Tangle - Congress’s bipartisan housing bill.

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

On Tuesday, the House passed a comprehensive housing affordability bill 358–32, sending the measure to President Donald Trump to sign into law. The bill, titled the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, seeks to increase housing supply by rolling back construction regulations, expanding financing options, and restricting institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes in most circumstances. The Senate voted 85–5 to pass the bill on Monday. After originally scheduling a signing ceremony today, Trump announced he would cancel the signing until Congress passes the SAVE America Act. He has not indicated that he would veto the bill.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!A conversation with Tim Urban.Why are otherwise intelligent people unable to resist falling into echo chambers, and how do some get out? That’s what Executive Editor Isaac Saul recently discussed with Tim Urban, the creator of Wait But Why and author of the book What’s Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies. The conversation flows from there, covering the information ecosystem, artificial intelligence, and the future of journalism. Check it out here!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Isaac Saul and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about policy, not reflecting pools, not culture wars, not real wars, just a good old-fashioned piece of bipartisan. partisan legislation with pros and cons and policy implications to explore. If you feel like my mood's elevated, I'm excited. We are going to deconstruct Congress's housing bill, which President Trump could be signing any moment or maybe not, apparently, according to his latest truth social posts which just came out moments ago as I

fired up the microphone here in my studio. But I'm very excited for today's episode because I like, talking about legislation, not to be a dork, but like things that matter a bit that are actually going to change lives. And it's nice to step into some of that and out of some of the craziness that we've just been forced to talk about ad nauseum recently. We also have a reader question about Tulsi Gabbard and Dr. Anthony Fauci and a medieval dancing epidemic. This is going to be a very interesting episode. And I'm joined today by Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead, who's going to help guide us through today's main topic and some views from the left and the right. And then I'll be back

for my take. All right, here's Audrey. First up, we have today's quick hits. Number one, the Supreme Court ruled six to three that a man incarcerated in Louisiana cannot sue prison officials who forcibly shaved his head despite his religious exemption claim. Separately, in another six to three ruling, the court limited non-citizens' ability to bring lawsuits in U.S. courts over alleged violations of international law. Number two, Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidates Claire Valdez and Darilisa Avila Chevalier won the Democratic nomination for Congress in two New York City districts. Additionally, former New York City comptroller Brad Lander defeated incumbent Representative Dan Goldman, and State Assemblyman Michael Lashir won the Democratic primary in the race to

replace retiring Representative Jerry Nadler, a Democrat. In Maryland, state delegate Adrian Bofo won the Democratic primary to replace retiring representative Steny Hoyer, a Democrat. In Utah, former Representative Ben McAdams won the Democratic primary for a newly drawn House seat. Number three, the Senate voted 50 to 48 to approve a war powers resolution, which passed the House earlier in June, directing President Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. armed forces from Iran. Four Republican senators voted with Democrats to pass the resolution, which does not have the force of law. Number four. The Justice Department announced charges against approximately 450 people, including 90 medical professionals and roughly 300 Medicaid recipients for alleged health care fraud.

Number five. At least 45 people in France have died, including 40 by drowning, amid a record-breaking heat wave. This morning, an agreement on Capitol Hill addressing one of the most pressing issues of our time, the housing shortage. In a rare act of bipartisanship, the Senate passing the 21st century Road to Housing Act, the most far-reaching housing reform legislation in decades. I don't say this a lot, but today I'm proud to be a member of the United States Senate. The measure will loosen regulations to encourage more home construction, open up funding to convert abandoned buildings into new housing, and ban Wall Street investors from buying single-family homes, so those homes can instead be sold to

families. On Tuesday, the House passed a comprehensive housing affordability bill of 358 to 32, sending the measure to President Donald Trump to sign into law. The bill, titled the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, seeks to increase housing supply by rolling back construction regulations, expanding financing options, and restricting institutional investors from purchasing single-family homes in most circumstances. The Senate voted 85 to 5 to pass the bill on Monday. Trump was set to sign the bill at a ceremony today. However, he announced that he would cancel the signing until Congress passes the Save America Act.

He has not indicated that he would veto the bill. For some more context, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act combines elements of housing packages passed separately by the House and Senate. On May 20th, the House approved a prior version of the bill in a 396-13 vote. Senate Banking Housing and Urban Affairs Committee chairman Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, ranking member Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, House Financial Services Committee Chair French Hill, a Republican from Arkansas, and ranking member Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California, led the negotiations and worked to reconcile the two versions.

