With Congress’ passing of major bipartisan housing legislation, a lot of celebrating may be in order by housing experts in Illinois and across the nation.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aims to spur housing and deregulate building requirements to encourage new and affordable homes. It’s the first major federal housing legislation in three decades.
“Housing supply is one of the biggest issues, impacts that buyers, sellers, renters, employers and communities are actually having…” said Camill Tedrick, incoming president of the Mid-Illinois Realtors Association [MIRA], the multiple listing service agency in Central and Southern Illinois.
“People still want to buy homes. First time homebuyers still want the opportunity to build wealth through home ownership, but many are really facing the challenges with affordability.”
Tedrick said she was disappointed to learn President Trump canceled the signing of the bill. Although he reaffirmed Friday that he would not sign the bill, it is set to become law tonight after a 10-day waiting period expires.
A former Bloomington-Normal home builder said the bill, while a celebration in bipartisan work, is only the easy part of building more homes.
Ed Brady is president and CEO of the Home Builders Institute in Washington, a leading advocate for the training of skilled trades workers. Before that, he built homes in the Twin Cities for over 30 years.
Brady said he is glad to see a number of deregulation measures pass to spur more single-family housing development.
“We’re blessed in Bloomington-Normal — and I was for 30 years — that we had good municipal government, good planners and good inspectors and administrators,” Brady said.
But that isn’t the case everywhere, Brady acknowledged. He said he has heard horror stories from across the country on difficulties to obtain permits and building homes.
“[The bill] will help fast track some of that permitting and allow people to move projects faster, so that will certainly create more supply on the market eventually,” he said. “But I think that’s the number one thing: deregulation, get rid of some of the bureaucratic red tape that will allow people to move forward.”
Brady said since the recession in 2008, the housing industry has faced overregulation and the bill can now address those.
First-time homebuyers
The assistance for new homes comes from a combination of strategies to boost the nation's limited inventory of homes, according to NPR. These including banning corporate investors from buying too many streamlining regulations for builders.
All of which were also goals Tedrick and current MIRA President Melanie Walker lobbied for in a Washington visit shortly before the bill was voted on.
“My feelings were they were 100% supportive, they know that the housing market is an issue,” she said, “because it makes individuals and families stronger by having home ownership. And I’m not going to say it’s the most important thing in life, but it gives people a lot of gratitude to be able to own a home.”
Nationally, the United States is short about 4 million housing units. Inventory is lacking in DeWitt and nearby counties as well, Tedrick said.
“I actually reside in Clinton, and I will tell you right now, our [DeWitt County] inventory is lacking significantly. And what I mean by that is... there might be a total of under probably a dozen homes on the market right now,” she said.
Tedrick said for the average realtor in Central Illinois with a client list of 12 home buyers, about half would be first timers. With the expected years until the effects of the bill will be seen, current buyers will not be the first beneficiaries.
“It’s not going to cure the situation overnight,” said Tedrick. “It’s taken us a long time to get into this situation that we’re in. It’s going to take us a long time to get out of the situation.”
Metal Chassis
The bill contains limited provisions for renters and apartments. Notably, the bill makes a few expansions to the rental assistance programs.
Members of the Mobile Homeowners Association of Illinois, or MHOAI, noticed some parts they say as lacking in the bill.
In the mention of manufactured homes, the bill no longer requires the construction of a permanent metal chassis, a loadbearing frame around the homes so it can be moved. Although, these homes, especially those found in mobile home parks, are rarely ever moved.
“I would be very concerned about the stability over the long haul for this type of change to the construction of the homes. ...It could be placed on a concrete pad, or you could have a basement, and, well, then that just sent the affordability out the window,” said MHOAI President Mary Meyer.
According to NPR, housing policy experts estimate as much as $10,000 could be knocked off the price of a new manufactured home without the chassis and provide an opportunity for basement or second floors.
MHOAI Secretary Halina Myers holds concerns of flooding.
“That’s going to be a nightmare, because it’s already a nightmare, and a lot of the corporate owners are not taking care of the infrastructure and still going crazy with the rent,” she said. “For example, Pheasant Lake Estates in Beecher, Illinois is very notorious for constant floods. In fact, they just had three of them within the last month, and it flooded to the point where cards are standing in water.”
As was the case in WGLT's reporting on residents of Oak Wood Mobile Home Parks, raising lot rents in manufactured home communities are climbing. MHOAI is less focused on affordable home purchasing and more focused on addressing lot rents pricing vulnerable communities out of manufactured homes.
“Our priorities are trying to get corporations to realize that they’re pricing themselves right out of the market now,” said Meyer, who noted MHOAI’s efforts to pass rent stabilization legislation in Springfield.
“So many of the communities are 55-plus, and a lot of them are way over the 55 [years old], current company included…but there’s people in my community that they can’t afford it, and they’re being upended and we’re just trying to help stabilize.”
Brady spoke in favor of foregoing the metal chassis. He said it presents a cheaper way to get more square footage out of a home.
If you build it, they will come
Housing experts may agree "if you build it, they will come," but who can do all the building? Brady said home contractors may have a hard time meeting the demand.
Brady said the Home Builders Institute regrets the bill provides no opportunity to increase the workforce for the desired new housing projects.
“We have 250,000 to 400,000 empty jobs [nationally] in the trades today. ...You cannot pass or fund or promote legislation to promote more housing without providing the skilled labor to build it,” he said.
Brady said construction workers are aging out of the industry and incoming workers go to other professions at a higher rate. For example, he said for every five trades workers that choose plumbing, two choose construction.
Similarly, Brady said another lacking part of the bill is the appropriations for the new programs it promises.
“So now the next step is, we’ve got to go after [the funding] in the housing industry and the community municipal leagues and so forth…and continue to tell Congress, 'Now you’ve got to fund this,'" he said. “We need to create opportunities for labor, we need certainty on tariffs. The tariffs have been inflationary on all products. We need to end this war. Gas prices have skyrocketed, which is a direct relationship to the cost of building homes…”
Furthermore, Brady said there is still more work for local governments to do.
“The mayors, the councils, the commissions are going to have to take action, use those tools and provide opportunities for more accessible, affordable housing,” he said.
