America has a shortfall of over four million housing units, the product of more than a decade of construction falling to meet household demand. Additionally for renters, the US is facing a shortage of seven million rental units for the lowest-income renters. For Regional Development Organizations (RDOs), housing is not a marginal concern. When families can’t afford to live where jobs are located, when rural communities can’t maintain an aging housing stock, and when localities lack the necessary planning capacity to zone for growth, regional economies are negatively impacted. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is the most significant federal housing legislation in decades, seeking to address these challenges at a national scale.
Background and Legislative Timeline
The bill — where ROAD stands for Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream — combines the Senate Banking Committee’s ROAD to Housing Act and the House Financial Services Committee’s Housing for the 21st Century Act, both of which passed their respective chambers by overwhelming bipartisan margins earlier this year. On June 16, after nearly a year of intense negotiations, the Senate released the final version, which was agreed upon by leadership in both chambers. The bill overwhelmingly passed the Senate, by a vote of 85-5, on June 22. The House followed the next day, by passing the bill 358-32. Currently, the bill sits on President Trump’s desk, who is refusing to sign it into law until the Senate passes the SAVE Act, which is a separate, comprehensive election reform package.
What’s in the Bill: Major Provisions for RDOs
The legislation spans eleven titles, with more than 50 individual provisions covering a wide array of housing policies, including housing counseling, supply expansion, manufactured housing, homeownership access, disaster recovery, rural housing, veteran housing, oversight, and more. Several sections are of direct and relevance to NADO members. Below is an analysis of each key provision and its implications for RDOs.
Section 101 – Reforms to Housing Counseling and Financial Literacy Programs
This section clarifies the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) authority to evaluate housing counseling agencies, require additional training where performance falls short, and revoke certifications for consistently non-compliant counselors.
RDO Relevance: For RDOs that administer or support HUD-approved housing counseling services, this provision strengthens the accountability framework within which those programs operate. The tightening of certification standards may create short-term administrative burden, but it could also be an opportunity for well-performing entities to differentiate themselves as preferred HUD partners.
Section 104 – Database of Publicly Owned Land
This provision will require Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) grantees to maintain, on a publicly accessible website, a searchable database that identifies all parcels of undeveloped land owned by the grantee.
RDO Relevance: As written, this requirement applies to all CDBG grantees, including non-entitlement communities, though indirectly. Technically, the State serves as the CDBG grantee, therefore bearing the responsibility to maintain the public database. That said, States already pass down many certification and obligation responsibilities down to non-entitlement communities as a condition of sub-recipient funding. Therefore, RDOs should expect states to build this into their CDBG state program administration. RDOs assisting non-entitlement grantees should track how their state implements this new provision, since implementation will vary by state.
This title holds the bulk of the provisions related to RDOs and will directly affect regional planning, CDBG administration, environmental review, and technical assistance capacity.
Section 201 – Increasing Housing in Opportunity Zones
Allows HUD to give competitive preference to applicants for housing-related grants who are located in or primarily serve federally designated Opportunity Zones (OZs).
RDO Relevance: Many RDO regions overlap substantially with current Opportunity Zone designations, especially in rural and distressed communities. That overlap matters right now, because states are in the middle of nominating the next round of zones (90-day nomination window opened July 1), and RDOs have a real opportunity to shape the outcome.
RDOs should begin by evaluating their region to determine which census tracts qualify under the updated eligibility criteria. With nomination windows currently open in states, that analysis can be brought directly to the governor’s office to advocate for designating the strongest candidates, drawing on local knowledge state officials often lack. Once designations are finalized, RDOs are well positioned to guide localities through the practical implications of OZ status, including how it can enhance their competitiveness in HUD funding opportunities, and how to highlight that advantage into their applications.
Section 202 – Whole-Home Repairs Act
Creates a HUD pilot program to fund state, local, and tribal whole-home repair programs — providing grants and forgivable loans to homeowners and landlords to address structural deficiencies, health hazards, and deferred maintenance in aging housing stock.
RDO Relevance: Rural and small-town housing stock tends to be older and more deteriorated than their urban counterparts, and traditional financing vehicles rarely reach rural needs. RDOs with community development lending or homeowner assistance capacity are well-positioned to serve as intermediaries or implementing partners under a whole-home repair pilot framework. This is a provision worth tracking closely as HUD develops program guidance in the implementation phase.
Section 203 – Community Investment and Prosperity Act
Raises the Public Welfare Investment cap for national banks and Federal Reserve–supervised institutions from 15 percent to 20 percent, expanding private bank capacity to invest in affordable housing and community development projects.
RDO Relevance: This provision expands the pool of private capital that can flow into community development lending, which is a direct benefit for the kinds of projects RDOs facilitate and support.
Section 205 – Build Now Act
Ties annual CDBG allocations for certain participating jurisdictions to housing production metrics, offering bonuses to localities that accelerate homebuilding and imposing small reductions on those that persistently lag.
RDO Relevance: The provision applies only to CDBG entitlement communities, not the state set-aside allocations, which is where NADO members typically interact with CDBG by helping to administer the funding on behalf of non-entitlement member localities. That said, for RDOs whose region includes entitlement communities who will be subject to the new performance scoring, it creates a technical assistance opportunity.
