“Halleluiah”

Senator Tim Scott gets a bipartisan win on housing supply

Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, at work on housing legislation.

Anyone susceptible to being discouraged by the polarization, bitterness, and scorched-earth partisan vindictiveness of Washington can be cheered up by Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina.

Senator Scott is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee. That Committee today unanimously approved the Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream (ROAD) to Housing Act of 2025. Scott says the legislation “takes important steps to increase access to affordable housing for Americans across the country by expanding and preserving housing supply, improving housing affordability, and increasing oversight and efficiency of federal regulators and housing programs.”

One can quibble with one provision or another of the legislation. Many people doubtless will. Virtually every new federal law comes with unpredicted costs and unforeseen consequences. But compromises are needed to build legislative consensus, and some of the items in the bill are promising. For example, there’s a requirement for the department of Housing and Urban Development to conduct a study on work requirements for public housing residents, “with an assessment of the challenges and benefits of work requirements on public housing agencies and families, including the effects on homelessness, poverty, asset building, job attainment, and public housing agency administrative capacity.” And there are efforts to expand the private housing supply by making modular and prefabricated housing units more readily eligible for loans. Other provisions reduce regulatory barriers to building and create incentives that reward communities that are building more housing supply.

There’s a policy story here, that there is a workable sweet spot on housing affordability large enough to encompass both the “abundance” and Yes-in-My-Backyard or “abundance” types on the center-left (Ezra Klein,

Derek Thompson

Matthew Yglesias

, et al) and the pro-development, deregulation, oppose-zero-growth-environmental-extremism types on the center-right.

And there’s also a political story here, which is that Senator Tim Scott is someone unusually special. He talked about growing up poor and living in a rental unit with his grandparents, sharing a bedroom and a bed with his mother and his brother. “Many people around the country are frustrated with the way we do American politics wonder, is there any issue that brings this nation together and I’m here to say, halleluiah! We have found one — it is housing. And halleluiah is a southern term, but it’s a term of endearment,” Scott said. I always thought hallelujah was a Hebrew term, for praising God, but whether southern or Hebrew, the expression, and the sentiment, is accurately applied.

There’s a saying that in Washington bipartisanship is the term for the Republicans surrendering and voting for what the Democrats want, but that does not appear to be the case here. The legislation, while falling considerably short of any libertarian free-market fantasy, does nonetheless move in the direction of a supply-side housing solution.

And Scott’s being modest. The cooperation doesn’t end with housing. It extends to other issues where Senator Scott is involved.