U.S. Senate passes landmark bipartisan housing bill, sends to House

By Thérèse Boudreaux
The Center Square

Bipartisan legislation to boost housing supply and home ownership nationally cleared the U.S. Senate in an 85-5 vote Monday evening, the largest housing bill Congress has advanced in decades.

The passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which now heads to the House for approval, follows months of haggling and marks a rare instance of lawmakers compromising in the 119th Congress.

“Today’s bipartisan vote is an important step toward addressing America’s housing affordability crisis and giving families across this country a fair shot at the American Dream,” Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., of the Senate Banking Committee said in a statement.

“This bill reflects years of work and priorities from the White House, Senate, and House to build a housing affordability package that puts families first, increases supply, expands access to affordable housing, and addresses the housing crisis.”

The median home price in the U.S. sits above $405,000 while the median annual household income is below $84,000, according to the most recent federal statistics.

Meanwhile, the median age of first-time buyers jumped to 40 in 2025, seven years older than the median age just five prior, according to a National Association of Realtors analysis.

Republican leaders in particular are hoping to get the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk as soon as possible so they can point to successful affordability-focused legislation ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Among other measures, the bill streamlines environmental reviews for new housing construction, lifts the 15% cap on banks’ private investments in affordable housing to 20%, and establishes a pilot program to convert vacant and abandoned buildings into livable housing.

It revises the federal definition of “manufactured housing” to include units not built on permanent chassis and authorizes a specialized grant program for areas with manufactured housing communities. It also updates mortgage lending standards through the Federal Housing Administration for manufactured homes.

Though the majority of the provisions are bipartisan, the legislation faced delays due to hangups in both chambers over pet provisions. Each chamber had posited its own version of the bill until committee leaders resolved the issues and revised the text.

The bicameral 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act will likely pass the House because it includes key sweeteners to appease factions in both chambers.

The final product contains the Senate’s 15-year ban on large institutional investors, defined as entities that own more than 350 housing units, from buying single-family homes for the next 15 years. Manufactured housing, multifamily homes, and build-to-rent properties are exempted from the ban.

At the same time, it omits a Senate provision requiring large institutional investors to sell rental homes they build to individuals within seven years of construction

It keeps a swath of banking provisions from the House’s version, including multiple deregulation bills meant to expand community banks’ access to funding sources for mortgages and home construction loans.

Sourced from the Senate version, the final bill includes a four-year ban on the Federal Reserve issuing a Central Bank Digital Currency, though it exempts “any dollar-denominated currency that is open, permissionless, and private, and fully preserves the privacy protections of United States coins and physical currency.”

Hundreds of organizations have expressed support for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, including the National Association of Homebuilders, the National Association of Realtors and the National Housing Conference.