Housing abundance is having a moment
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Rep. Ritchie Torres and Rep. Mike Flood at an Axios Live event on Thursday morning. Photos: Denny Henry for Axios
You don't see too many 396-13 votes in the U.S. House of Representatives these days, especially on substantive domestic policy. But that's what happened Wednesday as the body moved a sweeping housing bill — reflecting a rare, cross-partisan, shared diagnosis of a key economic challenge.
The big picture: In isolation, the legislation won't end America's persistent underproduction of housing and resulting surge in costs. But it is the clearest evidence yet that even in deeply polarized times, the need for more affordable residential options is a unifying goal.
- The legislative intrigue now set to play out between the House and the Senate will be instructive in seeing just how deep that impulse goes.
What they're saying: "It's the most consequential bipartisan housing compromise in more than half a century," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) tells Axios. "It shows that housing is having a moment in Washington, D.C."
- "We have a town like Columbus, Nebraska, where they have 900 open jobs, and the No. 1 barrier to filling those jobs is a lack of affordable housing," said Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.). "For me, this is economic development as much as it is housing supply."
Catch up quick: The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act contains provisions meant to incentivize builders to construct more residential structures and for local governments to allow it.
- The House version excludes a provision negotiated in the Senate that would require owners of single-family homes newly built for rental to be sold within seven years.
- That provision reflects a bipartisan populist push to prevent big institutional investors from owning houses that otherwise might be bought by families. Housing wonks and homebuilder lobbyists oppose that provision, arguing that it will discourage cash-rich investors from building new homes.
- The Trump administration has sent mixed signals on the provision, but on Wednesday issued a statement of support for the House bill.
The intrigue: The question now is whether the Senate will bend toward the House version or stick to its guns. Both Torres and Flood said they would prefer the Senate to simply pass the House bill.
- "Put it on the floor," Flood said, and see if it gets 60 votes in the Senate, and move to a conference committee if not. But, he said, "time is running out" with midterm elections looming.
- "I really want this done before we leave in July, and I fear that if we don't get that done, it's going to be a much harder path," he said.
By the numbers: Builders started work on new housing units at a 1.465 million annual rate in April, the Census Bureau said Thursday morning, down 2.8% from March.
- Homebuilding has bounced around in that ballpark for the last three or so years — well below the 2 million-plus housing units built per year in big parts of the 2000s and 1970s.
Zoom in: One provision of the legislation in both House and Senate versions would relax federal restrictions on manufactured housing that require it to have a chassis.
- That could open the door for housing built in centralized factory settings that more closely resemble typical ground-up homes, lowering costs and enabling productivity gains that have been sorely lacking in residential construction for decades.
The bottom line: "This is the part of Congress that I signed up for," Flood said, "and probably less than 1% of Americans understand what happened [Wednesday]."
