Housing for the 21st Century Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. FLOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Hill; Ranking Member Waters; and my counterpart on the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, Ranking Member Cleaver, for all of their work on this package.
This is how Congress is supposed to work. We all worked hard to bring forth a bipartisan housing bill that addresses housing affordability. The Housing for the 21st Century Act cuts costs, slashes red tape, and will increase housing supply.
There is no question that the legislation before us is a historic rewriting of our housing laws to bring our housing market into the 21st century.
According to the National Association of Realtors, the median annual existing home price in 2024 was up 69 percent relative to 1995, and that figure is adjusted for inflation. The realtors also have data showing that the median age of a first-time home buyer is 40 years old. This is an absolutely astounding figure.
Some estimates put the gap between housing supply and demand at about 3.85 million units, while other estimates show it to be 5 million units. This housing affordability challenge affects everyone, from young people saving up for their first home, to middle-class workers who are working as hard as they can to provide for their family and are just trying to make the rent.
There is no silver bullet for fixing this problem, but I think that this bill, this legislation, includes a range of meaningful housing reforms that will add to housing supply and ultimately decrease housing costs.
I will take a moment to highlight a few provisions that I think will make a difference. Section 104 and 105 of the bill works to rightsize the environmental reviews on both HUD and USDA housing projects to properly reflect their impact on the environment. This legislation ensures that these environmental reviews are properly tailored to the real impact of a project going forward, and this change will ensure that more housing projects break ground on time and on budget.
Section 201 includes reform of the HOME Investment Partnerships, the largest block grant program at HUD dedicated to building affordable housing. This bill would change HOME by slashing environmental reviews, easing labor cost burdens like the ones created by section 3 HUD requirements, and providing greater flexibility for cities and towns across the country to use HOME dollars to promote homeownership.
Section 301 makes important changes for manufactured housing. I give a special thanks to Congressman John Rose and his extremely important bill that would remove the requirement that a manufactured home be built with a chassis. That saves money. That one change is going to enable a significant growth for manufactured housing, and it will reduce the cost of manufactured homes.
Finally, title 6 of this bill adds meaningful community banking reforms to this legislation. It eases the burdens for de novo banks so that new banks can get off the ground. It tailors regulatory requirements for the smallest community banks, and it reforms the bank resolution process.
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Mr. FLOOD. Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that the Housing for the 21st Century Act is a comprehensive, bipartisan housing reform package that will increase housing supply, slash government regulations that keep housing costs high, and unleash our community banking sector.
Mr. Speaker, I thank everybody who worked on this bill, especially the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), Chairman Hill, and Ranking Member Waters.
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