Both the Senate and the House are moving legislative packages to deal with the housing crisis in the country, but whether one makes it to the president’s desk remains in question.
Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen sits on the House Financial Services Committee, which advanced the Housing for the 21st Century Act right before the holiday recess.
“I think that it helps in addressing some of the barriers to housing, streamlining some of the red tape and trying to create a framework that incentivizes your local municipalities to address housing barriers,” Pettersen said.
The House version has three main prongs: boosting housing production, improving housing access and increasing consumer protection.
Three of Pettersen’s bills were included in the House package.
“One of my bills is just having HUD work alongside our environmental agency to streamline what their requirements are at the federal level and align it. So that when you’re going through the process of building that, you’re not going through two different frameworks to get that done,” she explained. “That’s just an example of what we can do to make government work to make it more efficient. We need to be doing that at the federal level and at the local level.”
However, Pettersen thinks there is something missing from the House package: federal investments to spur home building. She said the last time federal dollars were used to create brick-and-mortar housing was the 1990s.
“We can bring the incentives for businesses to build the types of homes that we need to build affordable homes,” she explained. “Fundamentally, if we are going to make real change, we need large public investments.”
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Pettersen admitted there is no bipartisan support for that step.
Still, the House package did get bipartisan support from the top members on both sides of the aisle.
“I just think that about 80 percent of the cost to build new housing is structured around local decisions on zoning, development, fees, permitting,” said GOP Rep. French Hill, who chairs the committee. “So when states like Colorado and Texas try to come together with priorities to lower those costs, that makes it easier for families. And that’s what we’re trying to do at the federal level too.”
Hill said he’s looking forward to working with the Senate to get something passed.
The Senate’s ROAD to Housing Act also aims to increase housing supply and boost affordability and access to housing. With more than 40 provisions, it also includes regulator reforms for new housing and expanding financial pathways to homeownership, but it also went further, including more oversight and accountability, and permanently authorizing Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery.
The Senate had hoped to push its housing package through Congress by attaching it to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, but the House objected.