How Tim Scott and Elizabeth Warren agreed on a sweeping housing package

A sweeping package of housing reforms is gaining rare bipartisan support in the Senate, raising hopes that Congress might be able to pass legislation that would incentivize local governments and private developers to build more homes.

After the unlikely duo of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) teamed up to write the measure, it passed unanimously out of the Senate Banking Committee on Tuesday — unusual in a Senate sharply divided along partisan lines.

Lawmakers stressed the urgency of the nation’s housing crisis as they came together to move the package forward. The average age for first-time homebuyers is now close to 40, limiting one of the main ways people can build wealth. The country is short between 1.5 to 4 million homes, economists estimate, and high housing costs — for rentals and for-sale listings alike — are blocking many Americans from finding a place to live. The crisis took on particular urgency during the 2024 presidential campaign, with voters citing housing costs as a top economic issue.

“There may be a question about, ‘Do Americans agree about anything?’” Scott said in an interview. “The answer is yes. They agree that housing costs too much and the supply is too low.”

Although Republicans and Democrats alike agree there is a housing crisis, it was not clear earlier this year that lawmakers would be able to pass something to address it. Scott, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee and a onetime GOP presidential candidate who is now a close ally of President Donald Trump, has long pushed to make it easier to build housing, and introduced a version of this package last year. But the committee has not passed a housing bill in more than a decade.

The issue is personal for Scott, whose mother struggled to find adequate housing when she was raising him and his sibling as a single mom decades ago, he said. After Scott took over the committee last January, he and Warren — also a former presidential candidate, but from the left, who had also written multiple bills addressing housing — sat down to find common ground.

They barely knew each other when they began hashing out the bill, and they were surprised to find they agreed with each other on the issue.

“I have found her to be consistently not where I am on any of the issues, but on housing, we found ourselves in the same place,” Scott said.

The senators were able to agree on one simple principle, that later both Republican and Democratic members got on board with, too, Warren said: “We agreed we need more housing and we need less red tape, and those two are intertwined.”

Scott and Warren reached out to every member of the Banking Committee to bring them into the process, which resulted in each member signing onto at least one piece of the large package. That resulted in more odd bedfellows, such as outspoken conservative Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and Warren collaborating on provisions to incentivize local governments to build more housing by tying some federal grants to communities’ track record of building homes.

“Working with Sen. Kennedy is always an adventure, but it was a lot of fun because he’s not afraid to say things,” said Warren. “He was very clear about what he thought was a good idea and what he thought was a bad idea, and every once in a while, he was open to changing his mind on what ideas fit in which category.”

Kennedy said he enjoyed working with Warren and it wasn’t hard to find common ground.

“We’re both adults,” he said.

Staffers — who referred to each other as “the Warrens” and “the Scotts” — hashed out many of the details in weekly meetings beginning in March. After the committee unanimously passed the measure Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) suggested it would come to a floor vote in the future, saying it was clear it had “strong bipartisan support.”

Scott said he talked with the Trump administration as he crafted the legislation: “We want a presidential signature.”

The legislation, called the Road to Housing Act, represents the most significant housing legislation in more than a decade, experts say. Major industry groups — representing real estate agents, homebuilders, mortgage bankers, property managers, homelessness advocates and mayors — also rallied around the bill.

Much of the legislation builds on earlier versions of Scott’s housing proposals. But the final package includes ideas from both parties and various members of the Banking Committee. For example, an early Scott priority was making manufactured housing easier and cheaper to build. The new bill updates the federal definition of “manufactured housing” to include modular and prefabricated units that aren’t built on a permanent structure called a chassis. Housing advocates have pushed for the chassis requirement to be removed to lower production costs by thousands of dollars and make floor plans more flexible.

“He went member by member and did the hard work,” said Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio), a member of the committee.

The bill also creates a $1 billion “Innovation Fund,” a priority of Warren’s, who proposed a similar initiative in her 2020 presidential campaign. Places that build more housing would get rewarded with extra money for building roads, sewer systems and other infrastructure by the fund, which would give $200 million each year for five years.

“The clear focus is on housing supply — and housing supply broadly defined,” said Vincent Reina, a housing policy expert at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s talking about everything from manufactured housing, to market rate, to the rules around production.”

The legislation also boosts affordable housing in a few ways. It reauthorizes a major federal block grant for state and local governments to create affordable homes. It also lets local housing authorities convert more public housing units to those that receive what’s known as project-based rental assistance, which helps preserve affordable housing stock.

The bill also supports more development inside opportunity zones, which let investors defer capital gains taxes by reinvesting profits into economically distressed areas. The bill also creates a pilot program at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help homeowners and landlords repair their homes. And it authorizes a Community Development Block Grant for disaster recovery, boosts housing in rural areas and helps create preapproved housing designs to expedite construction.

Part of what made the bill bipartisan was its focus on cutting red tape, a deregulatory theme that easily attracted conservative support. But Democrats agreed some regulations were overdone and were holding back the market. And in many instances, lawmakers also deferred to localities to figure out the best solutions for them, rather than mandating a one-size-fits-all approach.

“Before my friends in local government get their bowels in an uproar, we’re not telling you how, or even if, to increase housing. That’s up to you,” Kennedy said. “I don’t want to get in the zoning business.”

Still, housing advocates say the legislation wouldn’t fully offset moves by the Trump administration to cut a range of housing programs, especially those supporting lower-income Americans. The White House budget proposal includes billions of dollars in cuts for rental assistance programs and puts a two-year cap on some kinds of aid, for example. Economists warn states and cities won’t be able to fill the gaps, compensate landlords for lost income or combat homelessness on their own.

Trump’s massive tax and immigration bill permanently expanded the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the main tool to build affordable housing nationwide. But broader moves across Washington could work against the Banking Committee’s push, said Noel Poyo, executive vice president of the Housing Partnership Network, who also worked in the Biden Treasury Department.

“Everyone should be getting good credit for something serious,” Poyo said. “But if that’s happening in the context of major cuts to housing resources, it undermines the value of any policy steps in the near future.”

Theodoric Meyer contributed to this report.