In total, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act encompasses nearly 60 provisions related to housing supply, manufactured housing, mortgage financing, rural housing, veteran housing, and community banking. Notably, the bill bars institutional investors from buying more than 350 single-family homes. Institutional investors, defined as those with at least 350 homes, own roughly 3% of single-family rentals nationwide, according to a 2024-office analysis. Senator Warren emphasized the bill's restrictions on corporate real estate investors. On the Senate floor, Warren said, quote,

It will make sure families own those homes, not giant corporate landlords looking to jack up the rent and squeeze out every nickel of profit they can. On the Republican side, Senator Scott touted the incentives to increase supply as drivers to lower costs. In a statement, Scott said, quote, This bill is the result of years of work to lower costs, expand housing supply, cut red tape, protect taxpayers, and help more Americans achieve the dream of homeownership. Next up, we'll hear from the right and left on the housing bill. Then, executive editor Isaac Saul will give his tape.

We'll be right back after this quick. bridge. First up, what the right is saying. The right is mixed on the bill, with some arguing it unwisely targets institutional investors. Others praise Congress for taking action on home prices. Still others say the U.S. doesn't actually have a housing crisis. In City Journal, Sean Regan wrote about the big problem with Congress's housing bill. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act aims to cut red tape and encourage construction, with broad support from both parties. Unfortunately, Lawmakers also appear to agree on an unhelpful idea that large institutional investors are to blame for the housing shortage. This misdiagnosis will, if acted upon, discourage the construction of new rental homes and make the housing shortage worse.

The target of the policy is the growing build-to-rent sector, essentially the single-family equivalent of apartment complexes. In build-to-rent, a single-investor owns a large number of single-family homes, all built with the explicit purpose of renting rather than being owner-occupied. institutional investors, pension funds, real estate investment trusts, and large asset managers play a central role in financing these projects. Restricting their ability to own rental homes, therefore risks choking off investment in a segment of the market that is actually adding supply. The firms that build targets are disproportionately involved in new construction, whereas smaller landlords tend to acquire existing properties to rent out, large investors frequently finance projects that add housing inventory.

Many build-to-rent developments simply wouldn't exist without institutional financing. In Blaze Media, Christopher Bedford suggested corporate America hates this housing bill for one reason. Private equity has targeted entry-level homes in fast-growing markets, paying cash and converting starter neighborhoods into permanent rental pools. The D.C. Commentariat loves to point out that institutional ownership is small nationally. That argument obscures the real numbers. The harm is local, concentrated, and immediate. exactly where young families are trying to buy.

The 21st century Road to Housing Act is the first tiny step Congress has taken in years to confront inflated home prices and the corporate churn making starter homes harder to buy. It's exactly the kind of policy populist conservatives have wanted for years. Corporate ownership of single-family homes isn't a passing blip. It's a growing problem. And one Congress can start clipping now if House Republicans will back the president and pass the Senate's proposal. My administration, Trump declared in February, will take decisive action to stop Wall Street from treating America's neighborhoods like a trading floor and empower Americans' families to own their homes.

One bill won't fix the housing market problem, but Congress can take a first step, and prove it still knows the difference between market orthodoxy and the American dream. In Cato, Norbert J. Michel and Jerome Famolaro argued there's no national housing affordability crisis. The Road to Housing Act is built around the assumption, that the United States is experiencing a historically unprecedented housing affordability crisis. In addition to recently declining home price trends, the evidence for that claim is far weaker than commonly suggested. Many Americans understandably look at rapidly rising home prices and conclude that housing has become dramatically less affordable. Some conventional metrics appear to

reinforce this view. In particular, house price to income ratios have risen substantially over the past several decades. But these measures often provide a misleading picture. of affordability. For instance, simple priced income ratios ignore important changes in housing quality and signs over time, as the typical American home has become substantially larger and more amenity-rich than in previous decades. High home prices may create sticker shock, but rising sticker prices alone do not demonstrate a historically unprecedented affordability crisis. Measures tied to actual payment burdens and household balance sheets show no indication of a crisis. Next up, what the left is saying.

