Congress' Housing Bill: Modest But Meaningful

The President Canceled a Bipartisan Housing Bill to Get What He Wants. Here’s What That Means for People Who Can’t Afford a Home

President Donald Trump just said the quiet part out loud about how his administration views housing issues.

On June 24, Trump abruptly canceled the signing ceremony for the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bill that had passed with a supermajority in Congress. The bill seeks to make wide-ranging changes to several housing policies, from increasing housing counseling and financial literacy programs to incentives that create more housing in Opportunity Zones and piloting a federal whole-home repair program. It would also address the shortage of housing in America by allowing communities to use Community Development Block Grant funding to build homes and by preventing large investors from buying single-family homes.

The bill passed the House of Representatives by a 358-32 margin and the Senate by an 89-10 margin, making it likely that the bill would still pass if Trump decided to veto it. That is also part of what made Trump’s decision to cancel the bill-signing ceremony so head-scratching. At a time when many Americans say the cost of living, including housing, is their top priority, why would the president unilaterally cancel an opportunity for his party to tout their efforts to reduce costs?

When Housing Becomes a Hostage

Trump made his intentions clear. In a post on Truth Social, he declared he would hold the ROAD to Housing Act hostage until Republicans passed his SAVE America Act, a deeply unpopular bill that would fundamentally rewrite the rules of American elections. He unofficially declared the move a “national emergency” in the post, language which alarmed some political analysts.

Trump was asked by reporters about his decision to cancel the ceremony. He said that “every election is important” and that the move is designed to prevent “communists” from being elected. Later that day in the Oval Office, Trump added that he didn’t want to “hurt people who own houses” by creating more affordable homes.

“These people, for the first time in their lives, they have valuable houses,” Trump said. “They become rich. I don’t want to hurt them either.”

There you have it. Without saying the exact words, Trump declared that solving America’s housing crisis is a political problem. People who are deemed to be insufficiently powerful or who are undesirable don’t deserve to have homes they can afford. Instead, housing is a bargaining chip that Trump can use as a bludgeon to get what he wants.

A Pattern That Predates the Presidency

This philosophy isn’t new to Trump. In 1973, Trump and his father, Fred Trump, were sued by the federal government for allegedly refusing to rent to Black and Puerto Rican tenants in New York. The Trumps countersued the government for roughly $100 million.

The case was settled out of court a couple of years later, with the Trumps agreeing not to discriminate against tenants, but they did not admit any wrongdoing. A straight line can be drawn from that lawsuit to the current Trump administration’s efforts to roll back civil rights, diversity initiatives, and his lack of attention to the cost of living, which disproportionately impacts low-income households of color, according to research from the Brookings Institution.

This is happening at a time when housing cost burdens are rising across the U.S. According to Harvard’s 2026 State of the Nation’s Housing report, people of color and senior citizens face the highest cost burdens, with 28% of people over the age of 65 paying over the recommended 30% of their income on housing. At the same time, 32% of Black households and 29% of Hispanic households are cost-burdened, compared to just 22% of white households.

Meanwhile, help for cost-burdened households is becoming harder to find. Harvard’s report noted that declining rental assistance, social benefits, and fair housing enforcement are all creating funding gaps and administrative uncertainty for service providers, which is leaving vulnerable households further behind.

“The U.S. faces interlocking housing crises, affordability, homelessness, climate change, and discrimination, that demand coordinated action across federal, state, local, private, and nonprofit actors,” the report reads in part.

The Bill Trump Won’t Sign

The ROAD to Housing Act was designed to address those exact issues. For example, the bill would have lifted the cap on the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program, allowing more than 872,000 public housing units to convert to a Section 8 platform and provide long-term assistance to low-income renters. The current cap only allows 455,000 units to be converted. It also provides funding for local governments to convert unused or abandoned buildings into affordable housing and expand energy-efficient housing options.

Trump’s decision not to sign the ROAD to Housing Act also happened at a time when the growing criminalization of homelessness is compounding the housing issues many cities face. Even though homelessness declined by 3% nationwide last year, more than 350 cities have enacted new laws that punish people for living outside when no adequate shelter is available for them.

These laws were inspired by the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that allowed cities to use punitive punishments to address homelessness. The ROAD to Housing Act addressed some of these issues by overhauling federal policies regarding funding for homeless initiatives and data collection. It could also boost eviction protections and encourage local governments to adopt evidence-based strategies to address homelessness.

“Two years since Grants Pass, we’re seeing exactly what advocates warned would happen,” Jesse Rabinowitz, spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center, said in a statement. “Cities and states are responding to homelessness not with housing, but with handcuffs. Now, the Trump administration, encouraged by the billionaire-backed Cicero Institute, is trying to export this ineffective, failed model nationwide. Two years later, the results are clear: criminalization has not reduced homelessness, it has only increased suffering.”

Trump’s threat, as empty as it may be, that he won’t sign the ROAD to Housing Act shows that he is willing to make all these issues worse to pass a bill that might make it easier for him and his Republican colleagues to maintain power. Not only does this strategy betray the purpose of government, but it also reveals how much work is left for advocates to do to end homelessness in America once and for all.

How You Can Help

Now is not the time to be silent about homelessness in the United States or anywhere else. Unhoused people deserve safe, sanitary housing just as much as those who can afford rent or a mortgage.

Poverty and homelessness are both policy choices, not personal failures. That’s why we need you to contact your officials and tell them you support legislation that:

Streamlines the development of affordable housing

Reduces barriers for people experiencing homelessness to enter permanent housing

Bolsters government response to homelessness

Together, we can end homelessness.