The Most Underappreciated Part of the Bipartisan Housing Bill

A lot of coverage has focused on reining in large investors from scooping up home. But an important provision could help thousands of working-class people buy their first home.

President Donald Trump surprised just about everyone in Washington, Republicans and Democrats alike, when he announced on Wednesday that he was canceling an afternoon signing ceremony for the biggest housing bill to pass Congress in decades. He’s holding the bill hostage over his unreasonable demand that lawmakers first pass the Save America Act, the Republicans’ voter suppression bill, which doesn’t have the votes to pass the Senate. As Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a key supporter of the bill, said, “He could be over here trying to claim a victory lap. And instead, he’s saying no, no he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”

The bill will automatically become law in ten days if Trump refuses to sign it. (He could also veto it, but it passed with veto-proof margins.) So one way or another, more than 60 measures will take effect with the goal of increasing housing by waiving some regulations, increasing grants to communities that encourage building, updating rules on manufactured homes, and preventing large investors from buying single-family homes. Much of the provisions were big asks from the abundance movement.

Proponents of these measures hope that they will increase housing supply and therefore lower prices, putting homeownership back within reach for middle-class families. But there’s a smaller provision that could be just as important. The bill includes pilot programs to address a gap in the housing market which keeps families from getting mortgages on already inexpensive homes because it’s often not profitable for lenders to issue smaller mortgages.........

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