The Senate on Monday approved a procedural test vote needed to begin debate on bipartisan legislation designed to expand housing supply and lower the cost of homebuying.
The 84-6 vote showed broad interest in advancing the housing package, which the Senate will continue to debate throughout the week.
“By removing barriers to affordable housing construction and unleashing investment, this bill stands to open the door to Americans across the country,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, South Dakota Republican.
The Senate is using a House-passed housing package as the legislative vehicle but plans to swap out the text with a new bill that combines policies from both chambers.
The House package, called the 21st Century Act, passed in an overwhelming 390-9 vote last month.
The Senate had a separate bipartisan bill called the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act, which unanimously cleared the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee last year.
The new bill the Senate released Monday ahead of its first procedural vote combines provisions from both measures, as well as a President Trump-pushed policy to ban institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
It is called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.
“Not only is this bill about cutting regulatory red tape, lowering costs, and expanding housing supply while generating no new spending, but it’s about making sure people like the single mom who raised me in North Charleston, South Carolina, have even greater access to economic opportunity and the American dream of homeownership,” said Sen. Tim Scott, South Carolina Republican and Banking Committee chairman.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the panel’s top Democrat, said the new package includes “the vast majority” of the original Senate bill and “bipartisan ideas from the House.”
It “takes a good first step to rein in corporate landlords that are squeezing families out of homeownership,” she said. “Congress should pass this package and continue working on further legislation to combat our nation’s housing crisis.”
The package would streamline regulatory requirements to make it easier to build new housing, expand home financing options, and modernize existing housing programs.
Mr. Trump has talked up the need to boost housing access and asked Congress during his State of the Union address last week to codify his executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms from buying single-family homes.
He pointed to one of his guests, Rachel Wiggins, a mother of two from Houston, as the reason why he is pushing the policy. Ms. Wiggins placed bids on 20 homes and lost them all to investment firms that were willing to pay all cash and bypass inspection to flip the properties into rentals.
“We want homes for people, not for corporations,” Mr. Trump said. “Corporations are doing just fine.”
The original House and Senate housing packages did not include the ban.
The new version would ban large institutional investors, defined as companies with investment control of 350 or more single-family homes, from further buying up housing supply.
Sen. Bernie Moreno, Ohio Republican who has backed the investor ban, said the goal of increasing access to home ownership is personal to him.
“I bought my first car dealership with the equity in my home. So if I didn’t have that equity in my house, I would not have been able to be a car dealer,” he told The Washington Times. “That’s a way to build wealth, and we have to create wealth-building opportunities for young people.”
