Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
House Financial Services Committee member presents H.R. 6644, urges Congress to fund affordable housing reforms
Loading...
Summary
A member of the House Financial Services Committee introduced H.R. 6644, the Housing for the 21st Century Act, highlighting reforms to expand development, protect borrowers and a provision to raise banks' public welfare investment cap; the speaker stressed funding is required to make the bill effective.
A member of the House Financial Services Committee introduced H.R. 6644, the Housing for the 21st Century Act, describing it as "an important first step" to address the nationwide affordable housing shortage and urging Congress to provide the funding necessary to implement the measure.
"For far too long, millions of Americans have struggled to find a decent, stable, and affordable place to call home," the speaker said, framing the bill as a response to shortages in rural, urban and suburban communities. The speaker said the measure was introduced with Chairman Hill and with Representatives Cleaver and Flood.
The statement said the bill would streamline housing development and modernize federal programs that the speaker described as "outdated or unwieldy." Key features the speaker listed include expanding local development opportunities, broadening access to homeownership through manufactured housing and small-dollar mortgage pilots, strengthening protections for borrowers and assisted families, enhancing federal oversight of housing providers, and increasing affordable housing in both rural and urban areas.
The speaker emphasized that policy changes must be paired with funding to succeed, saying federal housing programs have been "chronically underfunded," and that "we simply cannot create enough homes, keep renters stably housed, or preserve the existing affordable housing stock" without new resources.
On changes contained in a substitute amendment, the speaker highlighted a provision to increase a public welfare investment cap for banks from 15% to 20%, saying that change "should add as much as $2,500,000,000.0 a year in new private housing capital." The speaker also said they would closely review a provision that exempts a housing program from the Build America Buy America Act.
The speaker framed the bill as bipartisan and as a foundation for further work, saying the substitute includes roughly 38 provisions, about 18 of which the speaker described as led by Democratic members of the committee. The remarks concluded without a recorded vote in the provided transcript: "I thank you, and I yield back."
