Systemic Risk Authority Transparency Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the House amendment to the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 6644) a bill to increase the supply of housing in America, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.

America is facing a housing supply shortage that has been years in the making. For too many of our families, the consequences are felt every day through higher home prices, rising rents, and fewer opportunities to achieve homeownership.

Over the last several months, I have worked with our colleagues in both the House and Senate and on both sides of the political aisle to advance practical legislation that addresses this pressing challenge for our American families.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act represents one of the most significant bipartisan housing reforms in recent memory, bringing together commonsense policies to expand housing opportunities and improve affordability for our families.

Mr. Speaker, it cuts unnecessary barriers to new home construction. It modernizes Federal housing programs. It streamlines development processes. It helps create the conditions necessary to build more homes and increase housing supply.

The bill also strengthens the roles of our Main Street community lenders by modernizing outdated banking regulations and allowing banks to more effectively deploy capital in the communities that they serve. These reforms will help community banks focus on what they do best: providing loans to families seeking to purchase a home and financing the construction of new housing.

Importantly, the Senate adopted several key House priorities, including House language that limits institutional investors from outcompeting with American families looking to buy a home. At a time when too many of our families are struggling to purchase a home, this provision helps to ensure that American families have a fair opportunity to achieve that American Dream of homeownership.

Importantly, the House worked with the Senate to ensure that feedback was incorporated to other provisions added in the Senate amendment.

These provisions were the VALID Act, introduced by my great friend in the Senate across the Capitol, Arkansas Senior Senator John Boozman; edits from Ranking Member Waters on the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program; Senator Kennedy's groundbreaking initiative on the Build Now Act; and, importantly, sunsets to the programs offered by the Senate: CDBG-DR, Community Development Block Grant Program for Disaster Recovery, and the PRICE Act.

We focused on improving HUD accountability to benefit both our residents in our districts and taxpayers. This final product advances practical bipartisan and bicameral solutions to modernize Federal housing programs, reduce regulatory burdens, streamline the development process, and help build more homes to meet that growing demand and keep the American Dream within reach.

This bicameral, bipartisan bill before us today reflects ideas from both Chambers and demonstrates what can be accomplished when Congress focuses on solving problems for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, this is Congress working at its best, tackling the challenges of the American people, offering solutions, and having those enacted into law. I am proud to support this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Flood), who is the chair of the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee and has been the leader on building consensus on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga), the vice chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Barr).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lawler).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Kim).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Haridopolos), who is our vice chairman and whip of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Moore), who is a distinguished member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that the work has been extraordinary between the majority and the minority in this House in answering the call for solutions from the American people. I think Mr. Cleaver said it best talking about his own experience within his own family in east Texas: We always had a home, but we just didn't always have a house to put it in.

Let that hang in this room, Mr. Speaker, because that is the spirit in which both sides of the aisle have worked to find solutions today.

We couldn't do it without our staff. I thank the majority and the minority staff from both sides of the aisle who helped us get to where we are today.

Mr. Speaker, as referenced in the previous colloquy that I had with the ranking member when we were on the floor a few weeks ago, we believe there are several points the Treasury should consider as it evaluates the congressional intent in implementing section 1001 of this bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.

Entities organized as nonprofits under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code that are exempt from taxation under section 501(a), as well as community land trusts, as defined in the Cranston- Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act and amended by our bill today, should not be included in the definition of a large institutional investor.

It is also Congress' intent that nothing in the act should be construed to require a large institutional investor to divest or sell any home purchased before or after enactment.

The term, Madam Speaker, ``single-family home'' was also not intended to include property that when occupied is rented to a member of the Armed Forces or a member of the National Guard as defined in section 101 of title 10 of the U.S. Code.

Similarly, section 1001 should not reduce the supply of essential rental housing in our communities and should exclude student housing leased by bedroom to unrelated individuals under separate agreements.

Similarly, homes purchased by mortgage servicers for loss mitigation reasons following a foreclosure, not as long-term investments, should remain permissible when the mortgage is federally backed, as defined in section 4022(a) of the CARES Act, and the servicer first offers a first-look period to the owner-occupant or a nonprofit approved by the relevant Federal agency.

However, the bill prohibits large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes by participating in homeownership programs that do not meet the criteria under the act.

For build-to-rent programs, this exemption should apply when an investor purchases, constructs, or constructs and retains a single- family home for rental use, whether in a community comprised entirely of renter-occupied single-family homes or in a mixed community of owner- and renter-occupied homes. Clarifying this distinction is essential to carrying out the intent of the House and Senate in this bill.

