House set to vote on amended housing bill next week
The House is moving forward with a vote on the amended housing legislation despite pressure from the White House to pass the Senate version as is.
French Hill, Republican of Arkansas, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Ranking Member Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, on Thursday released the lower chamber’s version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, ROAD standing for Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream.
The bill will have to return to the Senate for another round of approval if the House passes its amended bill, even though the Upper House passed its own version in March by a vote of 89-10.
Ms. Waters said the Senate “unfortunately” changed the legislation to exclude provisions approved by House Democrats.
Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee…
more >
The result is that the future of the legislation is uncertain.
House lawmakers have removed the most controversial part of the Senate’s restrictions on large institutional investors: the requirement to sell single-family homes built for rental within seven years. The House bill retains language restricting Wall Street’s purchase of single-family homes, but removes the divestment provision after conservative backlash, with the new language stipulating that institutional investors are not required to sell or divest a covered single-family home.
Some lawmakers have argued that restricting investors to big money would inadvertently stifle new housing construction. The House bill keeps the language titled “Homes are for people, not businesses” but removes the strict ban.
Both versions of the bill prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, but the Senate version was temporary, until 2030. Some conservative House Republicans wanted to make that provision permanent.
Rep. Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, said: “We want to make sure that there will never be a central bank digital currency that controls what people spend and where they spend it.
One of the main concerns of House Republicans was that the Senate did not include regulatory changes relating to community banks contained in the version of the bill passed by the House. The House included 12 sections covering brokered deposits, supervisory testing, credit union governance, bank formation, and rural deposit studies.
The House version also proposes large one-time statutory increases to the Federal Housing Administration’s multifamily loan limits to catch up with decades of inflation.
The Senate removed the appropriations language and the community bank title to keep the bill focused. The House reinstated all that and more, moving from the Senate structure to a 12-title bill with new sections on manufactured housing, veterans housing, program oversight and community banking provisions.
Passage of the bill by the House is not guaranteed, as Senate supporters of the institutional investor divestment requirement and Democrats who supported it may object to the House removing it.
Mr. Hill said that “over the past two months, we have heard clear concerns from hundreds of members and stakeholders, and this bipartisan amendment reflects those comments.”
House leaders hope to pass the bill by suspending the rules, limiting debate, barring amendments on the floor and requiring a two-thirds majority — the same procedure used when the House passed the original version in February.