Many on the left view the bill as a win for progressive housing policy. Some question a provision borrowing private equity for buying homes. Others say the bill is a starting point, but future legislation must go further. In the American prospect, Robert Cutner praised Elizabeth Warren's amazingly progressive housing bill. The 303-page legislation creates new programs and federal money for housing construction, promotes manufactured housing housing, while streamlining zoning and permitting obstacles and improving access to mortgages. A key measure aimed at private equity prevents Wall Street from buying large numbers of single-family homes. The substantive strategy of one-part regulatory constraints on predatory landlords,

one-part new federal housing money, and one-part eased zoning and other bureaucratic restrictions also perfectly chimed with the Mom Donnie moment. As a fellow progressive, New York's new mayor has embraced a very similar formula. This is leading from the left at its best. best. The value of this legislation is not just on the merits. It's a reminder that a progressive form of bipartisanship is still possible, given leadership on the Democratic side, and it moves the public agenda in a progressive direction. Developer and private equity groups have been frantically working key House leaders to water it down. But given broad Republican support for the Senate version, most key provisions are likely to survive intact. In Vox, Eric Levitz suggested the

crackdown on corporate landlords just got more counterproductive. The bill would, among other things, erode regulatory obstacles to home building and encourage investment in affordable housing. The bill's Democratic co-sponsor, Elizabeth Warren, deserves credit for advancing these worthy causes. And yet, this legislation also includes a provision that would actually reduce the supply of housing, increase residential segregation, and mandate mass displacement, all to prevent private equity from building too many houses. Put differently, the policy would make housing in the United States less affordable for working-class Americans and less profitable for large corporations. Corporations do not buy houses to burn them down, but rather to rent them out.

Thus, whenever institutional investment subtracts a home from the buyer's market, it generally adds one to the rental market. Partly for this reason, corporate investment in single-family homes tends to reduce rents. In this way, institutional investment in existing homes presents a trade-off. It makes rental housing marginally more affordable while pushing home prices marginally higher. If one's primary concern is minimizing the number of Americans who cannot afford housing, this is a decent swap. Americans who can't qualify for a mortgage are more likely to be cost burdened than prospective home buyers. In the Los Angeles Times, Carlos Fernando Avenancio Leone said expanding housing access isn't enough. The bill is one of the most ambitious housing packages in

decades. Much of the conversation has centered understandably on supply, how to build more homes, reduce shortages and expand access to ownership. That matters. But supply is only part of the problem. Take California. In a state defined by severe housing shortages, extreme home prices and persistent racial gaps in homeownership, the challenge is not just helping families buy homes, but ensuring they can keep up with rising costs. Sustaining homeownership deserves the same attention as expanding access to it. The questions policymakers need to confront are not only about how to help people buy homes, to ensure those people can keep them without falling into financial distress. Too often, policymakers are laser-focused on the first half of the equation, expanding access. Our findings

point to the other half, when ownership's fixed costs, repair risks, and cash flow pressures begin to take their toll. The bill gets some things right, but the larger risk is that a housing agenda focused mainly on supply and access will only address one facet of the problem. That's it for what the right and left are saying. Now I'll pass it back to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for with the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. I'll be honest. I'm still trying to figure out if this bill should exist at all. Housing affordability is an undeniable issue and a salient one for voters.

Home prices went up 60% between 2019 and 2025 and are still rising, while renters across the country are feeling squeezed by throwing an increasingly large share of their income toward housing. The bill combines aspects of roughly 60 measures from across the political spectrum to try to tackle this issue. Yet the fundamental purpose of this bill is to solve a national housing shortage, which I'm not sure actually exists. What we have more precisely is an affordable housing shortage in select regions of the country and metropolitan areas in particular. There is no housing shortage in Decatur, Illinois, even if there is one in Brooklyn, New York. If you want to live on $432 a month, you can. It just might mean living somewhere you don't

want to live with fewer in-person career opportunities. That's obviously not an attractive prospect for many people, but I think it should narrow our focus on a solution to questions of where and what kind of new housing we want. In addition to the nuances of what a housing shortage actually means, some things Congress just can't change. One reason homes are expensive right now is that interest rates were at or near 0% for the better part of the last 20 years, meaning that a lot of people are unwilling to sell their homes and lose their favorable mortgages, thereby constricting supply. This seller's constraint is just as big a problem as restrictions on home construction, if not larger. Also, the homes modern Americans want are increasingly large and feature rich,

making new builds more expensive than the homes our parents and grandparents had available. And when you get into the details of this bill, I have a hard time sussing out whether or not it is a net win. I'm bullish on parts of it, skeptical of others, and I'm confident a few of its provisions are a net negative or distraction. I am bullish on the proposals that make manufactured housing easier to build, speed up environmental reviews, and generally push to reward localities for fewer regulations. Federal law currently defines manufactured homes as not just manufactured off-site, but transportable and built on a permanent chassis. They currently cost about half as much per square foot as site-built homes, and this bill removes the chassis requirement, which can meaningfully expand where they are

