Connecticut’s U.S. senators supported bipartisan legislation Thursday aiming to boost the supply of housing and create more affordable options. But the bill, which seeks to address a pressing cost-of-living issue for Americans, faces challenges ahead.
The original versions of the bill got overwhelming support in both chambers, a rarity in a deeply divided Congress. And it has the backing of President Donald Trump at a time when affordability has dominated voters’ minds ahead of the midterm elections and as gas prices have spiked amid the ongoing war with Iran.
U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy joined most senators in voting for the updated version of the legislation, the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.” Because it’s been revised, it will go back to the House for another vote. This time, it’s expected to run into more hurdles from Republicans who want it reworked. Plus, Trump has turned his attention to a voting bill, something he wants his party to address immediately.
The comprehensive bipartisan legislation, among other things, seeks to ease the construction of new homes, authorizes a pilot program to convert vacant and abandoned properties into housing and expands access to other types of housing like factory-built manufactured homes.
It also places a ban on large institutional investors who have 350 units or more from purchasing more single-family homes, with some exceptions. They would be able to build single-family housing to be used as rentals, otherwise known as build-to-rent, but those investors would need to sell those properties after seven years and give renters the first chance to buy.
This has been a priority for Trump, who released an executive order to prioritize individual homebuyers over Wall Street investors and highlighted the effort during his State of the Union address last month. His initial push was more restrictive and sought to limit the restriction to institutional investors with 100 housing units or more.
“These corporate interests, unfortunately, have diminished the supply of housing, increased its cost and made it less accessible,” Blumenthal said on Park Street in Hartford earlier this week. “No longer should corporate institutions exploit single-family housing, raising the price of housing for everyone.”
On multiple procedural votes leading up to final passage on Thursday, Murphy was one of only a handful of members to vote against it — for symbolic reasons, not on the heart of the bill. But when it came to the last few procedural votes, including final passage, he backed the wide-ranging measure.
“I’m voting for the bill on the merits, but I voted against the procedural motions because I wanted to send a message that our priority should be debating this illegal war as it spins out of control,” Murphy told reporters Wednesday after switching his vote to support two procedural motions that day.
Still, Murphy has some reservations regarding the new investor ban — a provision that was recently added into the bill.
The intention of the provision is prevent corporate landlords from buying up single-family homes and potentially pricing out individual buyers. But he worries about the unintended consequences on other types of investors and choking off other housing options for the state, like rental properties.
“I’ve spent the last 48 hours trying to figure out what the impact is on Connecticut, of what appears to be a pretty fundamental change in how we finance single-family rental homes,” Murphy told reporters at the Capitol on Wednesday. “I want people to own homes, but in Connecticut, we need everything. And anything that makes it a little bit harder to build housing, even for rental units, is less interesting to me.”
“I think there’s more good in this bill than concerns me, but I think that’s a really complicated change that they made to the final version of the bill,” he added.
Like the rest of the U.S., Connecticut has similarly suffered from a smaller supply of housing, coupled with high home prices and increases to building materials caused by the pandemic.
Connecticut has seen a small uptick in affordable housing over the years. Between 2011 and 2025, it increased by nearly 17%. The state is seeing many of the same issues with rising housing costs that are playing out elsewhere in the U.S.
Chelsea Ross, who serves as executive director for Partnership for Strong Communities, said nearly half of renters in Connecticut spend more than they can afford on housing costs. She also noted that one in four renters spends more than half their income on housing, and that the state is short more than 63,000 homes for extremely low-income households.
“Connecticut’s experiencing the same housing shortages that we’re seeing across the country,” Ross said in an interview a day before the bill’s final passage.
The bill is “really about modernizing our federal housing tool kit. Its provisions would help communities build more housing I think in a couple of different ways of reducing barriers to development and modernizing some federal programs and improving the financing pathways for different types of housing,” Ross said.
On top of the corporate investor measure, Ross also applauded the reauthorization and the modernization of the HOME Investments Partnership Program, a federal block grant program that seeks to boost building and buying affordable housing and providing rental assistance to low-income households.
Ross noted that points of contention for some Democrats are that the legislation doesn’t address rental assistance enough, such as stronger tenant protections or larger subsidies for extremely low-income households. She would have liked to seen more done on this front but still touted the work to address the supply side.
“It makes some good regulatory changes, but ultimately, there’s no way to solve a housing shortage in Connecticut without additional federal assistance,” Murphy said.
The revised legislation now goes back to the House, where it’s expected to face resistance. The original bill easily cleared the lower chamber, with support from all five of Connecticut’s Democratic members. But some factions are raising concerns over provisions related to a federal cryptocurrency and the investor ban. The House and Senate may need to work out the bills’ differences in a conference committee.
Recently, Trump’s top priority appears to have become the SAVE America Act, which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and identification to cast a vote. He wants it to pass Congress before he signs any other bills into law. The Senate plans to take it up next week, but it won’t move forward because it wouldn’t be able to clear a Democratic filibuster.
On top of that, Congress is still locked in a fight over funding the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which has been in a shutdown since mid-February.
Still, Ross hopes Congress can push through the housing bill, even as other priorities and roadblocks come up.
“It’s one of the biggest domestic issues facing our country right now,” Ross said. “Whether or not something else grabs the focus of Congress remains to be seen, but it’s something that needs action, and it’s long overdue.”
The Connecticut Mirror/Connecticut Public Radio federal policy reporter position is made possible, in part, by funding from the Robert and Margaret Patricelli Family Foundation.
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
