Trump Goes His Own Way On Housing

President Donald Trump on Friday released two executive orders aimed at expanding housing construction and financing — as the House and Senate face a mounting battle to reconcile two different bipartisan home affordability packages.

The executive orders are aimed at revising existing policy across a variety of federal agencies in order to reduce regulatory barriers to homebuilding and promote access to mortgages through community banks. Both congressional proposals also target increasing home supply, and the House package similarly includes measures to deregulate small bank lending.

“President Trump has been laser-focused on making housing more affordable,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, referencing the administration's recent decision to direct the purchase of $200 billion in mortgage bonds to lower home loan rates and Trump’s push to limit large investors from purchasing single-family homes. “The President will not stop fighting until the American Dream of homeownership is within reach for every American, which is why he just signed bold new executive orders on housing.”

The executive orders are notable as the president has remained unusually quiet when it comes to the housing legislation battle gearing up on Capitol Hill, where GOP lawmakers are struggling to define a clear affordability message ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. Instead of pushing Congress to come to an agreement on housing legislation, so far Trump has said the top priority should be passing a partisan election bill that doesn’t have the Senate votes to overcome major procedural hurdles.

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a historic, bipartisan housing bill 89-10, aiming to address housing supply and housing affordability. The House overwhelmingly passed its own bipartisan housing bill focused on the same goals in February.

The two chambers are having difficultymerging the two bills — specifically a White House-negotiated provision that would ban institutional investors from purchasing single family homes, and a provision intended to be a sweetener for the House that would temporarily ban the Federal Reserve from issuing digital currency through 2030.

After the Senate passed the housing bill, House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-Ark.) said in a statement that the vote was an “important first step,” but “it is critical we get the details right and mitigate some of the concerns raised by House members with the Senate bill.”

Friday’s executive orders aimed at cutting red tape in housing and expanding mortgage credit could be designed as an off-ramp for a potential legislative failure or to smooth things over regarding the House’s dissatisfaction with the Senate-passed housing bill.

A White House official said “the Administration continues to support the 21st Century Road to Housing Act that just passed the Senate.”

One of the orders directs agencies across the federal government to revise or eliminate certain requirements related to environmental reviews, energy conservation standards for manufactured and federally financed housing, as well as historical preservation. The document also directs the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy to develop a series of best practices for state and local governments to shape their regulations in favor of increasing home affordability and supply.

The other order directs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other financial regulators to consider a variety of changes aimed at making compliance easier for smaller, community banks. It also calls for agencies to revise existing policies in order to support community bank lending for construction, expand adaptation of digital technology in mortgages and update appraisal standards, among other changes.

The House-passed Housing for the 21st Century Act helmed by Hill included 13 provisions intended to strengthen the role of community banks in housing finance, which were omitted from the upper chamber’s housing package, and have been a focal point of the Arkansas Republican’s legislative agenda.