The U.S. House passed an affordable housing bill on Tuesday, June 23, 2026, sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk a day after a Senate vote. Trump is expected to sign it into law. (Photo by Grace Cary/Getty Images)
The U.S. House cleared a bipartisan housing policy overhaul Tuesday, aiming to lower the cost of homeownership as members of both parties attempt to focus on affordability issues ahead of November’s midterm elections.
The House passed the bill, 358-32, sending it to President Donald Trump’s desk a day after the Senate’s 85-5 vote. The White House has said the administration supports the measure and Trump’s aides would advise he sign it.
The bill would reduce some regulatory hurdles, including environmental reviews, to home construction and expand the possible uses of federal housing funds. It includes a high-profile provision to ban private equity firms from buying single-family homes.
The bill would allow money from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program to be used for construction of new affordable housing. It would also tie the amount some cities and states receive from the $3.3 billion grant program to their rates of affordable housing construction.
Increasing worries over cost of living
The action from Congress this week reflects a bipartisan focus on affordability, as both parties have sought to address voters’ increasing concerns with the cost of living that has been consistently rising since the start of the decade.
Margaret Spellings, the president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said at a housing policy conference hosted by the Washington, D.C., think tank that the rising cost of housing was due to a lack of supply.
“During the past two decades, the U.S. has simply not built enough housing to meet demand,” she said. “This supply-demand imbalance has led to soaring prices and rents in communities across the nation, with millions of households struggling to make their payments and unable to achieve the American dream of home ownership.”
She added that the issue had animated policymakers at the national, state and local levels.
“Housing is now a top-tier issue here in Washington and in state capitols and city halls all across our country,” she said.
Broad consensus
The measure includes provisions from earlier proposals in both chambers, reflecting a consensus not only between the two major parties but between the two chambers of Congress that often cannot agree on how to approach even broadly supported legislation.
Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who chairs the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, lauded the measure’s broad appeal in a pre-recorded message to the BPC conference.
The bill was nonpartisan, reflecting “advocacy on behalf of common sense,” he said.
“But it does take a bipartisan coalition who puts America first,” he said. “Your work encouraging all of us to put the country first, to put first-time homebuyers first, has resulted in legislation passed through the Senate yet again, and this time is on a path straight to the president’s desk.”
The committee’s ranking Democrat, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, called it a “BIG WIN to build more housing” in a post to social media Tuesday.
“I’ve worked on this bill for over a year,” she wrote. “It’s still possible to find bipartisan, common ground on legislation that actually helps the American people.”
Conservatives revolt
Despite the bill’s broad appeal, a bloc of House conservatives frustrated with the Senate’s inability to pass a Trump-supported bill to require photo ID at polling places and other measures they say are important to secure elections, mounted a last-minute objection to the housing bill.
Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna was the most vocal member of the opposition Tuesday, pledging to vote against other bills and House rules resolutions until the Senate passed the elections security measure, titled the SAVE America Act, whose proponents have noted would restrict noncitizen voting, which is already illegal and extremely rare.
“I will be voting no and oppose other bills AND rules until we fight for SAVE America Act,” Luna wrote on social media Tuesday afternoon, well after the bill had been scheduled for a floor vote. “That means if House GOP leadership chooses today to move the SENATE HOUSING BILL under suspension (getting rid of our house rules) I will vote to shut the floor down. I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE.”
