FHA Small-Dollar Mortgages Act

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6644) a bill to increase the supply of housing in America, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which 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 in strong support today of our collaborative and bipartisan bill titled: ``Housing for the 21st Century Act.''

Americans across our Nation have faced the tough reality of out-of- control costs because of the recent spike in inflation coming out of the pandemic.

President Trump has prioritized addressing affordability, and the Financial Services Committee has been working on solutions in our Committee's area of jurisdiction.

Alongside Ranking Member Waters, Chairman Flood of our Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, and Ranking Member Cleaver of our Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, together, we have introduced the Housing for the 21st Century Act to deliver a straightforward approach to housing. This includes building more homes and removing barriers standing in the way with an eye towards driving down that marginal cost of a new unit.

Mr. Speaker, the Housing for the 21st Century Act will streamline approvals and simplify the Federal and local housing process to give rural and urban communities the tools they need to build homes faster. Importantly, our bill helps banks access stable deposit funding. It streamlines the exam process that is tailored particularly for our vital community banks. It helps promote more community banks to do what they do best, which is lend locally and support their communities.

I think it is important, Mr. Speaker, that on this House floor all of us know that without our community banks and without vigorous lending, homes don't get built. Our communities and regional banks play a key role in that housing construction ecosystem.

When there are not enough homes, prices go up. The Housing for the 21st Century Act includes real bipartisan solutions to expand supply, lower costs, and, more importantly, give our families more options.

Let's deliver this real solution and return the housing market back to working for the very people that it should serve, the very people we do serve in the people's House.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I include in the Record the CBO estimate for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, from Los Angeles, California, to the capital city of Little Rock, Arkansas, I have heard directly, Mr. Cleaver has heard directly from Kansas City, and other Members hear directly about what is wrong at HUD. We are asked about how we can improve these programs and make them work for the American people and how they can have more accountability and more effectiveness for the taxpayer dollars that are expended.

That is at the heart of the work that Mr. Cleaver and Mr. Flood have done, as I say, benefiting a big city like the Los Angeles Basin all the way to a capital city like Little Rock, Arkansas, and certainly to Lincoln, Nebraska.

I am so pleased to have the leadership of the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Flood), who serves as the chair in this Congress of the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee. Mr. Flood has spent a lot of time working with Mr. Cleaver to do exactly that: How to make these programs more effective for the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Flood), the author of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Nebraska.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Cleaver for his work with Mr. Flood on this bill and his leadership in trying to find bipartisan solutions.

Mr. Speaker, I met last week with the community development folks from Little Rock, Arkansas. Kevin Howard, my friend who runs Housing and Community Development for the city of Little Rock, was in, singing the praises of this bill of how it will make their work so much more effective were the 21st century housing proposal enacted into law today.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a link to a list of over 70 organizations that support this bill being enacted: https:// financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle. aspx?DocumentID=411018

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Huizenga), the vice chairman of our full committee, the Committee on Financial Services, for remarks on this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the work of my friend from Illinois on this bill, the important work he has done both in the housing portion and on the work we have done together on nonbank designations. I appreciate his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, he mentioned the importance of community banks, from Texas to California, Arkansas, and across this country. The reason why it is so important to link housing and lowering housing cost policies, these HUD-related policies, to banking is because our banks under $10 billion, Mr. Speaker, make about 60 percent of all the home construction loans in our country.

Therefore, that is why the ranking member and I, and our committee, have chosen to come to this House floor to talk about some specific housing measures. I want to make sure that the American people know that we know that the supply of housing has to be financed. Some 60 percent of that is done by our local community banks and credit unions spread across this country.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz), the author of section 106 in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Rose), who has authored the very important manufactured housing provisions, which will immediately help our consumers, our families, across this country have a more affordable housing option.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Rose certainly talked about cost savings due to the deregulatory nature of this bill, lowering costs. All of us here know that we have learned in our committee work that 25 percent of the price of a new home in America is due to regulatory costs, State, local, and Federal. So, our bill has that as a theme.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nunn). He has worked hard at making sure these improvements in the Housing for the 21st Century Act fully apply to housing in rural areas, not just urban areas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Kim), a great member of our House Financial Services Committee and a senior member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 15 seconds to the gentlewoman from California.

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

Mr. Speaker, first, I have to say a big thank-you to Ranking Member Waters; the ranking member of our subcommittee, Mr. Cleaver; and the tireless leadership of Mike Flood, the chair of our Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. They have collaborated for a year to bring these proposals to the House floor today.

I reiterate that the linkage of housing and community banking is two sides of the same coin that leads to a better outcome, more choice, more accessibility, more affordability, and more housing choices for the American people.

This bill also has important HUD oversight, which I think is critical to make sure those who are tenants in HUD programs have the care, oversight, and safe and sound conditions they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I also thank the staff on both sides of the aisle for their work in putting this bill together, particularly on the majority side, Ed Skala and Maura Woosley, for their collaboration on the banking provisions with their minority colleagues and the community banking provisions.

