Housing bill passes House, goes to Trump’s desk

• Key insight: The housing package aims to cut red tape for housing construction, especially manufactured housing. 
• What’s at stake: The bill also includes a handful of closely watched community bank riders, including measures related to reciprocal and custodial deposits. 
• Forward look: President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill without delay. 

WASHINGTON — A housing legislative package that has bounced back and forth between the Senate and House for months has finally cleared Congress, with the House passing the measure by a wide margin. 

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The bill passed in a 358-32 vote. All Democrats and most Republicans voted in favor of the bill, which will now go to President Donald Trump for his signature. 

It was approved by the Senate yesterday in an 85-5 vote. Trump is expected to sign the bill as early as Wednesday morning. 

Some Republican lawmakers, belonging to the most conservative edge of the party, tried to hold up the vote earlier on Tuesday, briefly threatening a procedural block that would have delayed the bill’s final passage. The lawmakers, led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, wanted to attach the president’s favored voting bill, the SAVE Act, to the housing package. 

The housing bill’s authors say it will cut red tape for local housing construction across the country, especially for manufactured housing projects. It also includes a number of community bank-favored measures, including brokered deposit bills and one bill that would raise the asset threshold for banks to qualify for a longer 18-month examination cycle from $3 billion to $6 billion, and another that would make it easier for de novo banks to form.

The final version of the legislation emerged last week, with all four corners of bank policy on the Hill — Senate Banking Committee chair and ranking member Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren, alongside House Financial Services Committee leads French Hill and Maxine Waters — agreeing to the current iteration. Before that, it ping ponged between the House and Senate, with the House generally wanting a weaker prohibition on institutional investors owning single family homes and more community bank measures. 

“Throughout the process, I have fought to increase the supply of housing, cut red tape, increase capital, and make local rules and zoning more competitive,” Hill said. “We have achieved that by strengthening community banks, preventing institutional investors from outcompeting American families for homes, and modernizing building codes.”