Section 204 – Addition of Affordable Housing Construction as an Eligible Activity
This section meaningfully modernizes the CDBG program for the first time in decades, including a provision to allow CDBG funds to be used for new construction activities.
RDO Relevance: Explicitly authorizing new construction expands the range of housing-related activities RDOs can support, plan for, and help implement using CDBG resources. Communities that have struggled to use CDBG for gap financing or direct construction of affordable units will have clearer statutory authority to do so.
Section 206 – Unlocking Housing Supply Through Streamlined and Modernized Reviews Act
Expands categorical exclusions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for small-scale and infill housing projects funded with federal assistance.
RDO Relevance: For rural RDOs whose regions are developing small infill projects, the expanded categorical exclusions are a meaningful burden reduction. Projects that once required costly environmental assessments may now qualify for streamlined review, making federally assisted small-scale housing development faster and more feasible to pull off.
Section 207 – Grants for Planning and Implementation Associated with Affordable Housing
Authorizes a new competitive grant pilot program to fund regional housing planning and community development activities. Eligible grantees include states, insular areas, CDBG entitlement communities, and regional planning agencies.
RDO Relevance: This is the highest priority provision for the NADO members. The explicit inclusion of regional planning agencies as eligible grantees is a direct recognition by Congress that housing solutions require regional coordination that individual localities cannot provide on their own. This is a new direct funding opportunity, and NADO members should begin positioning themselves now, ahead of HUD’s forthcoming guidance and Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO).
Section 208 – Innovation Fund
Authorizes a flexible funding program for communities that are actively expanding housing supply, allowing funds to be used for community infrastructure and housing construction.
RDO Relevance: This type of cross-sector execution is something RDOs inherently do throughout their planning work. NADO members should position themselves to provide technical assistance when member jurisdictions are building future applications, particularly on the infrastructure-to-housing case that HUD’s “measurable increases in housing supply” criteria will likely reward.
Section 210 – RESIDE Act (Revitalizing Empty Structures into Desirable Environments)
Creates a pilot program within the HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) to fund the conversion of vacant and abandoned buildings into attainable housing.
RDO Relevance: Adaptive reuse of vacant commercial and industrial structures is an increasingly common strategy in distressed communities, and it intersects directly with RDO expertise in brownfield redevelopment, EDA-funded revitalization projects, and CEDS planning. RDOs that already work on vacant property remediation can position HOME-funded adaptive reuse as a complementary strategy and potentially serve as technical assistance providers to member jurisdictions who seek to pursue this new activity.
Sections 301–304
These provisions update the federal definition of manufactured housing to spur innovation, require FHA to assess barriers to modular housing financing, modernize manufactured housing lending standards, and reauthorize HUD’s Preservation and Reinvestment initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) program for manufactured housing community preservation.
RDO Relevance: No direct relevance, except that manufactured housing is disproportionately concentrated in rural and small-town geographies. RDOs serving rural communities should be prepared to help their members understand the expanded financing options and the PRICE program reauthorization.
Section 501 – HOME Investment Partnerships Reauthorization and Reform Act
Reforms the HOME program, raises the income eligibility threshold (supporting workforce housing gaps), and authorizes the use of HOME funds for housing-adjacent infrastructure in jurisdictions that do not receive direct CDBG entitlement funding.
RDO Relevance: Many non-entitlement communities that NADO members serve lack access to CDBG formula funds and depend on state-administered programs or competitive grants to support their housing activities. Allowing HOME funds to support housing-adjacent infrastructure (water, sewer, roads serving housing development) in these communities addresses one of the most persistent barriers to housing production in rural areas.
Section 502 – Rural Housing Service Reform Act
Reforms the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Housing Service programs, including the decoupling rental assistance from maturing Section 515 mortgage terms.
RDO Relevance: Section 515 loan expiration is one of the most consequential and underreported housing crises in rural America. When 515 mortgages mature, the affordability restrictions that came with them can expire as well, and tenants lose access to subsidized units. Decoupling rental assistance from the mortgage means that 400,000 rural families are able to retain their housing assistance even as the original loan terms expire. Though it doesn’t create a new funding stream or program that NADO members would administer or apply for, it provides stability for a large portion of the rural housing stock communities rely on.
Section 504 – Reforming Disaster Recovery Act
Authorizes HUD’s Community Development Block Grant–Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program for three years and establishes a new Office of Disaster Management and Resiliency within HUD.
RDO Relevance: CDBG-DR has historically been authorized on an ad hoc basis through supplemental appropriations after each major disaster. This structure has created delays, uncertainty, and administrative fragmentation for communities who are recovering from a disaster. The three-year authorization and new permanent office within HUD bring more structure and predictability to the program, even though the underlying authorization itself will need to be addressed before it sunsets in 2029. For RDOs in disaster-prone regions who help communities plan for and recover from natural disasters, this is a meaningful improvement.
Section 802 – Streamlining Rural Housing Act
Directs HUD and USDA to coordinate on joint environmental reviews for housing projects that receive funding from both agencies.
RDO Relevance: None directly, but rural housing projects frequently involve both HUD and USDA funding streams, and navigating dual environmental reviews from two agencies has been a persistent source of delay and confusion for member jurisdictions.
What RDOs Should Be Doing Now?
Regional development organizations do not need to wait for a presidential signature to begin positioning themselves for the opportunities this legislation creates. Several steps are immediately relevant: