Delaware Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester has unveiled a multi-layered legislative agenda dealing with housing called “The New Way Home Agenda.”
Blunt Rochester made the announcement on Friday, September 5, 2025, at Imani Village, which was developed with funds from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, but across from still abandoned and dilapidated homes in the Riverside neighborhood.
“I looked on one side of the street and I looked at the other side of the street and I was like, this is a tale of two housings, right?” Blunt Rochester recalled on an earlier visit to the area. “This is what it is, but this is what it can be.”
The New Way Home Agenda
State Representative Stephanie T. Bolden grew up in Riverside and knows the area can be revived, but she said new residents need to know about, and learn from, the past.
“With lack of history and knowledge, of knowing the purpose of this place being built, I think it started to go down,” said Bolden who pointed out the area was meant to be a first home community. “Riverside was built for those to be able to save and eventually move out. We were a real community. I get excited about it because I know what it used to be.”
Blunt Rochester’s plan is comprised of five pillars, some of which are meant to right some of the housing wrongs of the past.
“We have a bill called Reconnecting Communities because when planning, they just put I-95 right through the city and separated communities, so we want to fix things like that,” she said. “There were discriminatory practices that related to zoning and that’s one of the areas that this legislation is going to address.”
During her remarks Blunt Rochester said it’s time for the federal government to step in and step up.
“For many of us, and for many of you, home ownership is way out of reach, particularly for young people. I’ve had some people say to me, ‘I don’t even dream of owning my own home because it’s too expensive,'” Blunt Rochester said. “Some seniors are saying, ‘I can’t even stay in my house because I need updates, and I need things to make it more accessible.’ And for far too long, the federal government has been missing in action.
“We’ve been sitting on the sidelines, letting things spiral out of control. It’s been 60 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the historic Housing and Urban Development Act into law. 60 years. It’s been a hundred years since this country actually took a hard look at the federal government’s impact on local zoning regulations. The world has changed a lot since the 1960s. The world has definitely changed a lot since the 1920s and the 1930s.”
The pillars of Blunt Rochester’s agenda are expanding housing supply, laying a new foundation on which to build stronger communities, drawing up a new blueprint for making housing more attainable, unlocking new innovative housing models, and leveraging smart tax policy.