Common Ground – May 19, 2025
Members of Congress are taking a bipartisan approach to addressing the shortage of affordable housing
Given the energy—and media coverage—being devoted to passage of the “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill before Congress, it may seem as though our nation’s lawmakers haven’t been focused on anything else lately, and as though the two parties are too diametrically opposed to work together. Neither premise is true, and one area where Republicans and Democrats have found common ground is addressing the shortage of affordable housing.
The Real Estate Roundtable recently highlighted two such bipartisan initiatives: the Housing Affordability Act, introduced by Sens. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Dave McCormick (R-PA); and the reintroduction of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act (AHCIA) by Reps. Darin LaHood (R-IL) and Suzan DelBene (D-WA). The Roundtable found plenty to applaud in both measures.
The Housing Affordability Act updates the inflationary index used to set loan limits from the Consumer Price Index to a more accurate construction cost index to better reflect today’s building costs and boost housing production. As it is, most areas are misclassified as “high-cost,” thereby limiting HUD’s ability to support new multifamily developments and deepening the national housing crisis, the Roundtable said. That’s due in part to “a nearly two-decade-old loan limit,” said Gallego.
By increasing the Federal Housing Administration’s multifamily loan limits to more accurately reflect individual market costs, the Gallego/McCormick bill “would increase apartment construction, add supply, and help bring down housing costs,” said Jeffrey D. DeBoer, president and CEO of the Roundtable. “In short, enactment of this bill would make housing more available and affordable for millions of American families.”
The Roundtable has plenty of company in endorsing the Housing Affordability Act. Other industry groups that have given the measure a thumbs-up include the National Association of Home Builders; National Association of Realtors; National Multifamily Housing Council; National Housing Conference; National Apartment Association; Institute of Real Estate Management; National Affordable Housing Management Association; National Leased Housing Association; Council for Affordable and Rural Housing; National Association of Housing Cooperatives; and Arizona Multihousing Association.
There’s also broad support for the AHCIA—specifically, from House members, more than 100 of whom from both parties have endorsed it. The measure is intended to expand and strengthen the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. In so doing, it will support the financing of nearly two million new homes, according to the Roundtable.
Specific provisions of the AHCIA cited by the Roundtable include: increasing the number of credits allocated to each state by 50% for the next two years and making the temporary 12.5% increase permanent; increasing the number of affordable housing projects that can be built using private activity bonds by decreasing the amount of private activity needed to secure Housing Credit funding; and improving the Housing Credit program to serve at-risk and underserved communities, including veterans, victims of domestic violence and rural Americans.
These bills aren’t outliers when it comes to reaching across the aisles. At the National Council of State Housing Agencies, executive director Stockton Williams wrote earlier this month, “Bipartisanship is breaking out all over the place in the U.S. Senate on policies to help solve America’s housing affordability problems.”
Along with the Gallego/McCormick legislation, Williams cited bipartisan measures that would expand the LIHTC, broaden the impact of tax-exempt bonds for affordable homeownership, assist local communities in fixing zoning barriers to necessary new housing and shore up subsidized housing in rural areas.
“Each one of these proposals is serious, substantive, and supported by a wide range of stakeholders,” he wrote.