Trump Administration Turns Attention To Housing
Outside of the Federation’s top advocacy priorities in the trade, tariff and Farm Bill spaces, the team has been active trying to find legislative avenues to create additional domestic markets of U.S. grown and manufactured hardwood products. One area that is receiving considerable attention both on Capitol Hill and in the Administration is housing, specifically, proposals that seek to grow housing “new starts” and make the prospect of owning a home a reality for first time homebuyers. Late last year, bipartisan legislation almost became law that would have significantly moved the needle on a number of housing policy areas, including housing supply expansion, homeownership, manufactured housing, disaster recovery, rental assistance, veterans’ housing and rural housing. That bill, S.2651 known as the ROAD to Housing Act (Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act of 2025) was in play as part of last year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) but did not survive the final negotiation before the NDAA bill cleared Congress and was signed by the President.
Led by the unlikely duo of Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, respectively, the legislation would have authorized several new initiatives, among them:
- Creation of an Innovation Fund which is a competitive pot of highly flexible funding for communities that are building more housing supply, to be used to improve community infrastructure, housing construction and supplement water and sewer grants.
- Establishment of a HUD-administered grant program to help communities establish preapproved housing designs, or pattern books, to help streamline and expedite local construction processes and build more homes.
- A directive for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to study multifamily loan limits and adjust those limits to better match housing market costs and enhance affordability.
The bill also included several regulatory reform measures to expedite local construction processes.
While this measure did not become law, we expect focus will remain on this legislation and that it will be a priority for any moving legislative vehicles this year.
In addition to the ROAD to Housing Act, bipartisan legislation is pending in both the House and Senate that looks to increase housing starts and make home ownership more accessible. The legislation (S. 1686 and H.R. 2854) is the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act (NHIA) and is led by Senator Todd Young (R-IN) and Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA).
In many areas of the country, the cost to build or rehab a home exceeds the price at which the home could be sold once completed. The NHIA establishes a new tax credit which would help fill that “value gap” for developers, thus reducing their risk of loss and encouraging investments in new and rehabbed housing. The goal for this tax credit is to make homeownership more feasible and support broader revitalization and economic development strategies in disinvested urban and rural communities. The Neighborhood Coalition—one of the supporters of the bill—estimates that, if enacted, NHIA could result in 500,000 new starter homes nationwide.
Because NHIA focuses exclusively on single to 4-family unit structures, the impact on dimensional lumber and other wood products manufacturers could be considerable. Depending on the type of home built, Forest Economic Advisors estimates that this bill alone could result in an additional 7 billion to 10 billion board feet of demand. The Hardwood Federation team has been meeting with the bill sponsors to explore options for including hardwood-specific language in the measure.
Evidently, a modified version of the bill is being developed and will be made available sometime early this year.
President Trump signed an Executive Order (EO) the week of January 19 that would discourage large institutional investors from purchasing single family homes that would otherwise be bought by individuals or families. We understand that a follow-up EO is in the works that would attempt to address housing supply and affordability and should come out any day now. We will provide an update once that Order has been issued.
Both parties are and will continue to be battling to win the narrative around “affordability” and the volume level will only increase the closer we get to the mid term elections in November. Making housing and home renovation accessible to middle-and low-income earners is a key component in this debate and will be a focus in Washington in the coming months. The Hardwood Federation team is looking opportunistically at proposals discussed above and those yet to be introduced to secure hardwood forest product-specific provisions in these measures so that new homes and renovation projects resulting from these initiatives deliver real value both to the consumer and the domestic manufacturers that make these renewable and sustainable products every day.
