The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Is Now Law

By now you’ve probably gotten several to dozens of pings and press releases and emails about this big news, and I’m here to add to the party.

The 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Act is now law, and it’s being commended as the most significant federal housing legislation in over 30 years by many national organizations like Up for Growth, a national member network of pro-housing advocates that the Florida Housing Coalition is a part of. The Terner Center for Housing Innovation, a tremendous resource for housing policy, declared it the “most significant housing legislation in a generation” although stating that the “disparate components [of the Act] represent mostly technical or narrowly tailored reforms; none of these alone will likely change the game for housing supply and affordability across the country” before stating that the Act sets the stage for even bigger reforms in the future.

Given everything happening in Florida on housing policy, I usually keep federal developments in the back of my brain until something actually passes. Well, something passed!

Over the coming months, we’ll be publishing several pieces breaking down what different provisions of the ROAD to Housing Act mean for Florida. You can find many high-level summaries of the bill online including these that I’ve found helpful:

• Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, & Urban Affairs Section-by-Section Summary

• Congressional Summary as of May 7, 2026 (which leaves out some provisions that passed in the final bill)

• Bipartisan Policy Center

For now, here are the sections that stuck out to me, and what it could mean for Florida.

Copy/pasting here from the Senate Committee’s summary: “This section requires each Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) grantee to maintain a publicly accessible, searchable database identifying undeveloped land owned by the jurisdiction. It also allows grantees to use their CDBG funds to comply with the new database requirement.”

Takeaway: Since 2006, Florida law has already required each local government in Florida to inventory land owned by the local government (or a dependent special district starting in 2023) that is “appropriate for use as affordable housing” at least once every three years. But enforcement is weak, especially around how localities decide what counts as “appropriate,” and some jurisdictions skip the public posting requirement entirely.

To me, the main value of this provision is that strips out that local gatekeeping. It requires a publicly accessible and searchable database of all parcels of undeveloped land without any local gatekeeping as to what is “appropriate for use as affordable housing.” By having that publicly accessible database of all undeveloped land owned by a CDBG grantee, that could give affordable housing builders and advocates a clearer target for public land advocacy, and a basis to ask local governments why certain parcels were left off their state-required inventory.

Within three years, HUD must publish guidelines and best practices for state and local zoning frameworks to support housing production at every income level, following a two-year process of draft guidelines and a task force.

For state zoning frameworks, the list is extensive: reducing or eliminating parking minimums, raising floor-area-ratio and height limits, shrinking minimum lot sizes and setbacks, eliminating ADU restrictions, expanding by-right duplex/triplex/quadplex development, streamlining by-right review, encouraging transit-oriented development, reforming public engagement and protest-petition statutes, building code reform, and more. It’s nearly a full list of all the things a state could possibly do on housing!

For local zoning frameworks, the list of policies is much narrower: simplifying and standardizing zoning codes, review timelines, best practices for disposing of publicly owned land for affordable housing, and guidance tailored to rural, suburban, and urban contexts. The relative length of the list of policies at the local level mimics the national trend of housing advocates focusing more effort on state level preemptions and mandates.

Takeaway: It’s a strong framework for housing best practices and advocacy generally, though I’m generally wary about state or federal laws that offer guidance rather than binding standards. Jurisdictions already inclined toward good housing policy will act with or without a HUD report. But the positive spin is that whatever HUD ultimately publishes could serve as a solid model, and the list of policy areas itself is usable right now by state and local advocates. Including as a menu of ideas for the 2027 Florida Legislative Session and local reform campaigns.

A new pilot program funds grants and forgivable loans (through qualifying state and local governments) to income-eligible homeowners and qualifying landlords for “whole-home repairs.” Eligible work includes accessibility modifications (grab bars, ramps, widened doorways, etc.) for people with disabilities and older adults; habitability and safety repairs; and energy/water efficiency, resilience, and weatherization upgrades.

Homeowners qualify at or below 80% AMI. Landlords qualify if they own fewer than 10 rental properties, with a majority of units affordable and no more than 25 units total.

Takeaway: This program is a nice complement to what many local governments already fund through the SHIP program. Localities that tap this new pilot program could free up SHIP funds for other priorities, like new construction.

New construction is now an eligible CDBG use (capped at 20% of a grantee’s allocation), where previously it was allowed only in narrow circumstances. Applies to funds appropriated after enactment.

Takeaway: Generally good! This gives the state of Florida and local government grantees another funding source to use for the construction of new affordable housing. Though for smaller grantees, the 20% cap will limit how many units this can realistically produce.

This section directs HUD to award competitive grants to qualifying local governments or Indian tribes that have demonstrably increased their local housing supply. The grants may be used for a variety of eligible activities including any eligible CDBG activity (which now includes new construction of affordable housing) and any initiative to continue to facilitate the supply of attainable housing. This could include support for local code reforms on by-right housing allowances, parking requirement changes, lot size and setback revisions, height limit changes, floor area ratio requirements, and a laundry list of other local housing best practices.

Takeaway: This is a cool sounding concept that will reward local governments already making progress, and a talking point for advocates: bold local action on housing could mean extra federal funding. But I’m skeptical this type of policy really incentivizes jurisdictions that aren’t already inclined toward good housing policy. The money only flows toward more housing, so a locality uninterested in growth simply won’t bite. It’s still nice to reward localities who are taking good steps to allow homes regardless.

