Congress delivered rare bipartisan action Tuesday on the nation's housing affordability crisis, sending sweeping legislation to President Donald Trump as a federal appeals court simultaneously cleared the way for the administration to resume expedited deportations of undocumented migrants nationwide—a policy critics warn denies basic due process protections.
The House passed the housing bill 358-32 after the Senate approved it 85-5 on Monday, marking one of the most comprehensive efforts in decades to increase housing supply as Americans struggle with soaring costs. The median age of a first-time homebuyer has climbed to 40, and rents have surged 47% since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of California, who helped negotiate the measure. "Our country must do better and today we will," she said.
Addressing the Housing Crisis
The legislation tackles multiple barriers to affordable housing by reducing federal regulations, streamlining environmental reviews, and curbing corporate landlords' ability to purchase single-family homes. It expands financing for construction, encourages development of modular homes, requires new renter protections, and enhances homelessness prevention programs. Communities that exceed median homebuilding rates would receive Community Development Block Grant funding, while new dollars would help convert abandoned infrastructure into housing.
The bill also provides a framework for reforming outdated zoning regulations that often limit larger housing developments and raises limits on public housing units eligible for renovation financing. A disaster recovery provision would expedite funds to communities rebuilding after catastrophes. House Financial Services Chairman French Hill, an Arkansas Republican who worked with Waters and the Senate, said the bill represents the first time in years Congress has made "measurable, accountable changes" to housing laws.
The Economic Report of the President in April identified a shortage of 10 million homes. A report this month from the Joint Center For Housing Studies at Harvard University found existing home sales at three-decade lows, with "cost burdens for both renters and owners continue to climb, while assistance remains profoundly underfunded." While median monthly rent has declined for nearly three years, it remained 17.2% higher in May than before the pandemic, according to Realtor.com data.
Deportation Policy Advances
On the same day, 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 had temporarily blocked Trump's expanded use of expedited removal. The ruling allows the administration to resume quick deportations without judicial hearings for undocumented migrants throughout the United States, not just near the border.
Expedited removal had previously applied only to migrants arriving by sea or caught at or near the border shortly after crossing. In January, Trump expanded its use nationwide. Immigration agents began removing migrants from courthouses where they had gone for immigration proceedings, deporting them within days.
Due Process Concerns
Anand Balakrishnan, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement that "the Trump administration's push for fast-track deportations will subject people to an unfair and error-prone system." The ruling "undermines the fundamental principle that people receive due process when the government seeks to deport them," said Balakrishnan, who represented plaintiffs before the appellate panel.
DC Circuit Judge Justin R. Walker, writing for the majority, said plaintiffs had not shown the expanded policy violated due process rights because immigrants received notice of removal proceedings and a chance to respond. Walker and fellow majority judge Neomi Rao were appointed by Trump. Walker said there was no requirement to inform immigrants they can avoid expedited removal by proving they've 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.
The panel vacated an order by U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb that had put the expanded policy on hold. Cobb, appointed by President Joe Biden, ruled in August that the administration had not developed procedures to ensure migrants were not wrongly deported. She cited "substantial evidence" that expedited removal carried high error risk when applied broadly, including examples of people who had lived in the U.S. for far longer than two years but were still ordered removed in expedited proceedings.
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 administration has argued its expansion includes protections against arbitrary removal, calling Cobb's ruling an "egregious error" that deprived it of an "essential tool to combat the unprecedented surge of illegal immigration over the past few years."
Why This Matters:
The housing legislation represents a significant federal response to an affordability crisis that has locked millions of Americans out of homeownership and burdened renters with unsustainable costs. With a 10-million-home shortage and assistance "profoundly underfunded," the bill's emphasis on public investment, corporate landlord restrictions, and zoning reform addresses structural barriers that have disproportionately harmed working families and first-time buyers. Meanwhile, the deportation ruling raises fundamental questions about procedural fairness in immigration enforcement. Evidence of errors—including wrongful deportations of long-term residents—suggests the expedited process may deny vulnerable individuals meaningful opportunity to contest removal, with life-altering consequences determined in days rather than through full judicial review. The contrast between bipartisan cooperation on housing and partisan-divided courts on immigration underscores competing visions of government's role in protecting both economic security and constitutional rights.