The House gave final approval Tuesday to a broad bipartisan housing bill and, on the same day, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to resume speedy deportations of undocumented migrants throughout the United States, tightening the machinery of control over both shelter and movement. One measure promises to tinker with housing costs through deregulation and subsidies; the other restores a fast-track removal system that can send people out of the country without a chance to appear before a judge.
Who Gets to Decide
The House passed the housing bill 358-32 after the Senate approved it 85-5 on Monday, sending the legislation to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law Wednesday at the Capitol. The bill is being sold as one of the most sweeping efforts in decades to increase the supply of housing and bring down prices, while voter frustration runs high about the cost of living. Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the bill, said the median age of a first-time homebuyer is now 40 and rents have soared some 47% since the COVID-19 pandemic. “Our country must do better and today we will,” she said.
House Financial Services Chairman French Hill, an Arkansas Republican who worked with Waters and the Senate on the bill, said it is the first time in years that Congress has come together to make “measurable, accountable changes” to the nation’s housing laws. The bill will “help build more homes to meet that growing demand and keep the American dream within reach,” he said. Dozens of bills were combined to create the final package after months of negotiations, producing a rare moment of bipartisanship in a congressional session that has been plagued by bitter standoffs.
Housing for Whom
The legislation would reduce federal regulations, streamline environmental reviews, speed up the construction process and curb the influence of corporate landlords by limiting their ability to purchase single-family homes. It would also expand financing, encourage the development of “innovative housing” like modular homes, require new renter protections and enhance programs that aim to end homelessness. The bill would offer funding to local governments that build more housing, including Community Development Block Grant money to places exceeding the median rate of homebuilding. It would provide new dollars for communities to turn abandoned infrastructure into housing, and it offers a framework for communities that want to reform outdated zoning regulations, which often limit larger housing developments.
In addition, the bill would raise limits on the number of public housing units that can receive financing for renovations and codify a recovery program to help expedite funds to communities rebuilding after disaster. The legislation does not include a Senate provision that would have required investors to sell newly constructed homes within seven years. Republicans and Democrats have embraced the bill as a way to show they are addressing the nation’s affordability crisis, driven in part by rising home prices due to a shortage of affordable housing.
The U.S. housing market has been in a slump dating back to 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes have been hovering close to a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023 — well short of the 5.2-million annual pace that’s historically been the norm. Sales slowed last year to a 30-year low and have remained sluggish so far this year, declining in January and February versus a year earlier. The Economic Report of the President in April found a shortage of 10 million homes, while a report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found sales of existing homes were at three-decade lows and inventories were rising due to high home buying costs. “Cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded,” the report said. While the median U.S. monthly rent has been declining for nearly three years, it was still 17.2% higher in May than it was before the pandemic, according to data from Realtor.com.
The legislation drew widespread support in the housing community, both from organizations representing landlords and large property owners as well as groups that advocate for tenants and low-income renters. It also brought together Republicans and Democrats, many of whom noted the unusual level of bipartisanship ahead of the vote. “In this polarized and angry Congress, we are actually getting something done,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn.
The Deportation Machine Rolls On
A federal appeals court on Tuesday allowed the Trump administration to resume carrying out speedy deportations of undocumented migrants throughout the United States, not just near the border. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a lower court decision that temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s expanded use of expedited removal. The ruling was a big victory for the Republican administration, which views the expansion of so-called expedited removal as a key tool for carrying out its mass deportation policy.
Expedited removal — quick deportation without a chance to appear before a judge — has previously been applied to migrants arriving by sea or caught at or near the border shortly after crossing. In January, Trump expanded its use to undocumented migrants all over the United States. Immigration agents began whisking migrants away from courthouses where they had gone for immigration proceedings and then removing them from the country within days.
Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement, “The Trump administration’s push for fast-track deportations will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system.” Balakrishnan represented plaintiffs in arguments before the appellate panel and said its ruling “undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them.”
DC Circuit Judge Justin R. Walker, one of the judges on the panel, said the plaintiffs had not shown the expanded use of expedited removal violated due process rights. Immigrants received notice of removal proceedings and were given a chance to respond, he wrote in his opinion. Walker and the second judge in the majority, Neomi Rao, were appointed by Trump. The third judge on the panel was appointed by President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
Walker said there was no requirement that the administration inform immigrants that they can avoid expedited removal if they can show they have been in the United States for more than two years. “The constitutional requirement is notice of the action the government is taking and the grounds for it, plus an opportunity to respond,” he wrote, adding that the plaintiffs’ “contrary reasoning would require immigration officers to provide what amounts to legal advice.” Walker and Rao vacated an order by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb that put the expanded use of expedited removal on hold. Cobb, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, ruled in August that the administration had not developed procedures to ensure migrants were not wrongly deported under the expedited process.
The plaintiffs had put forward “substantial evidence” that the expedited removal process, on the contrary, carried a high risk of error when applied more broadly, Cobb said. The ruling cited examples of people who had lived in the U.S. for far longer than two years but were still ordered to be removed in expedited proceedings. In his opinion, Walker acknowledged evidence of such errors, but said they resulted from “individual officers’ failure to follow the law — not defects in the written directives under review or the procedures they incorporate.” The Trump administration has argued that its expansion of expedited removal includes protections to prevent arbitrary removal. In a court filing in October, Justice Department attorneys said Cobb’s ruling was an “egregious error” that was depriving the administration of an “essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years” and efficiently deport potentially millions of people.