The House cleared a massive housing reform package on Monday with a vote that wasn't even close. The Housing for the 21st Century Act passed 390–9, sending a bill packed with more than 20 provisions to the Senate. Only nine members voted no — eight Republicans and one Democrat.

The bill, sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) and ranking member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), targets the federal red tape that has strangled housing development for years. It would modernize HUD's HOME Investment Partnerships Program, direct the GAO to study gaps in federal housing programs, and give banks more flexibility to deploy capital toward expanding housing supply.

More than 50 groups endorsed the package.

The case for cutting red tape

Hill and Rep. Mike Flood (R-Neb.) made the argument plainly in an op-ed for The Hill last week:

When there aren't enough homes, prices go up. The Housing for the 21st Century Act includes real, bipartisan solutions to boost development by clearing out red tape and letting communities and local banks do their job. That's how we expand supply, lower costs and give families more options.

That's the kind of straightforward supply-side logic that should be uncontroversial but somehow took years to translate into legislation. When federal regulations make it harder and more expensive to build, fewer homes get built. When fewer homes get built, prices climb, The Hill reported. The bill attacks the problem at its origin — not with subsidies that chase prices upward, but by clearing the obstacles that prevent the market from functioning.

Speaker Mike Johnson framed the stakes in sharper political terms:

Housing costs have soared beyond the reach of millions of American families thanks to Bidenflation, while outdated and burdensome red tape has constrained our nation's affordable housing supply and limited our ability to expand it.

Johnson called the bill's passage "a critical step toward addressing this shortage by reducing unnecessary regulatory barriers, modernizing HUD programs, and giving banks flexibility to deploy capital to increase our housing supply."

A rare Washington consensus — and what it means

A 390–9 vote in this Congress is remarkable. The bill passed the House Financial Services Committee overwhelmingly back in December before cruising through the full chamber. When French Hill and Maxine Waters co-sponsor legislation, one of two things is happening: either the problem is so obvious that ideology takes a back seat, or the bill is so carefully scoped that both sides found something to claim.

In this case, conservatives got what matters most — deregulation and market-driven solutions. The bill doesn't create new entitlement spending or establish another federal housing bureaucracy. It clears bureaucratic deadwood and lets local institutions do their work. That's a win worth banking.

The nine dissenters — Andy Biggs, Josh Brecheen, Eli Crane, Paul Gosar, Thomas Massie, Tom McClintock, Chip Roy, Ryan Zinke, and Democrat Lizzie Fletcher — offered no public explanation for their votes. For the conservatives on that list, the objection likely centers on principle: any federal involvement in housing markets, even deregulatory, can expand Washington's footprint in ways that compound over time. It's a defensible instinct, even if the bill's substance leans in the right direction.

The Senate question

The bill now heads to the Senate, where its path gets less predictable. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) have already co-sponsored the ROAD to Housing Act, which shares DNA with the House package. They pushed last December to include provisions in the NDAA — those efforts failed.

Hill said in December that he looked forward to working with the Senate "to send a bill to the president's desk that reflects the views of both chambers." The diplomatic language signals what everyone in Washington already knows: the Senate will reshape this bill before it goes anywhere near a signing ceremony.

But the House vote gives the effort serious momentum. A 390–9 margin doesn't leave senators much room to argue the concept lacks support. The question isn't whether housing deregulation has consensus — Monday proved it does. The question is whether the Senate can resist the temptation to load the bill with unrelated provisions until it collapses under its own weight.

The bigger picture

For years, the housing affordability crisis has been treated primarily as a demand-side problem — more vouchers, more subsidies, more federal dollars chasing a shrinking pool of homes. That approach treats symptoms while ignoring the disease. The Housing for the 21st Century Act represents a philosophical shift, at least in the House: the supply side matters, and government regulation is part of the problem.

That's not a radical idea. It's an obvious one. But Washington rarely acts on the obvious until the pain becomes unbearable for enough voters in enough districts. With housing costs still punishing working families, that threshold has clearly been crossed.

Now it's the Senate's move.