I urge Members on both sides of the aisle to provide a ``yes'' vote for this important banking and housing legislation.

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

Mr. 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 Housing for the 21st Century Act, sponsored by myself and, of course, by Representatives Hill, Cleaver, and Flood.

Our housing and homelessness crisis has reached a breaking point, as millions of Americans each night struggle to find a decent, stable, and affordable place to live. The struggle has real faces of our children's teachers, working mothers, veterans, and, of course, children from all over the country. The struggle is in our rural towns, urban areas, and suburban neighborhoods across America.

On any given night, 800,000 people are experiencing homelessness in the United States of America. Rents nationwide have soared by 47 percent, and home prices have skyrocketed 57 percent. Incomes haven't kept pace with these increases, which means housing eats up more and more of a family's paycheck.

As the lead Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, it has been my mission to fight to end this homelessness and housing crisis. The Housing for the 21st Century Act is a critical first step in that mission.

Passed in Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support, H.R. 6644 sets the stage for building and preserving more affordable homes in our neighborhood. It makes many long overdue improvements to housing programs, expands local development opportunities, and broadens access to homeownership.

H.R. 6644 also includes a dozen bipartisan provisions to help small banks like community development financial institutions, the CDFIs, and minority depository institutions, the MDIs. It helps meet the housing and other needs of our constituents.

The bill also addresses concerns from the 2023 banking crisis that will now promote a safe, sound, and competitive banking system, one that doesn't threaten our housing markets or our economy.

This package represents a historical, bipartisan agreement. I am proud that Mr. Hill and I, along with Mr. Flood and Mr. Cleaver, have been able to work together to prioritize the housing needs of millions of Americans and advance this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to highlight House and committee Democrats who worked tirelessly with me on this package. H.R. 6644 includes 25 provisions that come directly from bills championed and introduced by House Democrats and another 16 provisions that House Democrats co-led.

I am excited that it includes my bill, H.R. 5077, which would allow cities to use CDBG funds toward affordable housing construction.

It also includes H.R. 6774, which would finally create a pilot program at the Federal Housing Administration to offer small-dollar mortgages.

It includes my bill, H.R. 6773, which directs cities across America to finally publish a database of their unused land so that developers may be able to bid on it and build more housing.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that it includes my bill, H.R. 4544, to encourage the formation of new banks including CDFIs and MDIs so that borrowers will have more options when they want to buy a home.

While we come today to pass this initial bill, let me be clear that much more work is needed. We can't pass this bill, call it a night, and then claim that this affordable housing and homelessness crisis is over. A significant problem warrants a significant response, which means that we need significant Federal investments to solve this crisis.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that this administration is watching today and learns something about true bipartisanship and getting things done for the American people. Our bill is the type of bipartisan work that is needed to tackle the crisis facing Americans. Among meaningless tweets, empty promises, costly tariffs, and ridiculous policies like the 50- year mortgage, while this affordability crisis rages on, Congress can act tonight to support Americans who are looking for real housing solutions.

Mr. Speaker, that is why I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Hill; Ranking Member Waters; and my counterpart on the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, Ranking Member Cleaver, for all of their work on this package.

This is how Congress is supposed to work. We all worked hard to bring forth a bipartisan housing bill that addresses housing affordability. The Housing for the 21st Century Act cuts costs, slashes red tape, and will increase housing supply.

There is no question that the legislation before us is a historic rewriting of our housing laws to bring our housing market into the 21st century.

According to the National Association of Realtors, the median annual existing home price in 2024 was up 69 percent relative to 1995, and that figure is adjusted for inflation. The realtors also have data showing that the median age of a first-time home buyer is 40 years old. This is an absolutely astounding figure.

Some estimates put the gap between housing supply and demand at about 3.85 million units, while other estimates show it to be 5 million units. This housing affordability challenge affects everyone, from young people saving up for their first home, to middle-class workers who are working as hard as they can to provide for their family and are just trying to make the rent.

There is no silver bullet for fixing this problem, but I think that this bill, this legislation, includes a range of meaningful housing reforms that will add to housing supply and ultimately decrease housing costs.

I will take a moment to highlight a few provisions that I think will make a difference. Section 104 and 105 of the bill works to rightsize the environmental reviews on both HUD and USDA housing projects to properly reflect their impact on the environment. This legislation ensures that these environmental reviews are properly tailored to the real impact of a project going forward, and this change will ensure that more housing projects break ground on time and on budget.

Section 201 includes reform of the HOME Investment Partnerships, the largest block grant program at HUD dedicated to building affordable housing. This bill would change HOME by slashing environmental reviews, easing labor cost burdens like the ones created by section 3 HUD requirements, and providing greater flexibility for cities and towns across the country to use HOME dollars to promote homeownership.

