This victory is the result of collective efforts by Commonwealth Housing Coalition partners, local elected officials, and Habitat DC-NOVA’s network of supporters, who have tirelessly advocated, strategized and mobilized the past seven months and over the last two years. There will still be some work to do to implement these new laws, but let’s celebrate the passage of these below:
Congress passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act that became law on July 11 — a historic, bipartisan legislation that will bring homeownership within reach by tackling longstanding barriers in the housing system, with more than 50 provisions touching nearly every corner of the housing sector. These overdue reforms will expand supply, modernize housing programs, and drive innovative solutions to address the nation’s growing housing affordability crisis.
Habitat for Humanity has influenced and shaped more than a dozen provisions in this legislation, led by Habitat for Humanity International and with sustained advocacy for multiple years by Habitat organizations across the nation. Habitat DC-NOVA, in particular, helped engage congressional offices through advocacy days like Habitat on the Hill and mobilized our network of supporters repeatedly to make the case for these improvements for affordable homeownership to Congress.
*Please note that a lot of these reforms will take some time to be implemented and for the impacts to be realized. Habitat DC-NOVA will provide updates as implementation details become available.
Here are some of the provisions we’re celebrating that are especially important for Habitat DC-NOVA:
- Faster approvals for small housing projects and streamlining of environmental reviews. ROAD to Housing will also streamline federal environmental review for small-scale construction and repair projects (through NEPA), reducing duplication of reviews for HUD-funded housing, by allowing greater use of existing federal, state, local and tribal environmental reviews, rather than requiring separate HUD-led reviews in all cases. This should speed up completion and reduce costs for Habitat DC-NOVA projects, cutting red tape that has historically slowed affiliates like ours down, particularly for repairs.
- HOME program reauthorized and strengthened. The HOME Investment Partnerships Program is a key funding source that lets Habitat affiliates build and preserve affordable homes and this will get reauthorized with improvements to program efficiency and impact, particularly on reducing environmental review burdens, including eliminating duplicative federal reviews.
- A new Whole-Home Repairs program. Modeled on the Whole-Home Repairs Act in Pennsylvania, this will create a federal pilot program to help lower income homeowners make holistic critical repairs so they can stay safely in the homes they own. This work aligns directly with our home repair and preservation efforts and could help increase our capacity for providing more no- to low-cost home repairs.
- Expanded CDBG funding. Community Development Block Grants, which has helped us with renovations, such as the Reeves Farmhouse in Arlington County, can now be used for new construction, not just rehabilitation – opening up a major funding stream for building new affordable housing. This could be especially helpful for Fairfax County and our work there. The related CDBG-Disaster Recovery program is also authorized for a stable three-year term.
- CDBG bonuses through formula allocation change in the Build Now Act. Localities could get bonus CDBG allocations based on how much they improve their rate of housing growth relative to other communities. The new formula allocations that provide additional resources for jurisdictions experiencing high costs and are working to add new supply could be particularly impactful in our service area, especially opportunistic for jurisdictions adding in new supply like Fairfax County.
- Incentives for local zoning reform. The legislation encourages states and cities to reform restrictive zoning and land use policies that have made it harder and more expensive to build homes where people need them.
- An Innovation Fund pilot. A new Innovation Fund will be established that will provide grants to localities aimed at testing new approaches to housing affordability, similar in spirit to the American Rescue Plan-era investments that helped communities respond quickly to housing needs.
- Improvement of building codes. Better guidelines for building codes will be established and resources will be developed to identify best practices for building in zoning codes that local jurisdictions can adopt and use to disseminate information.
- Updates to the definition of and more resources for manufactured housing. Includes technical changes to manufactured housing as well as to applicability/accessibility of resources making it easier to build and preserve manufactured housing communities. This could be especially helpful in Fairfax County.
Learn more about what else is in the package that is important for the Habitat for Humanity network.
For any questions or interest in getting involved with our advocacy efforts, please reach out to our Policy and Advocacy Director, Regine.Sellote@habitatdcnova.org, or subscribe to our advocacy mailing list to receive action alerts.