The New 21st Century ROAD to Housing Law with Jason Jordan

Hello and welcome to another edition of the APA Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Johnson, from the American Planning Association. We've got a special quick-hit episode for you today now that we're fresh off the news of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act officially becoming a law. Our guest today is Jason Jordan, APA's Public Affairs Principal, who's been helping APA with advocacy on housing and zoning reform among other planning-related issues for the last couple decades here at APA. Jason's coming to us directly from Washington, DC, where I'm sure there's some bipartisan excitement and probably a little relief now that the bill has finally crossed this last hurdle. So Jason is here to help us dive into some of the important provisions in the new legislation, funding opportunities, and give us a general sense of what comes next and, and what this means for planners. So Jason, Thanks so much for taking some time today to chat with us on the podcast.

Mike, it's great to be with you.

So let's, uh, just jump right into it. 40,000-foot view, what is the Road to Housing Act?

Well, it's the largest housing policy bill to pass Congress and become law in decades. Uh, it's a complex bill made up of a variety of provisions and parts, but it focuses squarely on making the federal government a better partner with localities and on reforming the system in ways to increase housing production and affordability.

I've seen, um, the bill described in many places as historic. Um, why is that? And do you agree with that?

Yeah, I actually do agree with that. It's a word that can be thrown around a lot, but in this case, I think it's apt. And the reasons for it are a few things. One is, you know, you mentioned at the outset about bipartisan celebration today. I think that's accurate, and it's a reflection of the overwhelming bipartisan majorities that passed this bill repeatedly through the House and the Senate over the past several months. So, That's part of what makes it a historic bill, that Congress can come together at a time of such deep polarization to do something like this. But more so than the politics, I think when you look at the policy is what makes it truly historic. I mentioned we haven't done a major housing policy bill in a long time at the federal level. And this really is an attempt to address many of the problems that have existed for a long time. And there's more than 50 different policy and program provisions baked into this thing. So the scale of the reform, the fact that it isn't just about putting more money toward existing programs, but really trying to figure out how to make those programs work better and reduce barriers. I think those things do add up to a bit of history with this bill.

And, and what makes it a housing supply bill? Like, how, how's a supply bill different than, say, a demand bill?

Yeah, great question. You know, it's important to remember we don't do a lot of housing supply bills in Washington. Typically when housing is part of a package, it is more demand-side focused. And by demand, what we're really talking about is subsidizing the ability of people who we want to get into the housing market to do that, or subsidizing developers to build those kinds of houses. So it, it sort of juices up the system, if you will, right? We're, we're providing, whether it's a tax credit or whether it's a direct subsidy, we're providing money to either get people in houses or build houses. Housing Supply is a little bit different take on the problem. Really, it focuses on how do we increase production at a variety of price points to ensure that that supply is available to absorb the, the demand that, that exists. The worry with a demand-only approach is that while it's well-intentioned, sometimes if the system itself isn't reformed, it's either not leading to new outcomes or it's actually increasing that affordability pressure. I think both sides of the equation need to be addressed, but ultimately this was an important step forward so that we can fix the system, so that we get different outcomes, so that if we spend more money, whether that's local, state, or federal, that we're spending it in a system that's actually generating the production that we want.

So the political journey to kind of getting this legislation finally passed, it's been rather long and interesting is a word I guess you could say, and to be expected, I would imagine this came with probably the usual amount of political debate. One of the obvious points of contention was the institutional investor restrictions. But some of the things that kind of surprised me was the holdup of the process surrounding debate over some of the provisions that had nothing to do with housing at all. For example, there was a heavily debated provision on CBDCs, central bank digital currencies. Could you talk a little bit about that and maybe any other non-housing related provisions that found their way into this bill?

Sure. So you're right, it has been a journey. Been about a year since the first version of this bill passed committee. So it has taken a long time to put these pieces together. And it's a good civics lesson for all of us in how some of these packages do come together and ultimately end up attracting what may seem like strange bedfellows. You mentioned some of the banking-related provisions. But if you look at the committees that are actually responsible for housing in the Congress, you can kind of begin to discern some of the method to the madness. So in the Senate, the committee that primarily has responsibility for housing is the Banking Committee. So it covers banking, housing, and urban affairs. In the House of Representatives, it's the Financial Services Committee, which has Housing and Community Development, but it also has all of the banking and insurance-related oversight jurisdiction as well. So what happened here is that as the pieces were coming together, it became apparent to some of the leaders on both of those committees that this might be one of the few opportunities as Congress moves toward the midterm elections to move some of those banking-related proposals forward.

