As the House prepares to vote next week on the Housing for the 21st Century Act, mortgage industry groups are lining up in support of a bill that bundles a wide range of changes to housing finance, federal oversight and development policy.

The Mortgage Bankers Association on Friday urged lawmakers to pass the act and asked each member of the House of Representatives to vote in favor of the bill. 

"MBA believes both legislative and regulatory reforms are needed to appropriately tackle affordability and address the nation's housing supply shortage," the association said in a letter addressed to leaders in the House. MBA also lauded the bipartisan efforts that went into design of the legislation. 

MBA's counterparts at the Community Home Lenders of America, likewise, came out in favor but added it would only represent a small drop in the bucket in solving today's housing affordability issues. 

The House introduced its proposal following the removal of similar bipartisan Senate-backed provisions, collectively dubbed the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act of 2025, from the government defense spending bill in December.  

At the time, analysts pointed out the ROAD to Housing Act's lack of clear financial limits on some pieces would likely lead Republican House leaders to remove it from the defense legislation. 

The act, which includes many of the same initiatives that were in the Senate legislation, passed through the House Financial Services Committee by a 50-to-1 margin following markup in mid December. 

Key features of the bill

Included in the House proposal are items addressing issues ranging from manufactured home and rural development to federal agency oversight and regulatory review affecting both single- and multifamily properties. 

Here are several of many updates included in the Housing for the 21st Century Act.

• A mandate to the Federal Housing Administration to research how to expand access to small-dollar mortgages of $100,000 or less.

• Removal of the permanent chassis requirement for manufactured homes that have limited financing opportunities.

• A provision that subjects housing counseling providers receiving federal dollars to periodic on-site and performance reviews by HUD.

• A HUD requirement that excludes veteran disability benefits from income calculation when determining eligibility for any future assistance programs as well as its current rental support initiative. 

• Expansion of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Service's home repair program that would open it up to more low-income families and an RHS requirement to produce an annual report regarding the health of all its programs.
• An update to maximum loan limits for Federal Housing Administration multifamily loans that also introduces a new formula to better reflect home construction costs. 

• Directives to the HUD, USDA and the Department of Veterans Affairs to strengthen coordination of their research and data.  

• A directive for the Government Accountability Office to look for gaps in federal programs that exclude middle-income individuals and families and provide a definition for "workforce housing" policymakers can use.

• The publication of HUD voluntary guidelines that state and local jurisdictions could consult when modernizing their zoning frameworks. 

• A requirement for the HUD secretary to testify annually before Congress.

Outside of leading mortgage industry advocacy groups, several other organizations across the country, including the National Housing Conference, National Council of State Housing Agencies and U.S. Conference of Mayors, spoke out in favor of the legislation after it was introduced in December. 

"The bill proposes practical updates to federal programs that would help lower housing costs and support local efforts to remove barriers to building affordable homes," said Dennis Shea, chair of the Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. 

Passage "would show that Congress can respond to a top public concern and encourage state and local leaders to boost housing supply and improve affordability," he added. 

"By updating federal policy to reflect how housing is built and financed today, this bill takes a commonsense, market-driven approach to expanding supply and improving affordability nationwide," noted the National Association of Realtors chief advocacy officer Shannon McGahn 

Still, Olson said there was far more federal agencies should be doing to address current housing issues, such as reducing mortgage insurance premiums on FHA-backed liens and government-sponsored enterprises' loan-level price adjustments and easing barriers on condominium and manufactured homes.

"CHLA is calling on federal agencies, which can act more decisively, to take bold actions," he said.