On Thursday, December 12, the House Financial Services Committee–the committee of jurisdiction in the House for housing matters–introduced the Housing for the 21st Century Act. While narrower than the Senate’s ROAD to Housing Act, the bipartisan introduction of the legislation demonstrates further momentum around the passage of a housing package this Congress.

In July, Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), the chair and ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, introduced and oversaw the unanimous committee approval of the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025. That legislation included a sweeping range of housing-related policy proposals largely aimed at removing barriers to housing development and marked the federal government’s return to a proactive role in influencing land use decision-making at the local level—a century after the 1920s-era Standard State Zoning Enabling Act. 

In early October, the Senate passed the ROAD to Housing Act as an addition to the National Defense Authorization Act. While the Senate sponsors, and ultimately the White House, pushed hard for the bill to remain in the defense package, it was eventually jettisoned from the final bill primarily due to vocal opposition from the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Representative French Hill (R-AR). While his Democratic ranking member counterpart in the House, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), expressed general support for the bill, Rep. Hill expressed a desire for the House Financial Services Committee to play a role in the final shape of the housing package. 

Following ROAD to Housing falling out of the defense bill, the House Financial Services Committee announced its own bipartisan housing package, the Housing for the 21st Century Act. That package includes many of the components of the ROAD to Housing Act, but also has some key differences. 

Below, we dissect the bills to highlight which provisions are most connected to smart growth goals. We then discuss the path forward for housing legislation broadly, including the need to push for smart growth provisions in the final compromise bill and ultimate bill passage, as well as the need to ensure the bill is provided with adequate funding and thoughtfully implemented.  

Housing for the 21st Century Act: The smart growth perspective

People across the country are facing an acute housing affordability crisis, and a federal focus on supply-side constraints to housing production has garnered bipartisan support. Removing barriers is essential, but above and beyond those barriers, the type, place, and price of housing that policy helps developers build determines who benefits. Can a grandparent find and afford the right home to downsize into near their family? Can a young family with one or no car afford their first starter home close to work, or with a variety of options to travel to work outside a car?

While removing regulatory burdens supports housing production, ensuring that federal, state, and local housing policy actually facilitates accessible, affordable communities that help create vibrant, inclusive places where people can access the housing, jobs, and services they need to thrive requires an intentional focus on aligning land use, housing, and transportation. To deliver more housing options and real affordability for more people and communities, Congress must ensure a comprehensive housing package includes smart growth-aligned provisions. 

The House’s Housing for the 21st Century Act includes a number of smart growth-aligned provisions focused on supporting infill development and missing middle housing, removing red tape and regulatory barriers to housing production, supporting transit-oriented development (TOD), and investing in resilience and risk preparedness that should be top priorities for inclusion in the final package. These provisions, which will still need to be funded (in some cases) or thoughtfully implemented with strong input from experts and practitioners, include: 

The Housing for the 21st Century Act and the ROAD to Housing Act both included versions of the following provisions that would support smart growth: 

• The Housing Supply Frameworks Act, which helps address the supply shortage by helping to remove barriers to housing development through zoning and land use reforms, including by incorporating transit proximity and TOD into zoning best practices considerations.
• The Accelerating Home Building Act, which would help communities cut through red tape and open new pathways for development by supporting community-driven efforts to create pre-reviewed building designs 
• The Unlocking Housing Supply Through Streamlined and Modernized Reviews Act, which would help alleviate the housing supply shortage by significantly easing environmental review requirements for infill and other housing. Extending similar adjustments to USDA’s programs would also be positive.  
• Provisions that reauthorize and modernize the HOME Investments Partnerships Program

Like ROAD, in addition to these provisions, Housing for the 21st Century includes a number of provisions intended to support manufactured housing, increased oversight of federally-funded housing work at HUD and related entities, and improve the transparency and efficiency of federal housing programs. 

Other smart growth-aligned provisions that Housing for the 21st Century Act incorporates that were not included in ROAD include: 

• The Identifying Regulatory Barriers to Housing Supply Act, which would require CDBG recipients to report to HUD on their progress towards adopting a series of pro-housing land use and zoning policies
• A new competitive grant program to assist in the planning, design, and implementation of local and regional housing or community development plans, housing strategies, or zoning code reforms 
• Provisions to require HUD to establish federal guidelines for point-access block buildings (single stair dwellings) and allow HUD to award competitive grants to state or local governmental entities and other stakeholders to assess the feasibility of point-access block residential buildings
• A slew of other changes to the CDBG program, including new requirements for grant recipients to use CDBG funds for affordable housing construction, and requiring CDBG grantees to maintain a public, searchable database of undeveloped land they own 
• Provisions that ease costly domestic sourcing requirements 
• Specific components of the HOME Reform Act, which modifies the HOME Investments Partnerships Program 

What’s missing from ROAD to Housing?

While Housing for the 21st Century includes provisions Smart Growth America supports that were not included in the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025, it is also missing some key provisions from ROAD that would advance smart growth. Critically, Housing for the 21st Century does not include:

• The Build More Housing Near Transit Act, which provides incentives for pro-housing policies along transit corridors 
• The Community Investment and Prosperity Act, which would expand the extent to which banks could invest in affordable housing by increasing the Public Welfare Investment cap they are subject to from 15 to 20 percent 
• Additional provisions that authorize Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program and encourage the preservation of existing homes

While it also does not include the innovation fund from the ROAD bill, the new competitive grant program to assist in the planning, design, and implementation of local and regional housing or community development plans included in Housing for the 21st Century is similarly focused, but the proposed funding level is unclear.

Path Forward

The House will markup its housing package on Tuesday, December 16, and negotiations between the House and Senate will determine the final contents of the bill. Despite the two competing proposals and the fact ROAD fell out of the defense bill, there is significant momentum for action on housing, and a sense that it is both possible and politically expedient given voters' concern about affordability.  

Ensuring smart growth provisions are included in the final package will position the legislation to deliver more homes right-sized for residents in existing neighborhoods, better connected to jobs, services, and transit. This remains Smart Growth America’s top priority. If the final bill contains the smart growth provisions, pushing for its passage will be the next critical phase for smart growth stakeholders to engage. Bill passage, however, will not be the final step for this legislation. Ensuring Congress provides adequate funding for the programs it authorizes in the final package and that the guidance and regulations around zoning and land use are developed and implemented thoughtfully will be key, and an ongoing priority. 

For now, there is momentum for federal action on housing policy, and stakeholders should take action by reaching out to their members of Congress to advocate for the inclusion of smart growth provisions that will allow more people to afford to live in a wider variety of places in the final legislation. Use this link to reach out to your member of Congress and take action!

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