By Samantha Delouya, CNN
(CNN) — The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, a bipartisan bill that aims to tackle housing affordability, officially became law early Saturday, despite a series of attempts by President Donald Trump to stall the legislation.
Its passage signals that lawmakers recognize the frustration many Americans feel about the high cost of housing. At a time of elevated mortgage rates and near-record high home prices, many feel locked out of homeownership or struggle with monthly rent payments.
Supporters of the law have touted it as the most comprehensive housing reform in at least three decades. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the new law “one of the most significant pieces of housing affordability legislation in American History,” in a social media post last month.
But Trump, who had previously expressed support for the law, has since turned critical.
In a social media post on Friday, Trump said he refused to sign the bill in protest of the Senate’s failure to pass the SAVE America Act, a voter ID measure he has argued should be Congress’ top priority.
Last month, after the bill passed Congress, Trump also canceled a signing ceremony just two hours before it was scheduled to begin, later calling the bill a “big yawn.”
Regardless, the measure became law automatically on Saturday morning under the Constitution, since he did not veto it.
Trump’s last-minute criticism capped months of bipartisan negotiations on what would become the largest housing affordability legislation in a generation. Instead of promoting their efforts, Republican lawmakers were left scrambling when the president abruptly withdrew his support over a separate political fight.
The nation’s housing affordability crisis did not stem from a single event or policy failure. It is the result of years of underbuilding, restrictive local zoning, rising demand and policy decisions and, in many cases, policy inaction.
The legislation reflects the complexity of the crisis, combining a total of 47 proposals aimed at increasing housing supply, reducing costs and expanding access to affordable homes.
But immediate relief may not come just yet for homeowners and renters, said Yonah Freemark, a housing research associate at the Urban Institute. Building new homes takes time, and the law gives short-staffed federal government agencies a new workload to manage.
“We’re talking about a situation where not only will the federal government have to make changes, but then state and local governments also will have to make changes and then businesses, developers, etcetera will have to make investments, which itself takes time,” Freemark said.
Here’s what the new law does – and doesn’t do – to address some of the housing market’s biggest challenges:
Supply constraints
In the years since the 2008 financial crisis, homebuilding has lagged, creating a housing shortage that has pushed prices higher.
The law primarily aims to tackle America’s housing affordability problem by increasing supply. It includes provisions that promote manufactured housing (homes built in factories) and office-to-apartment conversions. It also would authorize a pilot program to offer grants and forgivable loans to fix older homes that have fallen into disrepair.
But many housing experts point to local zoning and red tape as the root of the slowdown in homebuilding. It is difficult for the federal government to intervene, since local governments make their own rules, but the law includes provisions to encourage states and local governments to adopt land use and zoning policies that are more supportive of housing development.
If land-use regulations were relaxe