Three housing-related bills sponsored by Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester are moving forward.
Blunt Rochester’s three bills were packaged into a single measure, the ROAD to Housing Act, last week and passed out of committee in its first bipartisan housing markup session in more than ten years.
Blunt Rochester says the combination of housing measures addresses a large and growing problem in the US.
“We know that we have a housing crisis in this country - about 4.7 million units short," she said. "And what that means is that it puts a crunch on all of us.”
That shortage includes tens of thousands of units in Delaware, she says.
“Our focus is cutting red tape, doing pre-approved home designs, incentivizing development and investment, and ultimately it's a number one priority for me because it's a number one priority for Delaware," she says.
One piece would raise the limit on how much banks can invest in community projects, like affordable housing. Another would help local governments create pre-approved plans for missing middle housing, streamlining the permitting process. The third would task HUD with creating example zoning laws that localities could adapt.
“And that's going to give our state and local governments frameworks to reimagine zoning and to bring it into the 21st century," she says. "The last time something like this was done was in the 1920s.”
The ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Republican-led Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee unanimously and awaits debate in the full Senate.
