Warren Speaks on Senate Floor Following Passage of the Biggest Housing Bill in Over 30 Years

Warren Speaks on Senate Floor Following Passage of the Biggest Housing Bill in Over 30 Years

"House Republicans should immediately take up this bill and pass it. If they do not, they will have to explain to families across the country in November why they refused to lower the cost of housing."

Watch floor speech here (YouTube)

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, delivered a floor speech following the passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act - legislation that will boost housing supply, bring down costs, and get homes in the hands of families, not Wall Street or private equity.

Below are the Senator's remarks as prepared for delivery:

Thank you Mr. President.

Our nation is in a full-blown housing crisis. Across rural communities, small towns, suburban neighborhoods, and major cities, home prices are sky-high, rent is through the roof, and just last year, the median age of a first-time homebuyer hit 40 years old.

Housing is the biggest purchase most Americans will make in their lifetimes - but it's much more than that. Owning a home means building economic security. It's the number one retirement plan for families across the country. It helps people start small businesses in their communities. And it's the main asset that families can pass down from one generation to the next. Owning a home affects the jobs you can get, the schools your children can attend, and the kinds of communities you can live in.

But for too long, the federal government has been asleep at the switch while the crisis grows. Hundreds of thousands of families are priced out of homes by private equity. Many state and local governments have too many rules holding back housing construction. Young people cannot buy their first homes. Seniors and veterans are being left behind. Homeownership is out of reach for too many families, especially Black families.

We need to act. That's why I stand here today in support of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. This landmark, bipartisan bill will help tackle the root cause of this crisis by getting more homes built in every community across the country. It will make sure families own those homes - not giant corporate landlords looking to jack up the rent and squeeze out every nickel of profit they can.

House Republicans should immediately take up this bill and pass it. If they do not, they will have to explain to families across the country in November why they refused to lower the cost of housing.

This is the biggest package of bills to make housing affordable in 30 years. This bill has more than 40 provisions, each designed to help increase housing supply and bring down costs. Here are just a few things the bill will do:

It removes regulatory barriers and streamlines environmental reviews to speed up affordable housing development and construction approval processes. It rewards communities that build more housing and prods those that are not building to step up and build more.

It strengthens the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME programs to get more affordable housing built and permanently authorizes the CDBG-Disaster Recovery program to get money out to disaster-stricken communities faster.

It makes it easier and cheaper to build new manufactured housing by removing outdated chassis requirements, bringing down the cost of a new unit by up to $10,000.

It creates an "Innovation Fund" - one I've been proposing for years - to reward communities that are successfully building more housing with new funding for community infrastructure or to build more housing.

It will make long-needed improvements to rural housing programs to preserve affordable housing for 400,000 rural families.

It offers new and streamlined funding opportunities for cities and towns to bolster local infrastructure and convert abandoned buildings into new housing; for homeowners and landlords to make structural home repairs; and for homebuilders to finance new manufactured and modular housing.

And there's so much more. This bill supports more housing opportunities for veterans, takes action to reduce homelessness, and helps address appraisal bias.

Finally, this bill takes a good first step to get single-family homes back into the hands of American families, not corporations. An overwhelming majority of Americans across party lines want to stop private equity from snapping up single family homes. This bill does exactly that. It also makes sure that corporate landlords who don't follow the law pay up - and it invests any money they pay in fines into the HOME program to build more housing and to help first-time homebuyers with direct assistance for down payments, closing costs and interest rate buydowns. The bill does another thing that's very important: It preserves the power of state and local communities to tackle the problem of corporate landlords making it harder for families to afford rent and own a home.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act has overwhelming bipartisan support. It includes the vast majority of bipartisan housing provisions that passed in the House of Representatives. And the bill has strong support from the White House.

Americans have been clear they want their leaders to focus on lowering costs. There is no excuse to delay this relief. The American people will be watching.

Thank you to Senator Tim Scott for his partnership on this historic bill. His leadership made this bill possible, and I am grateful to work with him on an issue that will matter so much to so many families. I also want to note that every single member of the Banking Committee-Republican and Democrat-added ideas and specific provisions that made it into this bill. I thank them for their thoughtful and creative contributions. I also want to offer a very special thank you to the local and state officials, including the Mayors across Massachusetts and around the country, who helped shape this bill and who then raised your voices to help get it passed. I also want to thank the advocates who have worked tirelessly to push for more and better housing across America.

Let's get this to the House and signed into law as quickly as possible.

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