Comprehensive housing legislation won overwhelming bipartisan support in the House on Tuesday, as lawmakers sent President Donald Trump a package both parties hope will help lower costs for what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says is the single largest expense U.S. households face. The House voted 358-32 to clear the bill under suspension of the rules, which requires two-thirds of members present and voting for passage. All of the "no" votes were Republicans, as a group of conservatives led by Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who are pressing for Senate passage of a voter ID bill, voted against the housing bill in protest. Despite the number of Republican opponents more than doubling from votes on previous iterations of the bill, the conservative holdouts couldn't stop the legislation's momentum. The House voted a little more than 24 hours after the Senate passed the final bill Monday night, 85-5. Trump is planning to sign it Wednesday during his trip to the Capitol to meet with Republicans. The legislation hit the bicameral fast track this week after being stalled for months as the two chambers worked out differences over versions of the bill that each gained wide bipartisan support in previous votes. The legislation contains about four dozen provisions based on stand-alone measures, most of which have bipartisan co-sponsors. It aims to increase housing supply and decrease costs for an area that often tops voters’ affordability concerns. “President Trump has been clear: it’s time to restore fairness to the housing market and put families first,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement. Ingle cited a key provision Trump pushed to include: a ban on institutional investor ownership of more than 350 single-family homes, with certain exceptions including for properties built specifically to be leased. House and Senate disagreement over the provision was one a key sticking point that held up the bill. An earlier House version differed from an earlier Senate version by refusing to cap the time some institutional investors can hold properties they build to rent. The previous Senate version would have required them to sell the properties within seven years or pay a penalty. But the final language, which went through several iterations in talks with industry groups, also won approval from populist lawmakers across Capitol Hill including Senate Banking ranking member Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who rarely agrees with Trump on anything. Bipartisan wins The vote represents a win for House Financial Services Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., who pushed back against earlier Senate iterations of the bill that he thought did not reflect some House priorities well enough. In the final bargaining, Hill won inclusion of several deregulatory measures aiding community banks as well as an earlier sunset to a Department of Housing and Urban Development disaster-recovery grant program that he's criticized for inefficiencies and improper spending. The final bill also picks up the House-drafted changes to the institutional investor provisions that addressed concerns about stifling rental housing development. Many of the implementing rules for the section remain to be written by the Treasury Department, whom Hill urged in a floor speech before passage to act in a manner reflecting congressional intent. Hill said Treasury should ensure that certain housing developments owned by nonprofits aren't subject to the ban, and that various constituencies — including seniors, students, members of the military, individuals with disabilities and more — aren't inadvertently priced out of affordable housing. "The overall goal is to expand the number of single-family homes available for purchase," Hill said, adding that Treasury should not do anything that would "risk reducing, not increasing, the availability and affordability of housing across our great country." House Financial Services ranking member Maxine Waters, D-Calif., touted several wins for her side of the aisle as well, including the fact that the HUD disaster grant program was renewed at all. Waters said 51 individual bills backed by panel Democrats made it into the final package, including provisions to help community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions finance affordable housing. The measure would streamline housing regulations to bolster the construction of affordable housing in part through increasing a cap on banks' investments; change rules to boost manufactured housing; encourage localities to ease zoning rules; and more. It also would temporarily ban a central bank digital currency, a provision sought by conservatives, though it's not the permanent prohibition they wanted. 'Virtuous cycle' The measure includes a provision based on a bill that would provide more Community Development Block Grant allocations to localities that exceed the median rate of homebuilding. The Build America Caucus-backed measure was put back in the bill late in the process. The group was established in May 2025 and is comprised of 20 Republican and 20 Democratic House members. Rep. Josh Harder, D-Calif., founder and co-chair of the caucus, said the incentive will establish a “virtuous cycle” that encourages local government policies to make it easier to build affordable housing. He said Build America Caucus members sponsored legislation that became 27 provisions of the bill. “This is the most substantial housing legislation Congress has passed since 1974," Harder said. Although there was much support across the aisle for the bill at each step of the way, the journey was a long and winding one. The Senate Banking Committee approved the first version of the Senate housing bill last July. The House initially passed its bill in February, 390-9. The Senate passed an amended version the next month, 89-10. The House then countered with a revised version that passed overwhelmingly in May, 390-13. The chambers volleyed versions of the bill back and forth until Banking and Financial Services leaders agreed on final legislation last week.