And so the bill began to attract those pieces. In particular, the House Chairman French Hill from Arkansas wanted to incorporate some of those banking bills that his committee had worked on into this bill. And ultimately it carried those things. Forward. Now, if you're talking to the folks who were championing those kinds of proposals, you know, they would say that, for example, the proposals related to community banks have a housing nexus because those are the institutions that are often lending capital to developers and individual homeowners and, and so on, so that the, you know, it is part and parcel of the whole. But clearly you can look at some of those things and you can see You know, some are a little, a little further afield than direct housing. And you mentioned the institutional investor piece. That was a curveball that came in very late in the process. And while the problem of institutional investors in the single-family market had been talked about for a long time, we got an executive order from the White House that really seemed to resonate with a lot of Democrats, particularly in the Senate. And so you got pressure for some kind of language.

But unlike many of the other components of this bill, that language had not been sort of around for a long time and the subject of a lot of hearings and a lot of vetting from outside industry sources. So it came in and a lot of folks looked at that and said, this may be well-intentioned, but it's not actually helpful or workable and could, in a worst-case scenario, actually make financing of some projects harder, particularly for folks who may be in the build-to-rent housing market. So That caused an effort to rewrite some of those things to try to address those problems. You know, I think ultimately the language came out in a satisfactory place for most of the folks who were engaged in that debate. But, you know, the legislative process is always iterative. So we'll see, does it do the trick? Does it do what we want? Do we need to come back and tackle it? But yeah, at the, at the 11th hour, people did realize that this was a bill with a lot of momentum, and so it attracted a lot of interesting passengers on the train.

Yeah, so let's move, um, you know, away from the process and more towards, uh, you know, what's in it. Let's talk about what's in the bill. What are some of the main provisions that people need to know about?

Yeah, so I think it's helpful when you're trying to break down a bill that touches on more than 50 different policy proposals to try to figure out, well, what are the what are the themes that begin to unite some of these different individual provisions? And I, I think there are 3 elements to really, uh, think about when you look at this. One is a set of provisions that are really aimed at reforming the system. Uh, that could be promoting reform of local zoning codes, building codes, permitting processes, but it also involves reforming the way existing federal housing finance programs work, and even making some changes to longstanding programs like Community Development Block Grants. There's a second category that is really squarely focused on fixing the finance, trying to ensure that the programs that we have that support housing production can actually cover things like accessory dwelling unit production or other missing middle housing types, so that as communities are relegalizing more diverse housing types, that there's a corresponding set of financing tools to ensure they get built and people can buy them. Um, and lastly, there are a series of new incentives, um, sometimes direct financial incentives, sometimes, uh, support for capacity building to make the changes, but I'm really encouraging communities and states to look at the barriers to housing production and to move reform forward.

So Again, some of these are about system reform, some of them are about fixing finance, and some are about new incentives to get the job done.

You mentioned zoning reform. How does— how does the bill change zoning? And isn't that a local responsibility, many would say?

Yeah, it is absolutely a local responsibility. And to be clear, this bill is not a national zoning code. You know, it's not prescriptive or preemptive in that way. What it does, I think, is to recognize that a growing number of states and communities across the country are working very hard to overhaul these codes and these systems. And so there are a series of, of elements of the bill to support and encourage that work. Some of them, uh, are aimed at creating models that people could pick up, that are based on what's working in other places. So it would be HUD creating these frameworks, these models, and putting them out there so that people could see what others are doing, providing some research into what seems to be working or even some technical assistance. So some of them are reforms of that nature. Some of them are changes of existing programs to actually give people a financial incentive to do the work, whether that's a separate grant or in the case of Community Development Block Grants, a new program that for communities who are seeing production as a result of these reforms, to actually give them a financial bonus to continue doing that work.

So it's not to tell folks what to do, but it is aimed at a variety of different carrots, I would suppose, to encourage people to do the work or to recognize that it's a lot of work to do. So if you're a smaller community, you may not have the institutional capacity to do this work. So How can the federal government be a better partner? So it, it, it definitely is trying to walk the line of the appropriate distinction between the federal role and the local role in our housing system, while also acknowledging that, you know, in many cases you're talking about decades-old codes that are being worked around instead of facilitating the kind of development that communities actually want.

