WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) released the following statement regarding Senate passage of the bipartisan 21st Century Road to Housing Act. The legislation reflects serious bipartisan negotiations across the Senate, House and White House and focuses on rising housing costs by cutting red tape, unlocking housing supply, and lowering costs for families.
“Michiganders are demanding action to lower the cost of housing, and this bipartisan bill helps,” said Slotkin. “It rewards communities that add new housing, cuts red tape and improves federal housing programs to help both rural and urban communities. I look forward to this bill becoming law and working with communities across our state to take advantage of this bill.”
Slotkin has been sounding the alarm on the housing crisis since she was first elected, and cited the need for a National Housing Emergency in her Economic War Plan speech. Slotkin introduced her bill, the National Housing Emergency Act (S.3600) shortly after.
The 21st Century Road to Housing Act has more than 45 total housing provisions, designed to help increase housing supply and bring down costs. The bill:
- Creates an “Innovation Fund” to reward communities that are successfully adding to their housing stock with new funding for community infrastructure or to build more homes.
- Streamlines environmental reviews to speed up affordable housing development and construction approval processes.
- Makes improvements to rural housing programs to preserve affordable housing for 400,000 rural families.
- Strengthens the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME programs – both used widely across Michigan – to get more affordable housing built, and finally authorizes the CDBG-Disaster Recovery program to get money out to disaster-stricken communities faster.
- Offers new and streamlined funding opportunities for cities and towns to bolster local infrastructure and convert abandoned buildings into new housing; for homeowners and landlords to make structural home repairs; and for homebuilders to finance new manufactured and modular housing.
- For the first time ever, Congress is acting to stop private equity’s housing grab.
- This bill will stop private equity from buying up single family homes – something supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans across party lines.
- It also makes sure that corporate landlords who don’t follow the law pay up – and it invests any money they pay in fines to build more housing and to help first-time homebuyers with direct assistance for down payments, closing costs and interest rate buydowns.
Read an explainer of the bill from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
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