Additionally, purchases of homes used to provide residential care for individuals with disabilities or developmental disabilities or in senior living communities should be exempt as these are unrelated to the problem being addressed by the act.

The same is true for the exemption of homes purchased with support from programs described in section 42 of the IRS code or participating in Federal or other affordable housing programs where rents are restricted.

Congress also intended exemptions for homes acquired as a part of a community of five or more contiguous rental units, and homes planned, permitted, financed, and constructed as a part of a unified rental community on a single platted parcel that are not intended for individual sale, as well as properties that are made up of multiple rental homes or units constructed on a single parcel of property that cannot be legally sold as individual homes or the units without further subdividing the property.

The ranking member and I recognize that these regulations issued by the Treasury will be necessary to implement various aspects of the act that we debate today.

The overall reaching goal of section 1001 is to expand the number of single-family homes available for purchase by individual households.

Regulations that do not meet that objective will fall short of congressional intent and risk reducing, not increasing, the availability and affordability of housing across our great country.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member for her partnership on this housing bill that is groundbreaking, historic, and that is the first time in decades that the two Chambers have come together to make measurable, accountable changes that will benefit the American people in both accessibility, the construction of more units, and the affordability that our families so richly need and deserve over these past years of recently high inflation, particularly. I thank her for her partnership.

Madam Speaker, I will also say that I have talked to community development and housing refinancing people in Little Rock, and they all tell me that this is so overdue. I thank the gentlewoman for her passion in getting this done. Whether it is in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, or Helena, Arkansas, or St.

Louis, Missouri, or Los Angeles, California, or Little Rock, Arkansas, we are also, in this bill, holding HUD accountable.

HUD has a responsibility for safe, clean, and effective housing for the tenants dependent on their programs. Not only are we building supply and improving affordability, we are also in a bipartisan, bicameral basis holding the Department of Housing and Urban Development accountable.

Madam Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6644, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, sponsored by Chairman Hill and myself.

This bill represents the most significant housing reform package in decades and will finally get America back on track to building affordable housing.

Our bill includes dozens of bipartisan provisions to build new housing, lower mortgage and rental costs, expand homeownership, modernize Federal housing programs, prioritize home buyers and renters over corporate landlords, and support community bankers that finance affordable housing development and mortgages each day.

This final bill marks the culmination of numerous hearings, markups, votes, creative input from committee Democrats, and tough negotiations across both sides the aisle and the Capitol.

This bill speaks to the real change that our constituents have been demanding, where everyone can afford a dignified place to call home, where tenants are protected, and where working Americans can finally get ahead.

As a reminder of who we are trying to help and what is at stake, let's review the facts. The average cost of a single-family home has skyrocketed, and wages have not kept pace. The median age of a first- time home buyer is 40 years old. Rents have soared by nearly 47 percent since before the pandemic. Not surprisingly, 42 million American households are cost-burdened, and most shamefully, 800,000 people experience homelessness on any given night. Our country must do better, and today we will do better by passing H.R. 6644.

I have said since day one that housing must be a national priority. That is why I thank Chairman Hill for his partnership. This will be the third time this Congress has passed housing reform legislation, and each time, the bill has gotten better and better.

I also commend Housing and Insurance Subcommittee Ranking Member Emanuel Cleaver, Chairman Flood, along with our committee Democrats and Senators Warren and Scott for coming together on this historic bipartisan and bicameral bill.

By working together, we will deliver a stronger, more impactful legislative package to be signed into law, one with more practical solutions and affordable housing opportunities for American families than before.

This comprehensive package incorporates over 50 housing and banking provisions championed by House Democrats. It will lay the groundwork for the development of new, affordable homes all across America and create new pathways to homeownership. The bill will reduce unnecessary barriers to housing development, expand financing for housing and community investment, and support the development of innovative housing like modular homes and accessory dwelling units. It creates databases for available publicly owned

lands so communities know where they can build.

The bill provides a range of new protections for renters, including a hotline to file complaints with HUD and corporate landlords. The bill increases access to smaller-dollar mortgages under $100,000, and the bill, finally, codifies the Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery Program, which will help expedite flexible funding to communities seeking to rebuild homes after major disasters like hurricanes and wildfires.

H.R. 6644 also supports thousands of community lenders, including community development financial institutions and minority depository institutions, so they can more affordably finance home buyers and housing developers.

