WASHINGTON — Housing affordability was a key issue in the 2024 elections and continues to be a major problem in Massachusetts and across the country. Now, demonstrating deep bipartisan concern, a Senate committee has unanimously approved a sweeping effort to address it.
The Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act seeks to expand and preserve housing supply and improve affordability and access. It would spur construction of new houses and apartments largely by reducing and streamlining regulations, as well as by encouraging more prefabricated housing and other creative approaches.
The effort is led by Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who is chair of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, and the panel’s top Democrat, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. The 24-0 vote on Tuesday to advance the legislation was a rare instance of political cooperation in sharply divided Washington.
“This is a moment to say enough with being shocked about the rising price of housing, let’s actually do something it,” Warren told the Globe about the legislation, whose shorthand tile is the ROAD to Housing Act. “That’s what this bill is all about.”
One of Warren’s contributions to the bill is a $1 billion innovation fund that over five years would provide grants for infrastructure, such as new schools and other public projects, to communities that are constructing more housing or changing land-use rules to make it easier to build.
A proposal for a much larger innovation fund — $10 billion — was a pillar of the comprehensive housing legislation Warren has pushed since 2018 and was a centerpiece of her 2020 presidential campaign. Her American Housing and Economic Mobility Act, which she updated in March, would spend nearly $600 billion over a decade to help fund 3 million new housing units nationwide and reduce rental prices.
There is no cost estimate yet for the Senate banking committee’s bipartisan legislation, but its goals and anticipated price tag are significantly more modest. Still, it’s an effort that’s desperately needed as housing construction has failed to keep up with demand, sending real estate prices in many markets into ever more unaffordable levels.
“We have a real problem here in Massachusetts that we simply don’t have enough housing,” Warren said, noting the state is about 200,000 units short of what’s needed. “The federal government has stood on the sidelines for decades while the supply has gotten tighter relative to growth in population. And now is the time to step up and use the tools that are available only at the federal level to start pushing for more housing growth.”
The legislation is a collection of multiple existing bills, many of which have bipartisan support, Warren said. They include speeding up environmental approvals for homebuilding, expanding access to manufactured housing, and encouraging communities to develop preapproved building plans to reduce the time and costs for new construction.
“Not every idea works in every place,” Warren said. “But creating a menu of ideas so that different cities can pick out the pieces that will permit them to reduce the cost of building is one way that we can get more housing built in America — and we need it.”
During the 2024 presidential campaign, President Trump and former vice president Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, each touted plans to make housing more affordable. They were responding to a drop-off in building caused by the Great Recession and a snarled pandemic supply chain that pushed the problem to what experts say are crisis levels.
A Pew Research Center poll in September found 69 percent of Americans said they were “very concerned” about the cost of housing, a jump from 61 percent in early 2023. And a majority of 68 mayors across the country — including those from Everett and New Bedford — who responded to a recent survey by the United States Conference of Mayors said they believed housing affordability will worsen in their cities over the next year.
“Housing affordability is a major concern for millions of Americans, and there seems to be a bipartisan appetite, particularly around . . . the need for more affordable housing supply, that Congress wants to be responsive to,” said Dennis C. Shea, chair of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center think tank. “It seems like housing is having its moment in Congress.”
The bill’s strong support in the Senate banking committee stems from all 24 members of the panel contributing to it.
“Many people around the country frustrated with the way we do American politics wonder, ‘Is there any issue that brings this nation together?’ ” Scott told his colleagues Tuesday before the vote. “I’m here to say, ‘Hallelujah, we have found one. It is housing.’ ”
He took over as chair in January and has made housing affordability a top priority. That dovetails with a major goal of Warren, who became the panel’s top Democrat this year. Scott, who is close to Trump, also could be key in getting the administration’s support, Warren said.
“We’ve got a ways to go before we can get this to the president’s desk, but Senator Scott is strongly motivated to get a bill passed,” she said. “Not to get a bill that we can just talk about, but to actually get something done.”
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. Warren hopes the unanimous backing from the committee will give the legislation momentum.
The bill has support from 37 housing organizations, a diverse collection that includes the National Association of Realtors, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the National Association of Homebuilders.
“Addressing this crisis demands bold, bipartisan action,” the organizations said in a joint statement of support for the legislation. “We look forward to its consideration by the full Senate, and hope this momentum continues in the House.”
Trump has been aggressively calling for lower interest rates on mortgages. Warren also would like to see mortgage rates go down, but said that’s not nearly enough to solve the affordability problem.
“If we don’t start building more housing here in Massachusetts and all across the country, the housing crisis will continue to intensify,” she said. “This is a supply problem . . . and it’s got a lot of root causes, but that means it takes a lot of pieces to help unlock faster, less-expensive housing construction.”
Jim Puzzanghera can be reached at jim.puzzanghera@globe.com. Follow him @JimPuzzanghera.