The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law over the weekend without President Donald Trump’s signature.
Trump withheld his signature in protest of Congress not passing the SAVE America Act, legislation the president supports that requires Americans to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a passport or birth certificate, to register to vote in federal elections, and to present a photo ID when casting a ballot.
It passed in the Senate 85-5 and in the House 358-32, both veto-proof majorities, last month.
It was hailed by Democrats in Congress as the biggest housing bill in decades and Republicans called it a win for families across the country.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described it on X as “one of the most significant pieces of housing legislation in American history.”
Trump Refused to Sign
Shortly after the legislation passed both chambers, on June 24 called it “a big yawn” and refused to sign it.
On Truth Social in June, Trump dismissed the bill as “of minor importance” and he canceled a White House signing ceremony, stipulating that he would only sign if Congress passed a strict voter ID bill.
Senate Banking Committee Chairman, Sen. Tim Scott, R, S.C., led efforts to craft the housing bill and said in a statement Saturday that the law puts the “American Dream” in closer reach.
“The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act will help more Americans plant roots, build stability, and pass opportunity to the next generation,” he said.
Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota praised the bill’s bipartisan support, ABC News reported.
“A good example of what we can accomplish when we work together,” he said in a statement on X Saturday.
Democrats said that Trump slow-walked delivering the bipartisan cost-saving measures to voters by refusing to sign it.
“Donald Trump couldn’t pick up the pen because he just isn’t interested in lowering costs for American families,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, said in a statement Saturday.
Industry Leaders’ Support
In industry executives weighed in on legislation’s importance after it became law.
Century 21 CEO Mike Miedler called the law the “most significant step in housing in a generation.
“The country just took its most significant step on housing in a generation. At CENTURY 21, our agents see the inventory crisis play out in real time, in every market, every single day, so I don’t say this lightly: this is the most consequential housing law in over three decades. We see what the shortage actually does for the first-time buyer who gets outbid three times and gives up, the young family that keeps renting because nothing in their range ever hits the market. That’s who this is for,” Miedler said in a statement.
“The bill gets the big things right. It expands supply, opens doors for first-time buyers, cuts the permitting delays and red tape that have held construction back for years, and modernizes the federal housing programs that working families actually rely on,” Miedler said.
David M. Dworkin, President and CEO of the National Housing Conference (NHC), said this in a statement after the act became law:
“Today marks a major victory for American families, communities, and the housing groups that worked for years to make the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act a reality. With this bipartisan law, long-needed reforms can move forward to strengthen our nation’s housing system. This legislation will only be as effective as its implementation. Regulations must be written that ensures the bill’s promise becomes reality,” Dworkin said.
“The National Housing Conference’s Housing Supply Working Group will immediately take up this task, using our adoption of agentic artificial intelligence to assist the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Treasury, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Veterans Affairs in writing regulations in a fraction of the time it would have taken in the past. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act should be implemented with the full resources available in the 21st century.”
More Homes Needed to Meet Demand
According to Realtor.com economists the U.S. has a shortage of more than 4 million homes, as a consequence of more than a decade of building fewer homes than were needed to meet demand.
“Among other things, the legislation aims to incentivize homebuilding by establishing policy guidelines and best practices, streamlining environmental review, and improving existing programs, including tying community development block grants to housing outcomes,” Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hale said. “This last provision enables the federal government to put its finger on the scales of policymaking at the state and local level, where many of the policy and regulatory hurdles to homebuilding exist.”
The legislation also makes it easier to build and finance both manufactured and modular homes, which could bring down construction costs if used more widely, Realtor.com noted.
Here are some of the key provisions of the bill, according to Realtor.com:
- Restricting corporate buyers: Blocks Wall Street firms and large institutional investors from mass-purchasing single-family homes, backing the ban with steep financial penalties.
- Zoning reform: Creates a $200 million grant program to reward cities that eliminate restrictive zoning, while penalizing slow-growth communities by cutting their Community Development Block Grant funding by 10%.
- Cutting regulatory red tape: Accelerates construction timelines by waiving lengthy NEPA environmental reviews for low-impact HUD projects and streamlining repetitive property inspections.
- Expanding mortgage access: Launches a HUD pilot program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages below $100,000 and increases the amount of private bank capital that can be invested in local affordable housing.
- Modernizing factory-built housing: Updates FHA lending standards and draw schedules to give manufactured and modular housing financing parity with traditional, site-built homes.
- Disaster recovery fixes: Permanently authorizes the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery framework for faster post-disaster rebuilding and protects low-income rural tenants from losing rental assistance when a property’s underlying mortgage matures.
