Legislative Agenda
Reducing Regulatory Barriers to Housing Act
Congressional sponsors: Senator John Fetterman (D-PA), Representative Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE)
Background
- As of 2021, the U.S. was 3.89M homes short of meeting housing need.
- All 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have a gap between the housing they have and the housing they need.
- One-third of U.S. households are cost-burdened.
There are more than 40,000 local government entities responsible for zoning in this country! Many of them are facing a decades-long accumulation of rules and regulations that can make it almost impossible to provide enough homes for people who need them.
Many of these cities and towns want to enable more housing, but lack the resources and capacity to remove or reform these regulations quickly and well. In fact, HUD’s recent grant program that offered resources to communities who wanted to create more housing was oversubscribed 11:1! And there were applicants from 47 states. There are simply not enough resources to go around.
Legislative Solution
To help support the goal of facilitating more home building, this act would:
Direct HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research to
- Provide technical assistance on zoning and land use
- Coordinate housing development efforts across the federal government
- Research best practices and develop non-preemptive guidelines for states to encourage housing production
Create New Grant Programs
- Digitize zoning codes by district
- Help local governments establish pre-approved designs for affordable housing units
Develop Standardized Models and Promote Best Practices
- Provide model legislation, codes, and processes for local reform, including mechanisms to encourage adoption.
