At midnight on July 10, the most significant federal housing policy in more than three decades became law with overwhelming support from both parties—and not a moment too soon for millions of Americans exhausted by the hunt for an affordable home. Consider this: When Bill Clinton began his second term in 1997, the median sales price for a home in the United States was $82,800. Last month, that price soared to an eye-watering, record high of $446,400.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act approved by Congress won't magically make homes more affordable, but it moves our country firmly in the right direction. And much of the bill’s blueprint was drawn under the leadership of western governors on the front lines of the housing crisis. This new law attacks the housing shortage from multiple angles.
It makes homes easier to build by streamlining reviews and rewarding communities that adopt pre-approved home designs so builders aren't reinventing the wheel—and repermitting it—on every lot. It makes permanent the federal government's largest affordable-housing block grant, which has helped finance more than a million homes over three decades. And it helps families directly, expanding access to small mortgages under $100,000.
These are the loans that make homeownership possible in rural towns where houses exist, but financing doesn't. Several of the law's most consequential reforms weren’t hatched by lobbyists or in congressional committees; they started in the West. In July 2024, as chair of the Western Governors' Association, Governor Lujan Grisham launched an initiative called Building Resilient and Affordable New Developments in the West, or “BRAND West” that convened workshops and housing tours, took feedback from the public, and spurred months of work with builders, lenders, tribal leaders, and local officials.
The result was a set of specific recommendations WGA sent to Congress. Last week, several of them became federal law as part of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Twenty-two western governors from across the political spectrum came together and asked Congress to scrap an outdated federal rule requiring every manufactured home to sit on a permanent steel chassis—a relic that added thousands of dollars to homes that never move again.
This will cut the price of a manufactured home by $5,000 to $10,000. In rural New Mexico and Utah, that's often the difference between owning and renting. We also asked Congress to make sure rural families don't lose their rental assistance simply because the federal loan on their building gets paid off—a paperwork quirk that threatened hundreds of thousands of affordable rural homes.
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