Importantly, this bill includes the House language to responsibly rein in corporate landlords by banning large institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes but without halting construction of new rental housing or evicting families in the middle of a housing crisis. Tenants will have a national resource center to file grievances about corporate landlords, to which HUD will respond, and large institutional investors will be publicly named in an annual report along with the number and location of their properties.

I am very proud of this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to join me in this first step to finally addressing our Nation's affordable housing crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), who authored several bills in this legislation, including H.R. 1981, the Choice in Affordable Housing Act; H.R. 5878, the HOME Reform Act; and H.R. 5938, the Innovation Fund Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch), who is a strong advocate for affordable and public housing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green), who authored several bills in this legislation, including H.R. 8291, the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act, and H.R. 3716, the Systemic Risk Authority Transparency Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Beatty).

Mrs. Beatty authored H.R. 2031, the HOME Investment Partnerships Reauthorization and Improvement Act, and H.R. 3709, the Advancing the Mentor-Protege Program for Small Financial Institutions Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Ms. Tlaib), who authored H.R. 6768, the Housing Our Communities Act, which is included in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Horsford), who is a strong advocate for affordable housing and a former member of our committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Hill for working with me to clarify the intent behind this section. I agree with what Mr. Hill has described on the congressional intent for section 1001.

Madam Speaker, for years I have fought hard to make housing affordable, but for many years, it was hard to prioritize housing in both Democratic and Republican-led Houses.

It is for that reason, I am deeply grateful for Chairman Hill who worked so closely with me to write H.R. 6644 and prioritize it in our committee and in this House. Together, we found compromise that had previously proven so difficult. I hope that this partnership can continue to deliver for America because we still have a lot of work to do.

Madam Speaker, I also thank both of our staffs on the committee because without their hard work, this bill would not likely be here before us today.

This legislation must serve as a foundation for continued action, not the final step in addressing our Nation's housing crisis. We must build on this progress and continue to advocate and secure the resources our communities critically need.

Madam Speaker, I dedicate our work to some of the people in public housing who will have an opportunity now to help understand how their communities can be improved. In my district, Nickerson Gardens, Jordan Downs, Gonzack Village, Imperial Courts, and Avalon Gardens, I thank them for what I have learned. To my home in St. Louis, Missouri, where I was born, I thank those who lived and died in bond projects in Pruitt-Igoe and those projects where they had a difficult time many years ago. We are now leading to a point where we will be able to make all of those projects more livable. We will be able to have the constituents in those projects understand how their lives can be bettered.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I also rise in support of H.R. 4429, the Developing and Empowering our Aspiring Leaders Act, or DEAL Act, which is a critical bill to support innovation, entrepreneurship, and capital formation.

The venture capital industry provides vital funding for early-stage startups at points in their life cycle when they are generally deemed to be too risky for traditional bank financing or for raising money on the public market. This basically means that if we are going to have a growing and innovative economy, then we have to have a healthy venture capital sector.

Historically, venture capital earns investor returns and frees up more capital to recycle in other companies by selling their mature portfolio companies to strategic investors or taking them public on public markets.

For a variety of reasons, including public company reporting obligations, economic uncertainty, and the rise of private equity, U.S. companies today are staying private much longer, which has reduced the opportunities for venture capital firms to recycle their investment dollars.

Some venture capital firms have sought to create new liquidity options through secondary acquisitions and investments in other VC funds. This is what Congresswoman Wagner was referring to, but that option right now is constrained by provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that limit venture capital funds' ability to invest in these so- called fund of funds to only 20 percent of their commitments.

That rule was very well-intentioned when passed, and the intent was to ensure that VC firms remained focused on direct investments in early-stage startups. However, it was crafted for a very different financial market than we have today.

I would also note that that constraint is irrelevant to the larger, more well-known VC funds who have the resources to shoulder the compliance burdens associated with registering with the SEC as registered investment advisers. They can already do this, but they are the big ones. They are the ones based in San Francisco and New York. That option isn't available for these emerging regional fund managers located in the middle of the country. Many of those funds increasingly depend on that fund-of-funds model.

What the DEAL Act does is just provides greater flexibility to those smaller VC funds while still ensuring that investors are protected and that fund managers continue to prioritize direct funding in small businesses. It does this by revising the existing rules to raise the cap from 20 percent in fund of funds up to 49 percent but still requiring that the majority of their investments are directly in portfolio companies.

In other words, the DEAL Act supports growth in the startup economy and ensures that capital reaches the communities and innovators who need it most.

