Republican members of the House of Representatives may vote against a bipartisan affordable housing bill, even though it passed the Senate with overwhelming support last week and is a priority for President Donald Trump.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, sponsored by GOP Sen. Tim Scott and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, would be the first major piece of bipartisan housing legislation in decades. It incorporates much of a housing package that passed the House last month, but Republicans in the lower house have taken issue with new provisions added in the Senate bill.
One key stumbling block is a section that bars institutional investors from buying single-family homes, applying this restriction to investors who own 350 or more such properties.
Such investors could still buy or build single-family homes if they rent them out, but the bill would require them to sell the property to an individual homebuyer after seven years.
Critics of the provision, including industry groups, argue that institutional investors only own a small, single-digit share of single-housing family, and that these investors are a key driver of new home construction that helps lower prices.
“The government has to protect people against harm. You’re not harming people by renting them a house. I think that’s a ridiculous overreach of the government … the more we get ourselves inserted into people and how they run their businesses, the worse it goes,” Rep. Richard McCormick of Georgia told The Hill.
“We’ve proven that ad nauseam.”
Backers, however, say average homebuyers should be the priority, not Wall Street.
"We put this bill together with the deep-seated belief that it is families who should live in homes and that's what homes are for," Sen. Warren said after the Senate bill passed. "They're not there simply as investment vehicles for Wall Street private equity."
The White House agrees, and the president signed an executive order in January pushing measures to keep large investors out of single-family home buying.
Cost-of-living issues are an especially salient topic this year, as Americans face a deficit of accessible housing and are expected to prioritize affordability issues during the midterms.
A group of GOP lawmakers, including members of the far-right Freedom Caucus, has also criticized the housing bill because it only temporarily bars the Federal Reserve from creating a digital currency, rather than blocking it permanently.
“A Central Bank Digital Currency would expose Americans to unconstitutional financial surveillance and give the unelected Federal Reserve unprecedented power over Americans’ finances that would violate their civil liberties and financial freedom,” lawmakers wrote to Republican congressional leadership in a letter earlier this month.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said he would prefer if the House backs the Senate bill, but that the upper house could go to conference to iron out a compromise bill if necessary.
Further complicating matters, President Trump signaled earlier this month he wouldn’t sign new bills until Congress passes the SAVE Act, a package of voter ID requirements expected to fail in the face of uniform Democratic opposition in the Senate, who allege the act will needlessly restrict voting access.
The president insists the country is clamoring for the SAVE Act.
“That’s all they talk about,” Trump reportedly told GOP lawmakers during a retreat in Florida earlier this month. “They don’t talk about housing. They don’t talk about anything. That’s what they talk about. And if you send it up there, you will win the midterms and you will win every election for a long time.”
Recent polling suggests otherwise.
A PBS News / NPR / Marist poll released last week found that nearly six in 10 people say it is more important to make sure everyone who wants to vote can than to make sure no one who is ineligible casts a vote.
Price increases and inflation are the top concerns for voters, according to a recent Center Square Voters' Voice Poll.
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