permitted. That is a genuine, clear-cut win. The bill would also make investing in public welfare projects that provide affordable housing easier for banks, another win. Each of these is an intersection between the abundance left and the supply side right, and we should all be encouraged when Congress shows us it can still do big, bold things with a bipartisan consensus. I'm far more skeptical of the carrot and stick approach of federal dollars going to local municipalities to build more and being cut for those that don't. Supporters of this approach could point to a 2025 Golden and Sacks report, which found that relaxing land use regulations could add 2.5 million housing units over the next a decade. But again, where those houses are built and at what price matters far more than whether

they are built at all. Congress has tried to address this by tying the entitlements in Section 106 to community development block grant recipients, which are cities with 50,000 or more people. This is a good way to target the bill. And other provisions like the $200 million innovation fund are competitive grant programs that probably won't apply to places, particularly rural areas, without shortages. Yet the risk here is that the pork barrel approach is going to encourage local leaders to act in ways that their constituents may not want and that may not be necessary. To put it differently, we need more density in urban and metropolitan areas with jobs,

public transit, and office buildings. But what about places like Austin, Texas, which have already addressed their housing shortage and now have too much supply? Should they be able to collect federal dollars to keep building even when they don't need to? A very possible outcome to me is that these federal dollars end up supporting housing where it isn't needed, or that the kind of housing built in response isn't the kind of housing that's in demand. The part of the bill I'm confident is a net negative is perhaps the one that's driven the most commentary, the ban on institutional investors.

Managing editor Ari Weitzman already broke this down a few months ago on our podcast, but the corporations buying up housing narrative is mostly a boogeyman. institutional investors own roughly 0.65% of single-family homes, according to most estimates, and the institutional investors who buy up and build to rent developments are actually easing the housing crunch by converting unlivable properties into rentals. I get why blaming big corporations for everything is easy, especially if you see them buying up homes in your neighborhood or building massive developments next door. Yet, if they get pushed out of this market, our affordability problem probably gets worse,

not better. The policy is popular politically, so Trump insisted it be included, but it's among the worst provisions here. One remarkable angle on this legislation is what it doesn't do. The federal government is spending a lot of money, but it's not sending any new funding toward affordable housing projects or to address higher construction and material costs. That's largely due to how the bill was passed. Initially, it was an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA. That means it had to be budget neutral, which could be read as a bit of congressional spending restraint or a sign that the bill has fewer teeth than it needs to depending on your lens. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this housing bill is that it passed at all.

Housing policy is a bit dry, so this is unlikely to dominate the ex-feeds of culture warriors who are busy posting about the reflecting pool. But in 10 years, we may look back on this as one of the most significant pieces of legislation passed by Trump in his second term, and yet it never could have passed under a Democratic president, despite the fact it contains so many things Democrats have long sought. In fact, more Republicans than Democrats voted to oppose this bill, even though President Trump previously voiced his support for it.

Some conservatives are already expressing their sense of betrayal about that. Blaze TV host Daniel Horowitz gave a nearly hour-long monologue about how this bill represents the death knell of a bygone conservative movement, putting the blame squarely on the president, who is now promising not to sign the bill, even though it will become law with or without his signature. We won't see the downstream impacts of this bill for years, but I'll be watching for a few things,

where new housing will be built, what that housing actually costs, and what localities will do with the money they get from the honeypot. I'm excited to see a bipartisan, bicameral bill that will actually have real impact and get across the finish line, but I'm still unsure what that impact will really be. All right, that is it for my take. We have a dissent today from managing editor Ari Weitzman,

so I'm going to send it over to him for that quickly. This is Tangles Managing Editor Ari Weizmann with a staff dissent. I'll borrow Isaac's bullish slash skeptical framing and say that I am bullish on this bill, all of it. Even though I share the skepticism, which he is sharing with me about the impact of institutional investors, I think this bill is crafted very well to incentivize the localities that receive housing funding to do what they said they would do without over-applying it to areas that don't receive or need funding.

