In recent years, it’s fair to say that Congress only acts once an issue has become truly urgent. But recent years have strained even historical levels of inaction. According to Gov-Track, the current Congress (the 119th) has enacted only 104 bills since convening on January 3, 2025. This is on track to be the lowest number of bills passed since GovTrack began its analysis with the 93rd Congress in 1973–1974 (the current low point is 274 bills enacted, a mark set by the preceding 118th Congress). That brings us to the bill Congress recently passed to tackle housing affordability. Despite the bill’s overwhelming bipartisan support, legitimate concerns remain about how much it will actually move the needle. As Edward Pinto and Arthur Gailes of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) Housing Center recently wrote: “Many in Washington are hailing the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, passed by Congress this week, as the most important federal housing bill in years. The bipartisan bill targets the country’s housing affordability crisis by capping institutional investors’ ownership of single-family homes and removing obstacles to home building. It eliminates an expensive requirement to build manufactured housing on permanent steel frames, streamlines environmental reviews, and incentivizes cities to provide preapproved home designs, which will simplify things for governments, regulators, and builders. Beyond that, it likely won’t change the homeownership equation for Americans.”…
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