Kaine Applauds Senate Passage of Bipartisan Legislation to Build More Homes and Expand Affordable Housing Access

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a former fair housing attorney, applauded the Senate's passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, bipartisan, bicameral legislation that will bring down housing costs, increase access to affordable housing, and result in more homes being built. The bill, a previous version of which passed the Senate in March, incorporates provisions from several pieces of legislation that Kaine has introduced and cosponsored, including to improve transparency of mortgage loans for veteran homebuyers, create a pilot grant program to support new housing and community development activities, create a down payment assistance fund for first-time homebuyers, and ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

"As a former fair housing attorney, I have seen firsthand how critical safe, accessible housing is to people's well-being and long-term financial outlook-and everywhere I go in Virginia, I hear about how rising housing costs are holding folks back," said Kaine. "This Senate-passed, bipartisan legislation includes several provisions I championed and is an important step toward tackling our housing crisis. This bill will boost housing supply, lower housing costs, help first-time homebuyers with down payments, and ban deep-pocketed venture capitalists from snapping up single-family homes they'll never live in. I urge my colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives to pass this it as soon as possible."

Among its many provisions, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act would:

• Boost housing supply to bring down costs by allowing Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to be used to build affordable housing; reauthorizing and updating the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME); providing federal incentives for states and localities to assist with affordable housing planning and implementation efforts; removing a requirement that manufactured housing be built on permanent steel chassis; easing financing for modular housing, manufactured housing, and affordable dwelling units; and streamlining construction approval processes and environmental reviews for affordable housing developments.
• Make reforms to increase housing fairness, access, and affordability by addressing appraisal bias, preserving manufactured housing communities, improving Section 8 inspection policies to get families into housing more quickly, supporting home ownership, addressing housing needs of veterans, and expanding the availability of funds for emergency homeless shelters.
• Ban large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.

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