Donald Trump is now holding up putting his signature to affordable housing legislation because he wants to use it as leverage to be able to rig U.S. elections.
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump posted to his socials on Wednesday, putting the make me king forever cart before the affordability horse, as we probably should have expected.
The ROAD to Housing Act, which passed both the U.S. House and U.S. Senate by massive bipartisan majorities, is being touted by pols on both sides of the aisle as being the most significant piece of housing legislation passed in decades.
The bill will, among other things, establish a program to convert abandoned buildings into housing developments, increase capacity for banks to invest in affordable housing development, and ensure that workers on federally funded housing projects are paid prevailing wages.
Most significantly, and controversially, the legislation would restrict the ability of large institutional investors from buying single-family homes.
U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., said today that Trump’s move to hold off on signing the measure into law is “an insult to every family struggling to make their rent payment” and “a stick in the eye to every young adult scrimping, saving, and putting off starting a family to be able to afford their first home.”
Northern Virginia Congressman Don Beyer also took a shot at Trump, saying “the president who promised lower costs on Day 1 is refusing to sign the largest housing affordability bill in a generation. It’s a slap in the face to millions of Americans struggling to afford a place to live. My Republican colleagues need to find some courage and stand up to this mad king.’
Unfortunately there, the Republican colleagues still aren’t finding the requisite courage.
This is one issue that shouldn’t be about politics. The shortage of homes nationwide has real-estate prices soaring, with the latest Virginia Home Sales Report from the Virginia Association of REALTORS® pegging the statewide median sales price in May at $452,060.
The quick math on that has a monthly mortgage on a $ 452,060 home running in the range of $2,600 to $3,500.
You’d need a household income at around $110,000 a year to be able to afford the lower end of that.
Median household income in Virginia is in the $92,000-a-year range.
Realtor.com estimates that there’s a 4 million housing unit gap between available housing and the demand for housing.
Here in my backyard, in Waynesboro, a 2023 analysis completed by the Virginia Tech Center for Housing Research put the rental vacancy rate at a miniscule 1.8 percent, which you would define as a seller’s market – with low inventories, property owners can essentially name their price.
It’s against this backdrop that a guy who can’t even handle a pool renovation wants to hold up progress toward getting more affordable housing on the market so that he can be named king of the world.
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Chris Graham
