Congress passes bipartisan housing law to boost U.S. supply

Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, sending a wide-ranging housing package to President Donald Trump that aims to nudge local zoning changes, speed infill construction and expand financing tools rather than impose one federal fix. The House approved the compromise bill 358-32 on June 23 after the Senate cleared it 85-5 a day earlier, ending months of negotiations over H.R. 6644.

The enrolled measure carries a short title saying it was enacted “to increase the supply of housing in America, and for other purposes.” Its table of contents reflects that incremental approach: housing counseling, zoning, infill construction, a public land database, FHA small-dollar mortgages, manufactured housing, homeownership, veterans’ housing and oversight all sit in the same package. Congressional leaders have described it as the most comprehensive housing policy bill of this century.

The clearest supply-side changes are in Title II. The Congressional Research Service says that section is meant to incentivize zoning and land-use changes, authorize housing construction and rehabilitation grants, modify the Community Reinvestment Act and reduce federal environmental review requirements. Those provisions are aimed at the bottlenecks that slow projects before a shovel ever reaches the ground, especially in places where local rules, review timelines or financing gaps have kept smaller apartments and neighborhood-scale infill off the market.

The final version also adds several concrete program changes. It lifts the Rental Assistance Demonstration cap by 100,000 units, authorizes the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program for three years and creates a new Moving to Work cohort. It keeps language restricting institutional investors from buying single-family homes, while carving out an exception for build-to-rent properties, and adds a renter outreach resource at HUD for tenants in properties owned by institutional investors.

The bill’s breadth reflects how many pieces were folded into one compromise. The final package combines provisions from more than 60 separate bills, including 36 with bipartisan sponsors, and preserves nine of the 12 community-banking sections that had been in House legislation. The Senate first invoked cloture on H.R. 6644 on March 2, after the earlier ROAD to Housing Act of 2025 was introduced and reported on August 1, 2025, a path that turned housing policy into one of the rare bipartisan negotiations to clear both chambers this Congress.