That's great. And there's, you know, it's a big bill. There's so much in it. And, you know, somebody like you has probably gone through so much of it and done some control effing, I would say, you know, throughout there. And there's a lot of things in it that are really important for planners. And one of the things that is mentioned in there a number of times is opportunity zones. How are opportunity zones directly impacted in this new legislation?

Yeah, so might be worth taking a trip back to the big tax bill that passed Congress in, uh, in 2025, which took Opportunity Zones, which had been established back in 2017, uh, made them permanent. So a permanent fixture of, of the tax code, which means as policymakers look forward, you know, there's an opportunity to think about these Opportunity Zones in a different way since they're not going to expire and you know, have, have had some positive effects around the country. What this bill does is not really change how Opportunity Zones work, but change how HUD works in relation to Opportunity Zones. What the bill would essentially do is require HUD to give people extra credit when they apply for grants to HUD that are competitive grants if the project that is the subject of the application is based in an Opportunity Zone. So the bottom line would be you get an advantage over other applicants for the grant if you can demonstrate that what you're doing with additional HUD dollars, you know, is focused on an Opportunity Zone. It's a way to further catalyze the investment development that would be going on in those areas.

I would also say that it— for planners, it makes it even more important to be engaged in the process of the designation of new Opportunity Zones, because what's going to happen over the next year is that states are going to go back, they're going to look at the original designations, and they're going to redesignate places. So now you have this opportunity to ensure that your housing plan or your comp plan and these Opportunity Zone designations are well aligned so that you can take full advantage of the kind of incentive that's built into, to the ROAD Act.

So, uh, and also I think if I'm correct, uh, Opportunity Zones was originally— that legislation was originally created by Senator Tim Scott, right, who's also co-author of, of Road to Housing.

So absolutely, Senator Scott's now the chairman of the Banking Committee and really is one of the foundational authors of a lot of the pieces that are here and deserves a lot of credit along with his Democratic counterpart, um, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, um, for figuring out how to work together, uh, and for embracing a philosophy of a win is not me getting just everything I want and you getting nothing, but really looking for things that were wins for both or a way to you know, give you a little bit while I get a little bit too, which I think you really see reflected in the bill because there's a variety of different approaches to things like regulatory reform, right, which might be traditionally seen more as a kind of Republican priority. But there are some elements in here that are definitely longstanding bipartisan provisions or, you know, straight-up priorities for Democrats. So I think everybody walks away with some wins here, but Senator Scott definitely deserves some credit for leading the way.

So you mentioned, you know, just regulatory reform beyond zoning. What are some other regulatory changes that are made in this legislation?

Yeah, there's some significant ones. One is some changes made to the federal environmental review process, NEPA. NEPA's triggered whenever there's a substantial federal investment in an infrastructure project. And for a lot of housing projects, when NEPA gets triggered, there's a fairly significant time lag that's attributable to the environmental review. There can also be a lack of effective coordination across federal agencies when you're blending dollars, right? And a lot of these affordable projects definitely can, you know, you know, tap different funds. So, um, the environmental streamlining provisions try to give a shortcut path for projects like infill development. So you're talking about a site that's already been developed once, it's in an urbanized area, um, can it take a shorter path through the process? Uh, it also ensures that, that two of the main agencies responsible for housing finance coordinate better together. So HUD and the Agriculture Department now have a better, a better way of working together. So environmental streamlining is one of the three lines of regulatory reform. The other relates to manufactured housing. So when you look at the rules for what the federal government considers manufactured housing, there's a provision that says you're manufactured housing if you have a permanent steel chassis attached to the home, which is because it was intended to be moved, right?

That's what would make it mobile. In an era where modular housing and other housing technologies allow for different kinds of housing construction, to have 2 stories, for instance, well, it's, it's impractical to have a steel chassis on the bottom of the second story of a home. So this eliminates that rule. It should allow for more this kind of housing to be regulated under how HUD regulates existing manufactured housing. It should speed up that, um, that work and make it cheaper. Um, and so, uh, that's another big piece of this. And I, I think there are other ways that HUD and other agencies will look at what are the other barriers that need to be tackled here, um, in some of these categories.

So let's talk a little bit about dollars. Um, what new funding is going to be available for planners? Will, uh, any existing funding resources or funding sources change because of this bill?

