Trump Abruptly Cancels Major Housing Bill Signing Ceremony

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he would not sign the major bipartisan housing bill that Congress passed this week after months of negotiations.

Less than two hours before the planned signing ceremony for the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, Trump abruptly called it off, saying he would sign the housing package only after Congress passes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, an election security bill that Trump and many Republicans have been pushing ahead of the midterms.

"Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency," Trump said on Truth Social.

The news shocked Washington as lawmakers were already celebrating the bipartisan housing bill. Coming after months of negotiations, it contains 45 provisions aimed at cutting housing costs. That includes constraints on institutional investors in the housing market, new banking rules aimed at promoting mortgage lending as well as measures to cut red tape and speed up homebuilding.

Following months of stalled progress, the bill sped through Congress this week with broad bipartisan support. Trump now has 10 days to either sign or veto the bill. If he takes no action while Congress is in session, it will automatically become law.

A veto would require a two-thirds majority from Congress to override, which may be possible given the broad support for the bill. The House ultimately passed the housing bill 358-32 on Tuesday night, one night after the Senate passed it 85-5.

Asked if Trump planned to veto the housing bill if the SAVE Act fails to pass, a White House spokesperson declined to answer directly and merely pointed to the president's Truth Social post.

Trump's reversal on housing bill takes lawmakers by surprise

In a separate post, Trump criticized the bill as being "of minor importance compared to lower interest rates," echoing his longstanding but so-far unsuccessful push to bring mortgage rates back down to the ultralow levels seen during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis.

Trump also criticized Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who, along with Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee Chair Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), helped write the bill.

The president's sudden announcement caught Beltway insiders off guard. Lawmakers have already been hailing the bill as a rare act of bipartisanship ahead of the midterms. Democrats, pitching their own message of affordability, pounced on Trump's reversal.

"It's clear he doesn't care about the costs that people are facing," House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-CA) said at a press conference Wednesday. "This is something that will move the needle in an affordable way for housing. This was one piece, and it shows that we want to take the win for the American people ... and drive down the cost of housing."

Republicans, meanwhile, were on the back foot. House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. French Hill (R-AR), who, with Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), pushed the bill through the House, touted its bipartisanship.

"This isn't about suddenly a bill is too Democratic or too Republican. This bill is for the American people," Hill said Wednesday. "Let's show the American people how you bring something together and do something on a bicameral basis. And we did that, and we did that in conjunction with President Trump and his priorities."

The National Association of Home Builders, a strong advocate of the housing bill, expressed confidence that it would eventually become law.

"Voters are demanding action on housing supply and affordability, and Congress has delivered a historic bill to address their concerns," said NAHB Chairman Bill Owens. "Although there was no bill signing today, we are confident the 21st Century Road to Housing Act will eventually become law."

House Speaker continues to support housing bill

The canceled bill signing also marks an about-face for Trump, who in a May post urged progress on the then-stalled bill.

“I am asking Congress to pass that Bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which would ensure that homes are for people, not Corporations," Trump posted, referring to a provision in the bill that bans institutional investors from mass-buying single-family homes.

But Trump has also argued for passage of the SAVE Act, which would bring more stringent identification requirements for voting, throughout the year. Democrats fiercely oppose the bill, which they call a voter suppression measure. Trump says it will cut down on alleged voter fraud.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said at a Wednesday press conference that Republicans will follow Trump's lead in the elections bill as the top priority, even as he said 85% of the housing bill's provisions were "housing conservative."

"We're delaying this. As you know, he has a window of time before he has to sign a bill, and he's going to use a little bit more of that window of time, and we're going to go through this together," Johnson said.

"The president, when we go through the details of the bill, he's going to understand that it's a good product," Johnson later said. "And certainly something that fulfills his promises to bring down the costs."

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) vowed that Democrats would not allow the SAVE Act to pass in exchange for Trump's signature on the housing bill.

"We're not going to trade lower costs for housing for taking away our voting rights. That's a trade no one would make," he said at a press conference.

What's in the 21st Century Road to Housing Act

The final version of the bill includes 45 provisions across 381 pages with major implications for housing. Many of the measures are aimed at boosting housing production to address a massive national shortfall.

Realtor.com® estimates that the country has a shortage of more than 4 million homes, as a consequence of more than a decade of building fewer homes than were needed to meet demand.

"Among other things, the legislation aims to incentivize homebuilding by establishing policy guidelines and best practices, streamlining environmental review, and improving existing programs including tying community development block grants to housing outcomes," says Realtor.com Chief Economist Danielle Hill. "This last provision enables the Federal government to put its finger on the scales of policy making at the state and local level, where many of the policy and regulatory hurdles to homebuilding exist."

The legislation also makes changes to make it easier to build and finance both manufactured and modular homes, which could bring down construction costs if used more widely.

Key provisions of the bill include:

• Restricting corporate buyers: Blocks Wall Street firms and large institutional investors from mass-purchasing single-family homes, backing the ban with steep financial penalties.
• Zoning reform: Creates a $200 million grant program to reward cities that eliminate restrictive zoning, while penalizing slow-growth communities by cutting their CDBG funding by 10%.
• Cutting regulatory red tape: Accelerates construction timelines by waiving lengthy NEPA environmental reviews for low-impact HUD projects and streamlining repetitive property inspections.
• Expanding mortgage access: Launches a HUD pilot program to expand access to small-dollar mortgages under $100,000 and increases the amount of private bank capital that can be invested in local affordable housing.
• Modernizing factory-built housing: Updates FHA lending standards and draw schedules to give manufactured and modular housing financing parity with traditional, site-built homes.
• Disaster recovery fixes: Permanently authorizes the CDBG-Disaster Recovery framework for faster post-disaster rebuilding and protects low-income rural tenants from losing rental assistance when a property's underlying mortgage matures.