The road to affordable housing: Biden and Congress pass landmark reforms

26 October 2026

The Biden administration and Congress have enacted the most significant U.S. housing legislation in decades, with a 45-provision bipartisan bill that aims to boost supply, curtail investor purchases, and help families afford homes. But experts warn the law will not help immediately.

A historic bipartisan advance in housing policy

In July 2024, President Biden signed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act), an extensive housing package that passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. The law, described as Congress' largest housing package in 30 years, comprises 45 provisions targeting housing supply, financing, and investor activity.

Congress enacted the law following lengthy bipartisan negotiations, passing the bill 85-15 in the Senate and 325-108 in the House. The law includes provisions to cut red tape, raise loan limits for federally backed multifamily mortgages, and invest in housing through federal block grants. Notably, the administration touted the law as boosting housing supply without new mandatory federal spending.

"A key goal of this legislation is to get Americans better access to affordable homes, with a big focus on promoting more housing construction and reforming the process for getting housing built," said Representative Steve Stivers, a key bipartisan negotiator.

Supply and demand: incentives for construction

The ROAD to Housing Act employs a multipronged approach to expanding the housing stock. Stakeholders believe that easing regulations, boosting financing, and expanding federal grants will make residential construction more viable. The law streamlines permitting and environmental review, raises federally backed mortgage loan limits, and offers new grant incentives to states and localities to enact zoning reforms.

Beyond regulatory streamlining, the law also seeks to reduce the influx of investor purchases in the single-family home market. Provisions define "affordable housing" and use a threshold of 100 owned single-family homes to define institutional ownership, and they limit purchases by barring such large investors from buying additional single-family homes.

The law mandates that new single-family rental acquisitions must be sold off individually after five years if owned by those investors, a provision added by Congress in the final stages.

"By capping and constraining the ability of large investors to buy single-family homes, while protecting professional housing providers, this bill will help expand supply and protect families looking to buy homes," said Senator Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Republican champion of the bill who ran a major rewrite of it late in the legislative process.

Housing advocates and researchers say additional challenges remain

Even as the administration hailed this historic bill, experts stressed that the law does not address some major cost drivers, such as mortgage interest rates, construction costs, tariffs, labor shortages, or inflation. These additional factors could blunt the bill's impact, they warn, as housing costs fall slowly at best in the near term.

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"While any new legislation to promote housing production and protect homebuyers is welcome, the glaring omitted factors here are the core issues driving the affordability crisis," said Sarah Rosen Wartell, president of the Urban Institute, which conducted research informing the bill. "We're glad to see the red tape get cleared for housing construction, but without addressing the core fundamentals of housing inflation, I'd be surprised to see the pain of being priced out go away anytime soon," she said.

Meanwhile, Treasury regulators have tightened controls on large investors, following up on the ROAD Act's provisions with a rule in August that Treasury officials said would block major institutional players from buying single-family homes in bulk, though the rule is already facing court challenges. "With homeownership out of reach for many, especially younger and minority communities, we didn't want to see them shut out of opportunity by corporate home wholesalers," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in the rule announcement.

Opponents counter that the governmental limits on investment will not drive down housing costs for renters and homebuyers, but will simply transfer ownership of housing from one segment of investors to the other. "The law has a granular view of who the 'bad actors' are," said Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors. "But we'll see if it succeeds in limiting purchases enough for average homebuyers and renters to see a quick difference in prices."

Comments from advocates and affordable housing organizations

The national headlines on the new law, describing a major breakthrough, have not landed the same way at the local level in some housing-urgent Southern locales.

In South Georgia, rental application fees in Valdosta and Lake Park have been set as high as $75 per adult, and evictions continue at high pre-pandemic levels, as local rents outpace growth in wages. "That's the thing about affordability: it's going to take more than loosening some federal rules to fix," said Ron Rogers of Trees for Change Valdosta, which is advocating for better subsidies and covenant restraints to keep rents stable. "We need these costs to move in concert. Rent should follow what people are making, but right now the story is the costs - housing and everything else - are catching up to the people."

In the growing South Carolina Lowcountry, experts say that low inventory, logistical hurdles, and an insurance crunch are complicating housing construction, towering over the law's potential for quick results. "Moving forward requires imagining how the vested interests can collaborate on this," said Francis Lewis, a real estate professor at the College of Charleston. "But that work needs to happen for this federal initiative to make a difference, here. We need local agreements, permitting, and deed covenants that deliver on affordability. And the State House has to play a big part in that, even for this federal law to matter."

"When it comes to housing, we need a multi-pronged toolbox of ideas," added Su Tianpho, CEO of the Housing Authority of the Lowcountry. "This law marks an important step, but we can't expect a major sea change. We'll have to take several approaches that, together, center and scale up affordability solutions."