The Readout

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law on July 11, joining the modern lineage of major federal housing laws that includes HOTMA in 2016, HERA in 2008, and the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act in 1990. It also marked the emergence of a new federal housing-policy consensus: America has a severe shortage of homes, and that shortage is a major driver of unaffordability.

Almost immediately, attention turned to what comes next. At Up for Growth’s annual summit earlier this month, congressional staff and housing practitioners spent part of the day discussing ideas left out of the final package, unresolved financing and infrastructure questions, and what we loosely called “ROAD 2.0.” By the end of the day, though, a more immediate question had come into focus: before the next bill, we have to make the one Congress just passed work.

I’ve started thinking of that work as ROAD 1.5. Appropriations are part of it, but so are agency implementation, state and local uptake, and the decisions of housing providers and market actors. ROAD now has to move from statutory language to results on the ground.

Market View

Implementation means much more than standing up new federal programs. ROAD touches land use, permitting, building design, financing, repairs, conversions, and preservation, and each intervention ultimately depends on someone outside Congress making a different decision because the law changed.

The Accelerating Home Building Act is one example. Federal support for pre-reviewed designs can reduce design and approval friction, but the resulting project still has to work on a real site, satisfy local rules, and attract financing. In other words, a pre-approved plan still has to pencil. The law itself points toward that outcome test by requiring grantees to report permits issued and units produced using the designs.

Build Now pushes the same idea into federal incentives by connecting future CDBG funding to housing-unit growth rather than simply rewarding adoption of a preferred reform. The principle is straightforward: incentivize the outcome, don’t prescribe the means. Every community is different, and the barriers to building more homes in Toledo will not look exactly like those in Dallas or San Francisco. ROAD recognizes that difference while giving jurisdictions new tools to craft solutions that fit their own markets.

Why This Matters

Solving America’s housing shortage requires much more than building more homes. It also means preserving the homes we already have, adapting the built environment to today’s housing needs, repairing aging and deteriorating properties, and keeping affordable homes from disappearing from the stock.

Meeting that broader objective will require a different kind of implementation. ROAD cannot be delivered by HUD alone. Its provisions reach across federal agencies and depend on states, local governments, financial institutions, housing providers, developers, and other market actors translating new federal authorities and incentives into different decisions on the ground.

That should raise the bar for what we expect from ROAD. The job for Congress and the administration is not simply to establish programs, complete rulemaking, or appropriate funds. The test will be whether those actions change what a local government, developer, owner, lender, or investor actually does, and whether that change produces a better housing outcome.

Bottom Line

Passing ROAD was a major legislative milestone. But the measure of the law will not ultimately be that Congress passed it. It will be whether housing outcomes improve for Americans because Congress passed it.

ROAD 1.5 is where we find out. As agencies implement the law, Congress decides what to fund, states and localities put new tools to work, and market actors respond, we can begin to see which interventions change decisions, where implementation stalls, and where other constraints still stand in the way.

There will be another federal housing agenda. Before Washington writes it, ROAD 1.5 should help policymakers distinguish between problems that can be solved through better implementation, problems that require more resources, and problems that will need new federal policy altogether.

What to watch

  • Appropriations. Do funding and agency capacity match ROAD’s new authorities?
  • Innovation Fund. How will HUD define “objective improvement in housing supply growth”?
  • Build Now. How will HUD measure housing growth, and how will jurisdictions respond?
  • Pre-approved plans. Watch permits and homes produced, not plans published.
  • Coordination. Can federal, state, and local actors turn ROAD’s tools into aligned action?
  • ROAD 2.0. What does implementation reveal about what worked and where the chain broke?