Sponsor
Christina Houlahan
Representative · D-PA
Representative · D-PA
The bill trades the ability to rapidly mobilize federal authorities, funds and streamlined processes to produce millions of housing units and jobs for a significant shift of power toward the executive and potential environmental, fiscal, equity, local-control, and quality risks that could burden communities and taxpayers.
Renters, low-income households, first-time buyers and middle-class families would gain access to many more housing units (up to a 4 million-unit mobilization), which should ease shortages and reduce housing costs and competition in tight markets.
Construction workers, related trades, and small builders would see substantially higher demand and job creation (including hundreds of thousands of construction jobs) and broader GDP growth from a large-scale build/rehab effort.
Low-income households, renters and state/local governments could get housing and recovery projects delivered faster because federal HUD/CDBG-DR processes, duplication-of-benefits rules and procurement waiver timelines are shortened or expedited.
State and local governments, and community residents, would lose substantial land-use, planning and environmental oversight during a presidentially declared housing emergency, concentrating decisionmaking power in the executive branch and reducing local control and accountability.
Nearby communities, low-income residents and local services could face unassessed environmental, health, safety and infrastructure harms because NEPA and other reviews can be limited or suspended and land-use rules temporarily lifted to accelerate building.
Taxpayers and other industries could bear increased fiscal and economic costs—through higher federal spending, subsidies, redirected industrial capacity, or higher procurement prices if DPA actions or waivers favor rapid domestic production—while builders may also face higher up-front compliance costs.
Based on analysis of 9 sections of legislative text.
Creates a national housing emergency that suspends select federal and local regulatory barriers, conditions grants on housing growth, speeds procurement and waivers, and mandates minimum codes to rapidly increase housing supply.
Official title: To require the President to declare a national housing emergency and invoke the Defense Production Act to incentivize residential housing production, and for other purposes.
Introduced September 8, 2026 by Christina Houlahan · Last progress September 8, 2026
Declares a national housing emergency framework and temporarily uses federal emergency authorities to speed housing production and rehabilitation. While the emergency is in effect the bill suspends selected HUD and federal procedural requirements, mandates minimum residential building codes, conditions some federal block grants on measurable housing growth, restricts state and local land-use actions that substantially burden homebuilding, and sets an end date tied to adding 4,000,000 housing units or October 1, 2031. The bill also directs use of Defense Production Act authorities to expand domestic production of housing materials, expedites certain Build America, Buy America waivers, and creates streamlined environmental review rules for HUD-funded projects during the emergency. Some sections appear to be technical placeholders and do not show concrete textual changes to the Defense Production Act as presented here.