For the past couple of years, American politicians on the left and right have competed to define a political buzzword: affordability. Does it mean increasing individual resources to meet everyday costs? Or raising the output of goods and services to lower prices? Or both?
On Tuesday, Congress did the country a favor by passing a bill – in a rare case of broad bipartisanship – that helps give common meaning to the word. The measure puts a stamp of approval on an often unescapable law: that supply will rise to meet demand when free to do so.
The bill, which still awaits the president’s approval, mandates a range of initiatives aimed mainly at raising the nation’s housing stock. It would reduce production bottlenecks rather than raise subsidies for home purchases.
The number of parts in the legislation itself reflects how much lawmakers endorse a supply-positive approach. Through artful political compromise in Congress, the bill compiles nearly 50 initiatives from dozens of proposals offered by both sides of the aisle. It would, for example, greatly reduce the cost of factory-built homes, speed up environmental permitting, and provide federal incentives to reform restrictive local zoning laws.
“It’s reaffirming at a time of real polarization that you can still see Democrats and Republicans coming together … and passing common-sense legislation that should be a help to most Americans,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, the incoming president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, told The Boston Globe.
While the actual impact of the federal measure on local housing remains to be seen, Congress has nonetheless passed its largest housing bill in decades while also partly clarifying the public debate over affordability.
“Housing affordability starts with supply, and this bill makes meaningful progress toward building more homes and lowering costs for American families,” said House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas. His point was endorsed by the panel’s ranking Democratic member, Maxine Waters of California.
With its focus on widening the pipeline for new homes, the bill represents a “paradigm shift in federal housing policy,” Dennis Shea of the Bipartisan Policy Center told Bloomberg.
And, he added in speaking to The New York Times, that shift “would give members of Congress of both political parties an opportunity to talk about what they’ve done, and what they’re trying to achieve.”