary because market conditions alone are unlikely to solve affordability challenges.
Researchers found that employment growth slowed dramatically between 2024 and 2025, consumer confidence plunged, household formation weakened and construction activity remained sluggish. Meanwhile, nearly half of renter households continue to face housing cost burdens, and affordability pressures remain widespread across the country.
The report argues that housing challenges now extend beyond traditional high-cost metropolitan areas.
While cities such as San Francisco and New York continue to experience severe affordability problems, housing pressures have spread to regions previously considered affordable, including many smaller metropolitan areas and rural communities.
The Joint Center concluded that housing affordability, homelessness, climate-related risks and persistent discrimination are interconnected challenges requiring sustained public investment and policy intervention.
“The US faces interlocking housing crises—affordability, homelessness, climate change, and discrimination—that demand coordinated action across federal, state, local, private, and nonprofit actors,” the report states.
For advocates in California and communities like Davis, where debates over housing production, affordability and growth have dominated local politics for years, the federal legislation represents a significant acknowledgment that housing shortages are no longer viewed as isolated local problems but as a national economic challenge.
Whether the new law ultimately succeeds in lowering housing costs remains uncertain. What appears less disputed is the diagnosis. Across party lines, lawmakers increasingly agree that the nation has failed to build enough housing to meet demand and that the consequences are now affecting renters, homeowners, employers and entire regional economies.
As David M. Dworkin of the National Housing Conference observed, “No one component of this bill is going to be a magic wand and solve the housing affordability crisis.” But he added that the legislation’s combined reforms would “make a real investment in addressing the crisis.”
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“The legislation further streamlines environmental review requirements, expands eligibility for federal grants supporting affordable housing development, provides infrastructure funding for communities that add housing,…”
Sadly, Davis just turned down a 16 acre land dedication for Affordable housing that Matt, Eileen and Tim all prematurely claimed would never get built. Well it won’t get built now because V failed. Oh, and for the record, I believed it would have been built because State and Federal money to address Affordable housing would be forthcoming. Davis shot itself in the foot on Affordable housing and the supposed social justice warriors who claimed those 16 acres would never get built hold the smoking gun.
The legislation does not provide new federal funding to build housing.
But it does do the following, for those who believed that trailer parks weren’t already ugly and cheap-enough:
“Another is aimed at making manufactured homes more affordable by getting rid of the rule that those houses must have a permanent chassis, or a steel frame that makes them movable. Manufactured homes are often installed onto permanent foundations, and housing policy experts say that removing the chassis requirement could cut $5,000 to $10,000 off construction costs and allow for designs that could more easily incorporate a second story or basement.”
https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5867575/congress-passes-housing-affordability-bill
(Just what we need – 2-story trailer parks / meth labs.)
“for those who believed that trailer parks weren’t already ugly and cheap-enough:
…
(Just what we need – 2-story trailer parks / meth labs.)”
Your bigotry apparently knows no bounds.
True – I’m bigoted against trailer parks. (With the exception of Rancho Yolo – which is surprisingly nice and affordable. Probably due to the type of people who move into that particular trailer park.)
Though if Congress actually wanted to help people who live in trailer parks, they’d enact some kind of regulation preventing corporate takeover of them (and jacking up the rent with no restrictions whatsoever). It’s happening across the country.
But I suppose the action they did take might make sense, given that no one moves those things once they’re in place. So, might as well make them even flimsier than they already are, I guess. I’d suggest making the chassis out of particle board. I wonder if some place like Ikea might consider selling them.)
The really odd thing about all of this is that housing prices have been going down significantly on their own, in a lot of areas.
Ring, it will be interesting to track how the current queue of 450+ applications (461 was the number David Thompson reported a month ago) moves or does not move. New projects that are added to the queue will act as a reasonably good proxy for what would happen to The Village Farms project if it had been approved. That will give us data to assess rather than your cynical sound bites.
https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/california-affordable-homes-public-funding-construction/814184/
Here is an excerpt from from that article:
There are 39,880 affordable homes in California across 461 developments that are ready to begin construction but are stalled due to a lack of public funding, according to a recent analysis by Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit that advocates for increased housing availability.
That housing, which would benefit an estimated 432,050 low-income households over the next half century, requires more state support to move forward, including $2.3 billion in state subsidies, $1.8 billion in state tax credits and $5.8 billion in tax-exempt bonds, according to Enterprise.
Every dollar of state funds invested in affordable rental developments leverages approximately $3.60 of local, federal and private funds, per Enterprise.
Enterprise recommended allocating more money in the state’s 2026-2027 budget, which currently does not include any new funding for the state’s core affordable housing production subsidy programs or state tax credits, according to Enterprise.
“Without General Fund investment, coupled with cuts to affordable housing programs from the last three budget cycles, most affordable housing developments in the Pipeline will not be able to move forward and begin construction,” the report states.
So now you are saying wait and see when a month ago you were saying it will never get built. Well you are right thanks to you and your nimby friends that 16 acres of Affordable housing will never get built. I hope you and Ron O. are comfortably housed.
There is no housing shortage:
“But a new study by two urban planning researchers argues that the nation does not, in fact, face a shortage of housing; it faces a shortage of affordable housing.”
“Kirk McClure, a professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas, and Alex Schwartz, a professor of urban planning at the New School in New York, argue that in most of parts of the country, new housing has kept pace with new household formation.”
