There are several provisions that are genuinely positive:
👉 Faster environmental reviews. Time is money. A six-month delay on a $10 million development project can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars In carrying costs.
👉 Manufactured housing reform. This may be the sleeper provision. Manufactured housing has been Ignored for decades, and reforms such as eliminating the steel chassis requirement could reportedly save up to $10,000 per unit. For a $100,000 home, that's significant. Ironically, manufactured housing remains one of the few forms of housing that can still be built at a price point many Americans can afford.
👉 Tying federal funds to housing production. This has the potential to be the most Important long-term provision. Most cities love economic growth..think new restaurants, rising property values, new employers. But the NIMBYism Inherent In nearly every community often extends to housing. The bill creates Incentives for municipalities that actually produce housing by linking certain federal funding opportunities to housing production.
If I were ranking the biggest housing affordability levers in order, I’d probably put them:
- Local zoning reform
- Interest rates
- Construction labor availability
- Infrastructure expansion
- Construction material costs
- Federal permitting reform
This bill mainly addresses #6 and a little bit of #1 through incentives. That’s helpful, but it doesn’t touch the heart of why a starter home that cost $390,000 in 2019 now costs well over $500,000.
