The bill, which passed the Senate earlier this month with overwhelming 89-9 bipartisan support, includes some provisions of an earlier version—the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act—as well as housing reform legislation that the House passed in February by a whopping 390-9 vote,

But despite the enthusiasm for housing reform by both parties and both chambers, the fate of the legislation was in question at press time as some House members pushed back, saying that the Senate bill drops some of the critical provisions of their own chamber’s bill. On March 23, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) called for members of both chambers to enter conference committee negotiations to iron out differences between their respective bills.

Another potential obstacle is that President Donald Trump has vowed to refuse to sign any legislation until a separate voter ID bill is passed. At press time, it was unclear whether his postion would hold, since he had reportedly signaled he might be open to a proposal to partially fund the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, which has been shut down for nearly six weeks.

Pros and Cons

Among the 303-page bill’s provisions is a measure to require institutional investors that own at least 350 single-family homes to sell build-to-rent properties to individuals within seven years, a major sticking point for groups including the National Association of Home Builders and the National Multifamily Housing Council. an apartment industry lobbying group.

Build-to-rent properties are considered horizontal multifamily projects, which resemble apartment buildings with shared amenities and features such as central clubhouses. Developers must secure city approval for commercial zoning for build-to-rent work, not for individual homes, a council spokesperson said.

The bill’s build-to-rent provisions are problematic for several reasons, Senior Vice President Matthew Berger told ENR. He said it is difficult to subdivide single-platted properties within such a short timeframe.

“You don’t know what the economy is going to look like in seven years, and nobody’s going to invest in a product that you have to dispose of—and that’s even if you could dispose of it,” he said. The council is working with industry partners in Congress to change the provisions, Berger added.

The build-to-rent provision “would severely reduce investment in rental housing and could slash single-family production by nearly 40,000 units per year,” said National Association of Home Builders Chair Bill Owens, in a statement following the Senate vote.

The Senate bill does have some good provisions that would increase housing supply by removing barriers and promoting investments in housing, Berger noted.

 It expands the definition of manufactured housing by eliminating the permanent chassis requirement for these types of U.S. Dept of Housing and Urban Development homes and calls for the agency to review Federal Housing Administration construction financing programs to identify barriers in use of modular home methods.

“By and large [the Senate bill aims] to increase housing inventory, and we’re for that,” said Tom Hardiman, executive director of the Modular Home Builders Association. “Our concern is that [the bill is] blurring the lines between manufactured and modular, and the consumer may not understand those nuances. … The whole [manufactured home] industry was created to address affordability, not durability, not energy efficiency, not resiliency.”

Manufactured homes are built to department standards and designed to be transportable with a steel chassis, he said, and modular homes must meet the same state and local building code requirements as any conventionally built home, and are not intended to be moved once transported to the home site.

The average homebuyer may not be aware of the distinction between the terms “manufactured” and “modular,” which could be a problem when selling a home when a seller learns the structure is not built to the conventional standards, Hardiman said. The distinction between the two types of housing needs to be made clear with some type of educational element in the bill, he added.

Hardiman also pointed to large housing projects now underway using modular construction. These include one recently announced by California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo—s $1-billion, 10-year multi-phase project to build up to a 4,200-unit student housing complex, which would be the school's largest residential investment and the largest of its kind in the state university system, it said. The eight to nine-story structures would be manufactured by Fullstack Modular, which has factories in Carson, Calif. and Hamden, Conn.