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WASHINGTON — A bipartisan bill designed to make homes more affordable for Americans is now law, despite no signature from President Donald Trump on Friday.
Supporters call the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act the most comprehensive housing reform in at least 30 years.
The law limits corporate investors who own more than 350 homes from purchasing additional properties.
It also increases access to small-dollar mortgages for lower-income buyers.
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Rep. Sam Liccardo, D-Ca, said the bill isn’t the full solution to America’s housing problems — but it’s a start.
“This is not going to provide immediate relief for tens of millions of families that are struggling to pay rent. We need to do much more. And so, certainly this is a good set of steps, but it is necessary but not sufficient,” Liccardo said.
The measure became law after it sat on Trump’s desk for 10 days with no action.
Trump let the bipartisan housing bill approved by Congress become law without his signature, saying Friday that he was refusing to put his name on it because of the little progress made in passing a strict voter ID bill that he has been pushing.
“I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump posted on social media.
Trump had 10 days until the Friday deadline to sign the bill, issue a veto, or allow the measure to take effect without his signature. He chose to let the measure become law without his express approval, undercutting his administration’s claims that he considers it a priority to combat inflation.
Trump’s rejection of the bipartisan housing legislation exacerbates tensions with his own party in a midterm election year and cuts short their efforts to address a key voter concern about rising costs. His post comes more than a week after he canceled plans to sign the bipartisan legislation, announcing he was using it as leverage in his push for a strict voter ID bill.
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The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to lower the cost of housing and spur more home construction. It’s the broadest federal effort in decades to address America’s housing affordability problems, as state and local regulations have made it difficult to build in many of the communities that are also sources of job growth and economic opportunity. White House economists estimated earlier this year a national shortage of 10 million homes and the bill could help to close a portion of that gap.
But Trump called the bill “a yawn” and “so unimportant” compared to legislation that would require proof of citizenship for all voters.
He surprised Republican lawmakers on June 24, when, shortly before a planned signing ceremony at the Capitol, he announced he would not approve the bill until lawmakers first passed the voting legislation.
That bill, the SAVE America Act, doesn’t have enough Republican support to pass.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said after submitting the housing bill to the White House that he told Trump he should get the “fattest black marker you have, and sign your name really big on that.”
“I hope he does sign it,” Johnson told reporters at the time. “If he doesn’t, it’s still law. We’ll still celebrate it.”
He said he also understood Trump was trying to make a point that the elections bill is the top priority. “And I think he’s making it very effectively,” Johnson said.
Still, Trump’s decision not to sign the bill gave Democrats an opening to criticize him on the issue of affordability.
“His priorities couldn’t be clearer: higher cost for families and more power for himself,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on X.
The housing bill passed the Senate on an 85-5 vote and the House approved it with an 358-32 vote.
That legislation seeks to cut federal housing rules, slim-down environmental reviews, make it faster to build homes and limit the ability of corporations to buy single-family homes.
The bill does not address all of the causes of the country’s housing woes, including a shortage of construction workers, climbing insurance costs and wages that have not risen fast enough for renters and buyers.
But the bill has drawn support from the real estate industry and housing advocates.
The U.S. housing market has been a driver of recent affordability challenges as skyrocketing prices have kept aspiring buyers out of the market. The National Association of Realtors said Thursday that the median sales price increased 1.8% in June from a year earlier to $440,600, an all-time high on data going back to 1999.
7 Eyewitness News contributed to this report.
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