House overwhelmingly passes major housing package

The House of Representatives on Monday night overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan housing package that is intended to make homeownership more affordable and modernize rural housing programs.The lower chamber passed the Housing in the 21st Century Act in a 390-9 split under suspension of the rules, which allows noncontroversial bipartisan legislation to be approved quickly. 
The legislation will now go to the Senate, which passed its own housing bill late last year. Both bills are similar but have key differences that will need to be voted on before it can go to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature.
“We wanted to get [the housing bill and other committee priorities] through the House so that we could work with the Senate to find packages that the President could sign into law, long before the very active summer campaign season,” House Financial Services Chair French Hill told Politico. “So I would hope that we could work over the spring and find a way to have a bicameral, bipartisan set of bills.”
The House bill includes provisions that incentivize the construction of multifamily homes, which are things like duplexes that are between a single-family unit and apartment complexes, according to Fox News. 
It also includes provisions that protect borrowers and those utilizing federal housing programs and enhance oversight of housing providers.
“Housing costs have soared beyond the reach of millions of American families thanks to Bidenflation, while outdated and burdensome red tape has constrained our nation’s affordable housing supply and limited our ability to expand it,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. “Today’s House passage of the Housing for the 21st Century Act is a critical step toward addressing this shortage by reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers, modernizing HUD programs, and giving banks flexibility to deploy capital to increase our housing supply.”
Misty Severi is a news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.

Read Full Article: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/house-overwhelmingly-passes-major-housing-package?utm_source=justthenews.com&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=external-news-aggregators