The ROAD to Housing Act Passed. Now Comes the Hard Part.
When the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (the ROAD Act) became law on July 11, it represented one of the most significant federal housing policy packages in years. Spanning 12 titles and 60 sections, it touches nearly every corner of housing policy, from housing supply and homeownership to manufactured housing, disaster recovery, rental assistance, and homelessness.
What the act will do, and how it will effectively (or not) change the housing system depends more on implementation than intent. The passage of the ROAD Act represents a useful opportunity to apply systems thinking. Instead of asking what the policy will do, ask how it attempts to change the structures, incentives, information flows, and behaviors that produce current outcomes.
First, the act is a collection of leverage points, not a single housing program.
Housing affordability is the product of a complicated system, so Congress is pushing on different parts of that system simultaneously. For example, the act aims to increase information sharing.
Section 107 directs the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to develop best practices for state and local zoning, including recommendations related to parking requirements, lot sizes, density restrictions, approval processes, and transit-oriented development.
Capacity increases represent another leverage point. The act aims to increase capacity for local governments by authorizing the creation of grants to implement housing plans (Section 207). The ROAD Act even pushes on the incentives leverage point, directing HUD to establish an “Innovation Fund” to reward communities that demonstrate measurable housing-supply growth through a $200 million competitive grant program (Section 208).
Second, the Act treats pilots as learning opportunities.
Several provisions deliberately outline test approaches before assuming they should become permanent national policy. These include, to name a few, authorizing pilots involving small-dollar Federal Housing Administration mortgages (Section 105), testing the safety of single-stair multifamily buildings (Section 102), and whole-home repairs (Section 202).
Such provisions create the beginnings of a learning loop: try something, observe what happens, and use the evidence to improve what comes next. The important question will be whether policymakers actually close that loop by adapting policy based on what the pilots reveal.
Finally, implementation, especially funding, may itself become a bottleneck.
Passing legislation does not automatically change the housing system. The ROAD Act authorizes a number of new pilots and programs, but authorization is not the same thing as funding. For many of these initiatives, Congress still must appropriate the money necessary for them to operate.
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act Implementation Tracker is a useful tool for tracking future progress of the ROAD Act. It describes the pilot programs and reforms to existing policies, while being clear about which require Congress to appropriate funds and which deadlines have come and gone.
The tool notes that much of the implementation burden falls on HUD, which faces dozens of directives, many with tight deadlines and limited staff capacity.
The tracker is worth bookmarking precisely because passage on July 11 was not the end of the ROAD Act story. From a systems perspective, implementation is part of the intervention. The real measure of success will be how the provisions Congress enacted successfully move through agencies, governments, and markets and ultimately change the system that produces America’s housing outcomes.
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