One Democrat Votes Against Landmark Housing Bill Even Republicans Back

The Senate passed a landmark housing bill Thursday with a rare show of bipartisan support, but one Democrat still voted “no.”

Brian Schatz of Hawaii was the only Democrat to vote against the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which create incentives to build new homes, launch a program to turn abandoned buildings into housing, and ban Wall Street from buying single-family homes, among other long-overdue reforms.

Co-sponsored by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican Tim Scott, it passed 89-10, with all “no” votes coming from Republicans except Schatz. For what? Schatz suggested he was unhappy with the bill on Wednesday, claims in the Senate that “there is a problem” with the bill.

“It was written in such a way that it was trying to capture the problem with hedge funds, but they wrote it wrong,” Schatz said. saidciting a provision in the bill that requires large institutional investors to sell their rental properties to families after seven years. He said the legislation defines these investors as for-profit organizations with more than 350 single-family homes, not just hedge funds.

Warren disagreed and said Schatz mischaracterized the type of companies that own more than 350 homes and can still build as many as they want.

“Private equity can build as many multi-family homes as it wants, as many apartment buildings as it wants, and as many single-family buildings as it wants,” the Massachusetts senator said. HuffPost. “They can take advantage of all the tax benefits that they are currently entitled to, with the only exception that after seven years of benefits, private equity has to take those single-family homes and make them available to families.”

Clearly, Schatz’s concerns were enough to push him to vote against the bill, which now moves to the House with a narrow Republican majority. The fact that so many Republicans supported him in the Senate is a good sign, but his future remains uncertain in the House and with President Trump, who reportedly said President Mike Johnson said ‘nobody cares’ [bleep] on housing” earlier this week. But regardless, Schatz appears to be in a very small minority ally with Wall Street, even a Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is not one of them.