Senate Moves Forward on Bipartisan Housing Package

While the highly anticipated Executive Order from President Trump declaring a Housing Emergency did not materialize Tuesday evening during the SOTU, there is positive news from Capitol Hill: Majority Leader Thune (R-SD) has filed cloture on the Senate’s bipartisan housing package and scheduled a floor vote on the motion to proceed next today. 

We expect ROAD to pass the Senate overwhelmingly (again), and once it does, the Senate and House may begin to conference this bill with the Housing in the 21stCentury Act, passed by the House earlier this month.  Among the many provisions in both bills is the increase in the Public Welfare Investment cap from 15% to 20%.  The consensus within the industry is that increasing the cap will provide an infusion of equity into the investor market, at a time when the volume of credits and bond cap capacity from OB3 has significantly increased.   

The Senate and House packages have many shared goals, such as reforming NEPA, enhancing CDBG and CDBG-DR, and more. We anticipate there will be some differences in addressing small bank rules and grant programs. We hope that the two sides can reconcile the differences in the bills and pass a comprehensive housing reform bill by late March or April. 

We will keep you apprised as the process moves forward.