Senate Committee Unanimously Votes for Housing Bill
August 1, 2025 — On Tuesday, July 29, the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee advanced bipartisan legislation focused on housing supply and costs titled “Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act” on Tuesday. This is the first housing bill advanced by the Committee in over a decade.
The bill proposes a new Moving to Work cohort, modeled after the expansion, that would be called the “Economic Opportunity and Pathways to Independence Cohort.” The cohort would be open to no more than 25 agencies and would be limited to waivers included within the Operations Notice for the Expansion of Moving to Work Demonstration Program. The language would prohibit HUD from providing any waivers related to stepped rents, minimum rents, fixed rents/subsidies, imputer income, short-term assistance, time-limited assistance, increasing the PBV program cap, limiting portability, and work requirements.
The bill would also lift the unit and sunset date for the Rental Assistance Demonstration and make changes to the Opportunity Zone program by allowing HUD to prioritize applications for competitive grants related to housing development or preservation based in Opportunity Zones. The bill would also allow HUD to implement a multi-year demonstration project that would test and evaluate an opt-out approach to the Family Self Sufficiency (FSS) program.
The bill also aims to eliminate red tape for new housing construction, incentivize communities to build more housing, make changes to Continuum of Care administration, authorize CDBG-DR, modernize the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, simplify the National Environmental Protection Act review for housing-related activities, among other things.
The bill includes the Choice in Affordable Housing Act while allows units financed through LIHTC, the HOME Program, and the Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Service to automatically meet HCV inspections requirements if they passed an inspection within the past year. The bill would also allow new landlords to request advance inspections to expand housing options and increase landlord participation in the voucher program.