The leaders of the Senate Banking Committee yesterday released a bipartisan bill that seeks to boost housing supply by removing regulatory barriers to building homes, expanding rental assistance and allocating funds for infrastructure that supports new housing.
The ROAD to Housing Act of 2025, sponsored by committee Chairman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), incorporates legislation from members across the committee, according to a joint statement. The 315-page bill includes language to reward communities that build more housing supply, ease environmental review of new construction, rethink regulations to hamper additional lending for small-dollar mortgages, and expand tenant assistance and protections.
“This is a collaborative effort that includes the work of my colleagues across the committee, and I look forward to advancing these solutions to the full Senate,” Scott said.
“With this historic bipartisan bill, we are taking a critical first step to bring down families’ number one monthly expense–housing costs,” Warren added.
Among its many provisions, the proposed bill would:
- Increase the Public Welfare Investment cap for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve from 15% to 20%, which would enhance banks’ capacity to make investments in affordable housing.
- Allow the Department of Housing and Urban Development to give more weight to grant applicants that are located in, or primarily serve, designated opportunity zones to support housing preservation and construction.
- Require the Federal Housing Administration to assess barriers to FHA-insured lending for modular housing and direct the HUD secretary to modify the financing draw schedule to encourage modular housing construction.
- Direct HUD to develop best practice frameworks for zoning and land-use policies.
- Require the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to issue a report to Congress studying the effect of various factors of loan originator compensation on the availability of small-dollar mortgage loans and assess the barriers they pose to the availability of such mortgages.
- Require the CFPB and Federal Housing Finance Agency to evaluate the effects of existing regulations that limit the points and fees that lenders can charge on qualified mortgage loans, which vary by loan limit. Based on such evaluation, the CFPB would be directed to make any necessary regulatory changes to points and fees to help encourage additional lending for small-dollar mortgages.
- Permanently authorize the Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery and establish the Office of Disaster Management and Resiliency within HUD to administer the program.