Section 301 makes important changes for manufactured housing. I give a special thanks to Congressman John Rose and his extremely important bill that would remove the requirement that a manufactured home be built with a chassis. That saves money. That one change is going to enable a significant growth for manufactured housing, and it will reduce the cost of manufactured homes.

Finally, title 6 of this bill adds meaningful community banking reforms to this legislation. It eases the burdens for de novo banks so that new banks can get off the ground. It tailors regulatory requirements for the smallest community banks, and it reforms the bank resolution process.

Mr. Speaker, the bottom line is that the Housing for the 21st Century Act is a comprehensive, bipartisan housing reform package that will increase housing supply, slash government regulations that keep housing costs high, and unleash our community banking sector.

Mr. Speaker, I thank everybody who worked on this bill, especially the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), Chairman Hill, and Ranking Member Waters.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), who is also the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance.

Mr. Cleaver, along with Mr. Flood, worked hard to reauthorize and reform HOME, which is in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Foster), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6644, the Housing for the 21st Century Act.

I certainly applaud Ranking Member Waters and Chairman Flood for working together and for the inclusiveness of this package. I am proud to have five affordable housing bills included in this overwhelmingly bipartisan package.

One of my bills makes key provisions to the HOME program at HUD to ease compliance for small properties and to recognize community land trusts as eligible HOME fund recipients.

The package also expands foreclosure mitigation counseling to delinquent borrowers and raises the public welfare investment, or PWI, cap to 20 percent to free up capital for historic investments in affordable housing and community development.

Among other community bank reforms, H.R. 6644 includes my bill to

modernize the treatment of reciprocal deposits to help small- and mid- size banks, like Fifth Third Bank, Huntington Bank, KeyBank, improve liquidity and better compete for large accounts.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, it includes a measure that I have long championed in Congress, a bill to codify the financial agent mentor- protege program at the Treasury to help small banks and minority deposit institutions, or MDIs, survive. We also have one AdelFi bank in my district, and I thank them for all the work that they have done with that. It will also help them survive and thrive.

Lastly, again, I thank Ranking Member Waters and Chairman Hill for their leadership on this package, and I urge my colleagues to support the package.

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

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

H.R. 6644 represents an important first step, a strong bipartisan one, in our fight to ensure affordable, decent housing for everyone in America. It provides a critical foundation for us to end the affordable housing and homelessness crisis.

This bill would update and improve existing Federal housing programs by expanding local development opportunities and modernizing existing housing programs in communities across the country. It will also support community financial institutions to meet the housing needs in their communities.

I am pleased to advance this legislation to the floor with Ranking Member Waters, Chairman Hill, Mr. Flood, and Mr. Cleaver, and I am proud that it includes 20 housing provisions and five banking provisions championed by committee Democrats. This bill is a true testament, Mr. Speaker, to bipartisanship.

I, again, urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman, my good friend from Arkansas, for yielding me time today.

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

This legislation will lower housing costs for millions of Americans, including tens of thousands of Tennessee families whom I represent.

I am proud that my bipartisan bill, the Housing Supply Expansion Act of 2025, was included in the Housing for the 21st Century Act. My bill removes an outdated Federal chassis requirement that has stifled manufactured housing construction for decades.

When we hear the term ``manufactured home,'' many people still think ``mobile home.'' That is because Federal law has forced us to adhere to a permanent chassis requirement. Since 1974, manufactured homes have had to be built on a permanently installed steel chassis, even after the home is placed on a site, never to be moved again.

This bill will give millions of Americans a path to homeownership without going over budget. It will provide young and low-income families with the opportunity to build equity instead of being locked into rising rents year after year.

You don't have to be a trained economist to understand why home prices and rental rates have skyrocketed. Demand continues to outpace supply in our cities, suburbs, and even in many rural communities across this country.

The simple truth is that we need more homes. This bill takes meaningful steps toward making that happen. We are reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers, removing financing roadblocks, and modernizing HUD programs.

Municipalities across the country have restricted or outright banned homes built on permanent steel chassis. The result has been less construction, higher costs, and fewer opportunities for working families to own where they live.

Yet, manufactured housing is one of the most effective ways to expand housing supply quickly and affordably. By removing this outdated Federal restriction, more homes will be built, and ultimately prices will come down for everyone.

The experts in the manufactured housing space tell us that allowing manufacturers to design a single-family home without a permanent chassis will bring about modern low-profile builds, multistory construction, and urban-friendly designs. It will also improve efficiency and eliminate unnecessary steel, waste, and cost.

We cannot sit by while 50-year-old policies prevent folks from signing on the dotted line. Imagine if the Federal Government had mandated that every vehicle coming off of Henry Ford's assembly line had to remain permanently attached to a trailer in order to be owned. We all know that didn't happen because the trailer was a means of transportation, not a permanent feature.

Housing should work the same way. There is a reason why this bill has so much bipartisan support.

Mr. Speaker, it includes commonsense solutions for building more homes, lowering costs, and giving more Americans dignity and stability.