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The Senate on Monday overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill aimed at lowering housing costs, sending the legislation to the House.
The rare show of near-unanimous support comes as lawmakers hustle to score wins on affordability that they can trumpet back home during a midterm campaign cycle that has focused heavily on rising costs.
The bill, which the Senate approved on an 85-5 vote, is expected to pass the House this week and head to President Trump, who is expected to sign it.
Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have been driving the package in the Senate, along with their House counterparts, Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Maxine Waters (D-Calif.).
“Today’s vote proves that it is possible to find bipartisan, common ground on legislation that actually helps the American people. And, importantly, it proves that bipartisan legislation doesn’t have to be the weakest, most milquetoast agreement that doesn’t offend anyone or do too much to help anyone either,” Warren said on the floor before the vote.
“It proves that we can legislate by taking really good ideas from every member of the Banking Committee, Democrats and Republicans, from across the Senate, from across the House, from mayors and local governments, from housing experts and advocates – and instead of just beating each other down to strip out anything that anybody in that group doesn’t like, we add in even more good ideas until we have the biggest housing bill in more than 30 years.”
The housing bill, titled the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, contains over 45 different provisions, rolled together from different lawmakers’ bills in both chambers. That includes measures that would waive environmental review requirements for some housing construction projects, encourage renovating aging homes and incentivize communities to build more housing.
One piece, which would effectively bar private equity from buying up single-family homes, was hotly debated between Republicans in the House and Senate for months.
Senate Republicans had attempted to include an all-out ban on companies buying single-family homes, in line with an executive order Trump issued in January. Republicans in the House fought to soften that language.
The final bill landed on a middle ground, restricting companies who already own more than 350 single-family homes from purchasing more.
The housing bill also contains a compromise between the chambers on a program that provides federal grants to communities for disaster recovery. Senate leaders sought to extend it indefinitely, while those in the House hoped to let it lapse. The final version passed by the Senate on Monday contains a three-year authorization for the program.
Politically, the housing package is significant given how few pieces of legislation get such widespread support from both parties. The last non-spending bill, besides previous versions of the housing package, to pass the Senate with a similar margin in a recorded vote was the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of (HALT) Fentanyl Act in early 2025. Another significantly bipartisan bill, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the chamber by unanimous consent that fall.
Warren, speaking on the floor last week, said the housing bill was the most significant legislation on the subject to pass Congress in three decades.
It will likely take a while for the public to feel the effects of the provisions in the housing bill. But its success in Congress illustrates the importance that lawmakers are placing on affordability issues ahead of this year’s midterms — and perhaps the 2028 elections as well.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Monday said anything to address costs is “a good deal.”
“We should do a lot more things to bring down the costs of other items, like gas, like healthcare. You know? I mean, like everything we can get our hands on,” he said.
Democrats hope the momentum could bode well for future attempts to put more federal money into housing supply programs, which this bill does not do, or to pass subsequent efforts to bring down housing costs.
“And I just want us all to remember – this housing bill is big. But our housing crisis is even bigger. We have more work to do. And I hope that today’s vote is only the first of many votes to follow to continue our efforts to lower the cost of housing all across America,” Warren said.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) echoed that sentiment.
“The housing market is a mess. We’ve got a generational affordability crisis around housing in this country. And so I’m glad that we’re able to get this done on a bipartisan basis…But I hope that this is the beginning and not the beginning… I think when we’re in charge, you’re gonna see us do more,” he said.
Those opposed to the housing bill were a small minority in the Senate.
Sen. Alan Armstrong (R-Okla.) said last week that he voted ‘no’ because he wants to push for more in-depth permitting reform rather than simply waiving the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, which this bill allows for housing construction. But he knew the bill could pass without his vote.
“Rather than actually tackling it, and you know, really fixing the problem, it just waives NEPA for housing,” Armstrong said of the bill. “And so if we start doing that for every, you know, pet project, and we don’t actually solve the permitting problem, then we just get a bunch of one-off pieces like that.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) was another ‘no’ vote. He told The Hill last week that housing is “a local issue” and that he wants to see Congress focus on balancing the budget and driving interest rates down, which he said are the deeper issues making housing more expensive.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Chris Murphy Elizabeth Warren French Hill Josh Hawley Maxine Waters Raphael Warnock Rick Scott Tim ScottCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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