The House is moving forward with a vote on amended housing legislation next week amid White House pressure to pass the Senate version as is.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, Arkansas Republican, and ranking member Maxine Waters, California Democrat, on Thursday released the lower chamber’s version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, with ROAD standing for Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream.
The bill would have to circle back to the Senate for another round of approval if the House passes its amended bill, even as the upper chamber passed its own version in March in an 89-10 vote.
Ms. Waters said the Senate “unfortunately” amended the legislation to exclude provisions secured by House Democrats.
House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member …
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The result is the legislation faces an uncertain future.
House lawmakers scrapped the most contentious part of the Senate’s restrictions on large institutional investors — the requirement to sell build-to-rent single-family homes within seven years. The House bill keeps language restricting Wall Street’s purchase of single-family homes but removes the divestment provision after backlash from conservatives, with the new text stating that institutional investors are not required to sell or divest any covered single-family home.
Some lawmakers argued that restricting big-money investors would inadvertently stifle new home building and construction. The House bill retains language titled “Homes are for people, not corporations,” but strips out the hard prohibition.
Both versions of the bill ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency, but the Senate’s version was temporary, through 2030. Some conservative Republicans in the House wanted to make the provision permanent.
Rep. Scott Perry, Pennsylvania Republican, said, “We’re interested in making sure that there’s never going to be a central bank digital currency that controls what people spend and where they spend it.”
A key concern from House Republicans was that the Senate did not include the community bank regulatory changes contained in the House-passed version of the bill. The House included 12 sections covering brokered deposits, supervisory testing, credit union governance, bank formation and rural depository studies.
The House version also proposes large, one-time statutory increases to Federal Housing Administration multifamily loan limits to catch up with decades of inflation.
The Senate stripped out appropriations language and the community bank title to keep the bill focused. The House put all of that back in and then some, expanding from the Senate’s structure to a 12-title bill with new sections on manufactured housing, veterans housing, program oversight and community banking provisions.
The House bill’s passage in the Senate is not guaranteed, as Senate supporters of the institutional investor divestment requirement and Democrats who backed it may object to the House stripping it out.
Mr. Hill said that “over the last couple of months, we’ve heard clear concerns from hundreds of members and stakeholders, and this bipartisan amendment reflects that feedback.”
House leadership hopes to pass the bill under suspension of rules, limiting debates, prohibiting floor amendments and requiring a two-thirds majority — the same procedure used when the House passed the original version in February.
