The House on Monday night passed its bipartisan housing package aimed at increasing home supply and affordability, setting up an uncertain effort to merge the measure with a Senate housing bill.
House lawmakers approved by a vote of 390-9 the Housing in the 21st Century Act under suspension of the rules, a fast-track procedure for non-controversial legislation. The bill includes provisions to modernize local development and rural housing programs, expand manufactured and affordable housing, protect borrowers and those utilizing federal housing programs and enhance oversight of housing providers. The package also contained a recently added section aimed at increasing community bank lending.
Congress must now work to get a unified bill to the president’s desk. The Senate passed its own bipartisan housing affordability package in October, which was supported by the White House. Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) — who spearheaded the House bill with ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) — told reporters Monday he plans to negotiate with the administration as well as his counterparts on the Senate Banking Committee to get a final version which both chambers and the White House can support.
“We wanted to get [the housing bill and other committee priorities] through the House so that we could work with the Senate to find packages that the President could sign into law, long before the very active summer campaign season,” Hill said. “So I would hope that we could work over the spring and find a way to have a bicameral, bipartisan set of bills.”
Hill has previously said the Senate bill, the ROAD to Housing Act, contained a number of provisions that House Republicans would likely not support. Although the House and Senate bills share many similarities, the Senate measure includes a number of grant programs that would expand federal spending.
But Senate Banking ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said that she still wants the House to take up the Senate bill, setting the stage for a potential clash. Support from Senate Democrats will likely be necessary to get housing legislation through the upper chamber.
“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 in an interview.
Warren also signaled that she disapproved of the new section added to the House legislation, which would ease regulation on community banks — reflecting Hill’s “Make Community Banking Great Again” agenda.
“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.
Katherine Hapgood contributed to this report.
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