How Senators want to preserve rural housing stock

Lawmakers are pushing to pass Senate bills that include what has been described as the most significant rural housing reform in years. 

Experts spoke in favor of the Rural Housing Service Reform Act Wednesday before a small audience of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. The bill among other actions would update home repair financing initiatives and protect hundreds of thousands of renters at properties where federally sponsored mortgages are maturing. 

"This legislation is going to make long overdue updates to RHS programs that are really needed," said Robin Davey Wolff, senior director of rural communities at Enterprise Community Partners, a housing non-profit. 

A bipartisan group of senators in the Housing, Transportation and Community Development subcommittee were optimistic but noncommittal on getting a vote on the act by the end of the year. Bipartisan U.S. Representatives have introduced a similar version in the House. 

The bill's widest impact would address a threat facing rural renting housing loans. Four hundred thousand low-income tenants would receive rental assistance at properties which have those Department of Agriculture-sponsored loans. Passage of the act would decouple rental assistance from those mortgages, protecting 137,000 low-income renters at properties with those loans maturing in the next 10 years.

The act would also make it easier for nonprofits to acquire those properties, according to Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith's office. The Democrat and sponsor of the bill said her home state has the most of those mortgages maturing than anywhere else in the country.

The bill would also make permanent a community development financial institution fund for Native American communities, and yet-to-be-determined additional funding for technology upgrades for rural housing services. 

Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, a Democrat, and Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican, also promoted their Whole-Home Repairs Act, which would create a five-year pilot based on a program in Fetterman's state. The program would create a repair grant program for low- and moderate-income homeowners. 

Many homes are irreplaceable in that they could not or would not be replaced because of the lack of economic incentive to build new units, said Jesse Ergott, president and CEO of NeighborWorks Northeastern Pennsylvania.

"Likewise, when there's extensive deferred maintenance, there isn't an economic incentive for investors to purchase these homes in many markets," he said. 

Expert witnesses compared the pending bills to stalling aid in Congress. The Community Development Block Grant program has been flat-funded since fiscal year 2022, Wolff said, while the Department of Housing and Urban Development's HOME Investment Partnerships Program received $250 million less funds in the past fiscal year. 

The push by lawmakers follows the Biden Administration's call for bipartisanship in achieving housing goals. The industry meanwhile has had a tepid reaction to the White House's larger aims in housing, including a controversial title insurance pilot program.