Yeah, both is true— new sources and some changes. Um, you know, I would say overall this is not a big money bill. You know, this is not an effort to pump new stimulus dollars into existing programs. That said, there are some important new programs. I'll hit a few highlights. There's a new $200 million innovation fund where communities that are able to show that they've made progress on local reforms can apply for grants to support the actual housing production, things like supportive infrastructure, which is always a big cost driver when you have new housing development. So that's a totally new pot of money. There's additional money to help communities who are on the pathway to reform, helping regional organizations provide more technical assistance to, to communities to do the work. There's a program that we worked a lot on to create grants for communities to do pre-approved plans, the so-called pattern books, that help smaller developers or even individual homeowners who are trying to build, say, an accessory dwelling unit, as a, for instance, or a duplex, to have plans that the community has already vetted so that the permitting process is shorter, more predictable, lowers the overall cost, helps with some of the outside costs that may be involved.

So those are all new pots of money that are available, but there's some changes in the Community Development Block Grant program. For instance, there's a new incentive where if you are one of the high-cost communities that receive CDBG funds, there's essentially going to be a competition run over time where those communities who are seeing increased housing production are going to get a little more CDBG, and those who are not seeing that get a little bit less CDBG. So it's revenue neutral overall to the federal government, but definitely creates, you know, an incentive to do more and do it faster to actually get that production. It's a very different approach approach to, to how CDBG has been run in the past, but it could constitute an important way of encouraging communities to move these reforms forward.

So we're at a place now where 21st Century Road to Housing is officially the law of the land. I guess the question of the hour is, what comes next? Now what? What should planners and everybody be prepared to see happening next?

Yeah, no, I think everyone deserves a big moment to pat themselves on the back for all the work to get to today and to celebrate that. But the work isn't done. And it's not even done on this bill. So before we even talk about what bills come next, there's more work to be done on just the changes that are made here. And that's because for every new change that's in this bill, an agency is going to have to take a corresponding action. So that will lead to new rules for programs, new guidance for programs, guidelines that are created completely from scratch for, you know, initiatives that aren't created yet. That'll take time. And, um, It's gonna be important, I think, for planners and housing advocates to be deeply engaged in that process so that we can ensure that the way the programs are actually rolled out on the ground matches the vision and the needs that we know exist. The other important area for ongoing work here is that for all that new money that I was just talking about, the innovation grants and other things, it's gonna require Congress to actually appropriate the dollars.

Which is a separate process. Many folks may not understand that that's going to require separate action, but essentially, you know, you can create a program, but then you have to go get the funds appropriated. So, when we start looking at budget bills year over year, it's going to be important to ensure that appropriators in Congress hear the need for these resources and include them in the bill. And then, of course, You know, there are other ideas in the housing space. I mentioned the fact that this is a supply bill, not a demand bill. So if we do supply, what can we do on demand? How do we take some ideas that didn't make the cut for this and include them in a new package? So I'm hopeful that this isn't, you know, we made history with this bill and now we can move on to something else, but rather an acknowledgment that it took a long time to get in the crisis we face. And so it's going to take concerted effort to continue legislating and regulating in order to get us, to get us out.

All right, Jason, well, we don't have a whole lot of time left. We want to let you get on your way and, you know, give you a chance to celebrate in that bipartisan celebration happening all around the Beltway with the officially enjoying the passage and now law 21st Century Road to Housing Act. What are some good resources? What can we point folks to? Where should they go to find out more info if they want to follow along with the work APA and your team is doing, you know, kind of in the weeks and months ahead as we move through, you know, implementation?

Yeah, and we really want people to stay engaged with APA on this journey. The best single place for folks to go is actually to a section of the APA website at planning.org/housingreform where we're gonna aggregate a lot of resources to help you understand more specifically what's in the bill, the regulatory process that unfolds around these new provisions. So that's a great resource. We're gonna be hosting some webinars there and other tools for people to use. Our policy section overall is a great place to go to understand kind of the broad sweep of what we're prioritizing and focused on at APA. So you can expect a lot of resources coming your way in those, in those areas.

Well, Jason, thanks so much for taking some time today to join us on the podcast and dig a little bit into what is now law, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act. We're looking forward to seeing what APA and the policy and advocacy team have in store for us in, in the weeks and months to come. So thanks for spending some time today.

Thanks for having me.

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