The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is now law. Here’s where implementation goes from here.

After years of work and overwhelming bipartisan support, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is officially law. It’s the most significant federal housing legislation in decades and an important step toward addressing America’s housing shortage.

But signing a bill into law isn’t the end of the story. In many ways, it’s the beginning. In other words, as Willie Nelson once sang, we’re on the (21st Century) ROAD again—this time from enactment to implementation.

And there’s plenty of work ahead. Now federal agencies have to turn the law’s more than 50 provisions into reality through regulations, guidance, new programs, and day-to-day administration. In fact, the act requires more than 100 implementation actions across the federal government, many of them within the first year.

But implementation won't stop at the federal level. States and local governments will need to consider how new tools and flexibilities can work in their communities, prepare for new funding opportunities, and, in some cases, take action on their own to put the law into practice. Housing providers and real estate industry stakeholders will have important roles to play as well, helping carry out new programs and policies and providing feedback on how they are working on the ground.

The legislation provides the framework, but effective implementation at every level will be critical to expanding housing supply and improving affordability.

That’s why NAR’s work didn’t end on July 11 when the bill was enacted into law. As implementation gets underway, we’ll be working with agencies and policymakers to help ensure the law delivers on its promise. And in this blog series, we’ll follow that work as it unfolds, highlighting key milestones, what they mean for real estate and where NAR is weighing in.

To start, here are five areas of the new law we’ll be watching especially closely.

• Building More Homes: At its core, the act is about one thing: increasing housing supply. The law tackles some of the barriers that make housing harder and more expensive to build, including by developing model housing-supply frameworks, rewarding communities that adopt pro-housing policies, supporting preapproved housing designs that can speed permitting, and streamlining environmental reviews for certain federally supported housing projects. Rather than relying on a single solution, the act recognizes that solving America’s housing shortage requires attacking the problem from multiple directions.
• Expanding Access to Homeownership: The act includes several provisions aimed at expanding access to mortgage financing and homeownership. These include improving access to FHA small-dollar mortgage lending, updating financing for manufactured homes, and making it easier for veterans to understand and use their VA home loan benefit. The act also modernizes USDA’s rural housing programs by allowing more borrowers to assume existing loans and expanding financing for properties with ADUs.
• Making Federal Housing Programs Work Better: The act doesn’t just create new initiatives, it improves programs communities already rely on. Major changes to the HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME) Program provide greater flexibility to support homeownership, while Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) can now support new affordable housing construction. The law also establishes a statutory framework for CDBG disaster recovery, replacing the long-standing practice of rebuilding the program after each major disaster.
• Encouraging Housing Innovation: The act recognizes that addressing the housing shortage will require new approaches to what we build and how we build it. It advances manufactured housing reforms designed to lower production costs and expand design and siting options, supports commercial-to-residential conversions, and creates opportunities to test point-access, or single-stair, multifamily buildings.
• Funding the New Programs: The act authorizes several new grant programs to help increase housing supply and improve affordability; however, the law does not provide funding for them. Congress will need to fund these programs through the appropriations process before they can get off the ground. Many are also time-limited, making timely funding particularly important. NAR will continue advocating for Congress to fund these programs so agencies can stand them up and communities can put these new tools to work.

These are just a few of the issues we’ll be following as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act moves from enactment to implementation, and we’ll dig deeper as that work gets underway.

There’s a long road ahead. We’ll see you along the way.

Source:  Elayne Weiss for REALTOR® News