“What hasn’t happened: Housing prices haven’t kept pace with incomes.”
https://48hills.org/2024/06/does-the-us-have-a-housing-shortage-or-an-affordable-housing-shortage/
“Leading off the first panel, UCLA economic sociologist Michael Storper noted that the Yimby agenda rests of five assumptions: That the nation has a housing shortage, which is causing prices to rise; that the shortage is due to a long term failure to build housing; that the failure is due to regulations and Nimby neighbors; and that eliminating zoning and other obstacles to construction will solve the problem and bring prices down.”
“Not one of those assumptions stands up to the evidence,” he said.”
“Schuyler Louie, a PhD candidate in economics at UC Irvine, and the author of a key paper on housing prices, told us the economic inequality, not regulation, is the source of high housing prices.”
https://48hills.org/2026/04/the-best-and-worst-of-ca-housing-policy-on-display-at-ucla-conference/
Well, not so fast I guess:
“WASHINGTON—President Trump abruptly canceled plans to sign bipartisan housing legislation, saying he would refuse to take action on the bill until Congress passes a long-stalled bill he has championed that would impose strict new voter-eligibility rules.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-abruptly-cancels-signing-ceremony-for-bipartisan-housing-bill/ar-AA26rnuN?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6a3bfd920e264a09ba27a5eed6390360&ei=12
Trump Cancels Plans to Sign Housing Bill
President Trump abruptly said he would not sign a bipartisan bill meant to improve housing affordability until Congress imposes unpopular new voting restrictions.
Apparently it becomes law without his signature so long as Congress is in session.
That would be good.
Don, on a separate subject last week I provided a summary of the building permits that the City had reported to HCD since Measure J was passed in 2000. I was missing the years 2000 through 2004. The City has now provided the numbers for those years.
So the official total of units added to Davis since January 1, 2001 is 4,266.
1,360 of those were Single Family detached units
107 of those were Single Family attached units or Multi-family for sale units
2,511 of those were Multi-family rental units/apartments
288 of those were ADUs.
One interesting piece of information that the data from the City illuminates is the Building Permits issued in 1998 and 1999, which were 1,017 and 955 respectively. Those were the years that the City and the Mace Ranch developer chose not to comply with (1) the measured build-out provisions of the Development Agreement or (2) building the parks called for in that same Development Agreement, which resulted in the City Council imposing the Mace Ranch CFD Mello-Roos tax on the people who bought Mace Ranch homes for 30 years. Those breaches of public trust by the City government and the developer resulted in the citizens formulating and passing Measure J in 2000. I have never seen the building permit numbers evidence before. That evidence stands out like a beacon.
Nope Matt. It was the failure to overturn Wildhorse by referendum that immediately preceded Measure J.
“Under the Constitution, a bill passed by Congress becomes law in about two weeks if the president doesn’t sign or veto the measure. The GOP-controlled Congress could also delay sending the bill to the White House indefinitely. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-abruptly-cancels-signing-ceremony-for-bipartisan-housing-bill/ar-AA26rnuN?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=6a3c172214d7472cbe2d85de8dea4872&ei=9
(Trump – the “accidental environmentalist” strikes again. Clamped down on illegal immigration, caused an increase in gas prices, supposedly against nuclear proliferation, and once said that little girls don’t need more than a couple of dolls – addressing consumerism with that comment.)
Well, we’ll see – I doubt that he will block/veto the bill.
“President Trump abruptly said he would not sign a bipartisan bill meant to improve housing affordability until Congress imposes unpopular new voting restrictions.”
Actually I’ve seen polls where the Save Act is highly popular with the people with as high as 83% approval.
Matt says: “(2) building the parks called for in that same Development Agreement, which resulted in the City Council imposing the Mace Ranch CFD Mello-Roos tax on the people who bought Mace Ranch homes for 30 years.”
Interesting. I recall that the city also chose to allow housing on the commercial site in Mace Ranch Park, rather than including it in the park when commercial turned out to not be viable.
I approached council member Ted Puntillo about including that site in the park beforehand, and he reacted with hostility (and as I recall, said there was no money to obtain the site I think). Council member Mike Harrington, on the other hand – was receptive to the idea.
Of course, the site (along 5th Street) is now covered in housing, rather than being included in the park.
The council in Woodland tried to do the same thing with Rick Gonzales park, but I was “on the ball” with that one and got the neighborhood involved to block that proposal. (The Spring Lake Specific plan stated that the commercial site was to be included in the park, if commercial was determined to not be viable. But as usual when it comes to city-approved developments, the council’s initial response was that there was “somehow” no money to obtain and landscape the site.)
Frankly, I spearheaded three separate, successful efforts to save all of what is now Rick Gonzales park (including a proposal from the school district and city, to take part of the park for the school).
Although the neighbors and I were successful in regard to Rick Gonzales park, the Woodland city council simultaneously took action to simply “eliminate” the commercial site in at least one other park that hadn’t yet been landscaped. (In other words, they simply shrunk the size of that park.)
There still is one undeveloped commercial site adjacent to Jack Slaven park that the council couldn’t simply eliminate, since the rest of the park had already been created/landscaped.
No doubt, some of the people playing pickleball every day in Rick Gonzales park know how close they were to losing that site, nor do they know “who” was primarily responsible for doing so.
Too bad I wasn’t able to save Mace Ranch park from that same fate.