The House of Representatives voted 390-9 in a Monday night session to pass the bipartisan Housing in the 21st Century Act.
According to combined media reports, the bill seeks to update local development and rural housing programs while expanding manufactured and affordable housing opportunities. The bill also calls for boosting the mortgage origination levels by community banks.
Conspicuously absent from the bill is President Trump’s initiative to restrict institutional investors from acquiring single-family homes. The Trump administration did not issue a comment on the bill’s passage, although Financial Services Chairman French Hill (R-AR) said he would negotiate with the administration to get its support.
Hill will also need to negotiate with his Senate counterparts, which passed their own ROAD to Housing Act with provisions not included in the House version. But the Senate bill seeks to expand several federal grant programs that many House Republicans do not support, and Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is not enthusiastic about negotiating.
“ROAD to Housing is a Jenga tower. Adding or taking things away risks losing the unanimous coalition that we have built in the Senate,” Warren said, adding she did not approve the House’s focus on community banking. “House Republicans should not hold housing relief hostage to push forward several bank deregulatory bills that will make our community banks more fragile,” Warren said in a statement before Monday’s House vote.