I thank my fellow Midwesterner and friend, Congresswoman Wagner, for her leadership on this. I am proud to lead this important legislation, and I urge all my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, I start by thanking our chairman, French Hill, who has shouldered the burden of helping us get this through Congress, together with our Ranking Member Waters, my colleague Emanuel Cleaver from Kansas City, myself, and all the staff that have made this happen.

At this hour, across our land, the mayor of San Diego is celebrating as is the executive director of the Huntsville, Alabama, Habitat for Humanity; the mayor of Columbus, Ohio; and plenty of folks in Nebraska and everywhere in between, because what we have here is a comprehensive, bicameral, bipartisan solution.

When I started in this role in the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, I knew this was the number one issue in my district. Housing supply is not keeping up with demand. Tara Vasicek, the city administrator from Columbus, a city of approximately 25,000 people in Platte County, Nebraska, testified in our first Housing and Insurance Subcommittee hearing that the lack of affordable housing directly impacts economic growth, workforce attraction, and retention.

The mayor of the largest city in my district, Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, 300,000 people strong, believes so strongly in the need for affordable housing and supply that she set an ambitious goal of 5,000 units by the end of this decade.

As we wrote this bill, we thought about them and everybody else; and Mr. Cleaver and I welcomed literally hundreds of suggestions from across the country. They weren't blue ideas or red ideas. We have a lot more in common than we have opposite.

I want to read you something from the Federalist Papers written by Alexander Hamilton. This is from No. 70. This really talks about the process. Now mind you, we had Republicans and Democrats united in the House working with Republicans and Democrats, a different version, in the Senate. Alexander Hamilton wrote: ``In the legislature, promptitude of decision is oftener an evil than a benefit. The differences of opinion, and the jarrings of parties in that department of the government, though they may sometimes obstruct salutary plans, yet often promote deliberation and circumspection, and serve to check excesses in the majority.''

This bill was a product of the process that Hamilton described. There were differences of opinions and jarrings of parties, I would say jarrings of Chambers, but the final bill is stronger as a result of this long and deliberative process.

It is my honor to have been a part of it. I thank again our chairman, our ranking member, and my counterpart, Emanuel Cleaver, for their work on this bill. I thank President Trump for identifying this as a major issue in September of 2025. I also want to send a special thank you to the leadership of this Chamber: our Speaker, our majority leader, and our whip. Without them, this would not be a bicameral, bipartisan bill.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to sponsor H.R. 4429, the Developing and Empowering our Aspiring Leaders, or DEAL, Act.

This bill, which passed with almost unanimous support out of the Financial Services Committee, seeks to ensure the United States remains the most entrepreneurial country in the world, where the next great companies are founded and funded.

It is often said that small businesses are the engine of the American economy, and that is an absolute truth. Small businesses make up 99 percent of U.S. employers, and they are the driving force behind the creation of a majority of new jobs.

The entrepreneurs leading these companies are building something new, taking real risks, and driving growth in communities across the Nation, but too often, they can't get a fair shot at investment.

Right now, our capital markets suffer from an extreme geographic imbalance. The data is stark. Nearly 70 percent of venture capital flows to three States, Mr. Speaker: California, New York, and Massachusetts.

This leaves entire regions of the country struggling to access funding. It leaves communities in the Midwest and the South without the capital they need to build and scale businesses. Access to capital is not just a coastal issue. It is a national economic necessity.

This capital divide is why the DEAL Act is so critically important. This bill is a targeted, forward-looking effort to modernize outdated rules and channel investment to where it is needed most.

The DEAL Act fundamentally strengthens the ability of capital to reach more founders and more communities. It achieves this by allowing larger venture funds to invest directly in smaller, regional funds, a fund-of-funds investment.

This mechanism is a game changer, Mr. Speaker. It means more funding for startups, more opportunities for businesses that might otherwise be overlooked, and more innovation happening everywhere, not just in a handful of elite ZIP Codes.

Newer, regional venture funds are often best positioned to back the entrepreneurs who are building businesses on Main Street. The DEAL Act ensures that these funds can expand that important work, giving them the flexibility to partner with larger institutions to reach a wider base of early-stage companies.

H.R. 4429 ensures our policies are helping capital move efficiently and effectively, empowering those taking risks to build something new, and helping good ideas grow into great companies.

I thank Chairman Hill for his support, and also I thank Congressman Casten for joining me and co-leading this commonsense and bipartisan piece of legislation.