This section lets HUD reserve a portion of HOME funding for a new pilot program to carry out a new Blighted Building to Housing Conversion Program. HUD would be allowed to provide competitive grants up to $10 million to HOME grantees to convert vacant and abandoned buildings into attainable housing (for households up to 120% AMI, if the majority of units are affordable to households up to 60% AMI). HUD must prioritize projects that are in economically distressed areas or opportunity zones, projects that serve a need identified in the jurisdiction’s consolidated plan, or grantees that have reduced “regulatory barriers to conversion of vacant and abandoned buildings to housing.”

Successful applicants can use the grant for property acquisition; demolition; health hazard remediation; site preparation; construction, renovation, or rehabilitation; or the establishment, maintenance, or expansion of community land trusts or housing cooperatives.

Takeaway: This pilot program pairs well with the Live Local Act’s land use mandate, which allows multifamily and mixed-use affordable housing on commercial, industrial, and mixed-use land — especially with House Bill 1389 (2026) expanding that mandate to land owned by cities, counties, and school districts. Local governments could use these grants to acquire and renovate vacant buildings, with Live Local’s land use policies clearing the regulatory path for conversion to affordable housing.

Florida is well positioned here: Live Local’s land use mandate is already a national model for cutting regulatory barriers to converting vacant buildings into housing. Then-Senate President Kathleen Passidomo championed that mandate before Live Local’s 2023 passage specifically as a tool for adaptive reuse of abandoned shopping centers into housing.

The gist of the Build Now Act is that cities and counties that exceed a median housing growth rate among all CDBG cities and counties receive extra CDBG funding, pulled from grantees whose housing growth improvement rate falls below the median, who see their CDBG allocation cut by 10%.

Takeaway: This genre of funding policy—rewarding local governments that unlock more housing supply—is a genre I’d like to see show up in Florida as part of the Chapter 163 Growth Management rewrite currently swirling in the state policy world. The trick is which funding programs to attach it to. One of my dreams is to have a “SHIP Plus” initiative (title and branding to be worked on) that leaves baseline SHIP allocations untouched (so no local government loses existing SHIP dollars) but creates an additional pot of SHIP funding for jurisdictions with high growth rates or adopt a list of pro-housing reforms like legalizing ADUs, reducing or eliminating minimum lot sizes, allowing high density multifamily development, etc…

There are certainly pros and cons to this type of policy as applied to CDBG specifically. The pro is that tying CDBG funding directly to local housing growth gives advocates a powerful new argument for reforms that produce more homes. The counterpoint: even if a local government has the best housing regulations on the planet it doesn’t mean that growth will actually happen. A low-growth jurisdiction that’s making good faith efforts to get more homes built may need more CDBG funds to build the infrastructure that makes housing growth possible in the first place.

This section eliminates the requirement that manufactured homes built to HUD Code include a permanent chassis. A chassis is a steel frame under a manufactured home that allows the home to be transported. A permanent chassis is what it sounds like (it’s permanent) even though fewer than 5-7% of all manufactured homes are moved after they are attached to the land. The requirement dates to the 1970s, when policymakers considered a permanent chassis essential to keep homes movable.

Takeaway: Good! The Niskanen Center has estimated that by removing the permanent chassis requirement, the cost of each HUD Code home would be reduced by $5,000 to $10,000 and enable more flexible floorplans, including making two-story manufactured homes more feasible. Researchers from the Lincoln Institute also note that chassis removal would allow manufactured homes to be situated like site-built homes, allowing a more seamless integration into existing communities. This change comes right after HUD published a proposed rule to amend the HUD Code to allow upper floor sections of manufactured homes to be transported and constructed without a permanent chassis.

This is especially timely for Florida as House Bill 803 and House Bill 399 go into effect, legalizing manufactured and modular housing, by right, in all areas that allow site-built, detached single-family homes. Chassis removal should make it easier for manufactured housing supply to grow and blend into existing neighborhoods across the state.

Per the Senate Committee summary, this section “authorizes the Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program for three years and establishes the Office of Disaster Management and Resiliency within HUD to administer the program.”

Permanently authorizing the CDBG-DR program has long been a federal priority of ours and our federal partners like the National Low Income Housing Coalition as a way to expedite and provide more certainty to disaster relief. Until now, the CDBG-DR program has been set up on a case-by-case basis through disaster appropriations bills without a consistent statutory framework as it is not specifically authorized in federal law. The Act only authorizes the program for three years (not permanently), but sets up a federal framework to ensure that federal disaster dollars reach all impacted households funded by a new Long-Term Disaster Recovery Fund.

The Act also touches on financing affordable housing (including Section 105 which authorizes a pilot program to increase access to small-dollar mortgages with balances of $100,000 or less), Section 212 to increase the cap for the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program by 100,000 units, sections on streamlining environmental reviews, a section providing grants to help communities establish pre-approved housing designs or pattern books, authorization of the PRICE Program to provide grants to maintain manufactured housing and manufactured housing communities, reforms to the USDA Rural Housing Service, allowances for ESG grantees to require a waiver to provide more funding for emergency shelter and street outreach, various oversight and reporting requirements of federal agencies, a required GAO study on identifying and remediating heirs’ property issues, and much more.

More to come as we continue analyzing what the Act could mean for Florida! Let us know if there is a particular section of the ROAD to Housing Act that intrigues you that you’d like us to go more in depth on.