I also think that the bill's decision to avoid any action on, quote, affordable housing is smart, since legislating on a definitionally relativistic term like affordable is troublesome. In my opinion, I think this is the wonkish Elizabeth Warren at her best. and I'm optimistic that 10 years or so, after the law takes effect, it will have contributed to improved affordability in the desired areas in a meaningful way. That's it. So sending it back to the team for the rest of the pod. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, thanks, Ari. That brings us to your questions answered.

This one's from an anonymous reader in Alexandria, Virginia. They said, can you please explain Tulsi Gabbard's release document? and claims about the COVID-19 origin. What is the relationship to the report on this guru? I'm pretty confused about this, and my partner is supporting the claims, but I haven't seen any credible sources to back this up. Okay, so just to catch people up, Tulsi Gabbard announced her resignation as Director of National Intelligence in May,

saying that she needed to spend more time supporting her husband as he battled a rare form of cancer. These two unrelated stories broke on her way out the door. First, Gabbard has long supported the lab leak theory of COVID's origins, and on June 18, she declassified documents supporting the claim that Dr. Anthony Fauci oversaw funding that supported coronavirus research involving bat viruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and then lied to Congress about his role. The documents show intelligence officials debating Fauci's suggestions on which virologists to consult while investigating the lab leak theory before deferring to his recommendations. This supports the claim that Fauci guided intelligence officials toward experts more skeptical of the Lab League theory, but it doesn't support Gabbard's claims of a cover-up. Fauci has not commented on the allegations, but he has previously denied claims that he misrepresented the government's relationship with the Wuhan Lab or covered anything up. Fauci did, however, say under oath in 2024 testimony to Congress, that he did not, to my knowledge, speak to intelligence officials about viral research.

the documents Gabbard released directly contradict that testimony. As for the Guru story on Sunday, the Washington Post published a story about Gabbard's relationship with Chris Butler, an eccentric religious leader described as her guru and the leader of a breakaway hair Krishna group, the Science of Identity Foundation, that some ex-members have described as a cult. According to the report, Butler closely managed Gabbard's public statements while she was a member of Congress, and she at times quoted his talking points to reporters nearly verbatim. Gabbard has not commented on the story, but her spokesperson has denied the reports,

claiming they were an example of anti-Hindu bigotry. All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to Audrey for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Next up, I have this day in history. On June 24, 1374, the townspeak of Akhen, Germany, gathered in the streets,

joined hands and began to dance, and dance, and dance, and dance. They danced for days on end, twirling, whirling, screaming and shouting, even as their bodies showed signs of injury, until finally the participants collapsed from exhaustion. The outbreak of dancing soon spread up the Rhine River into France and the Netherlands, frightening priests, merchants, and neighbors who hadn't succumbed to the dancing mania. The outbreak became known as St. John's dance because it began on the feast of St. John. Though the 1374, outbreak subsided after a few months, it was neither the first nor last episode of Coriomania in medieval Europe. Coriomania outbreaks are well documented by medieval authors and public records, and many theories have

been advanced to explain the phenomenon. In the Middle Ages, some believed the dancers to be victims of demonic possession. Others thought spider bites caused the frenzy. More recently, some scientists have theorized the ergotism, a poisoning known to cause hallucinations brought on by eating rye infected with a certain fungus was the culprit. However, those theories don't account for the spread, timing, or full symptoms of the afflicted. Some historians and psychologists believe instead that the dancing contagion was a psychological phenomenon, a sort of mass hysteria brought on by depression and fear in the aftermath of the bubonic plague. But choreomania's cause or causes remain a mystery. Finally, our have-nice day story. It took once Samadran

orangutan exactly 60 seconds to make history. Arangetans are highly endangered species, and when a road through their habitat in North Sumatra Indonesia made survival even more difficult, conservationists installed a special bridge for wildlife in 2024. Members of the Samatran orangutan Society, or SOS, have been monitoring the area ever since, hoping an orangutan would use the intervention. In the first video ever recorded of the species crossing a wildlife bridge, a young male orangutan puts one foot after another on a human-made woven structure. Helen Buckland, the SOS chief executive, said,

quote, you should have heard the cries of delight from the team. After two long years, it's finally happened. The Guardian has the story and the video, and you can find those linked in the show notes. All right, everyone, that's all we have for today. If you would like to support our work, head over to retingle.com, where you can buy a newsletter subscription,

podcast subscription, or a bundle subscription that gets you a discount on both. In the meantime, this has been Associate Editor, Audrey Moorhead. For Isaac and everyone else, have a nice day. And peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul and our executive producer is John Wall.

Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Cowback and associate editor's Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To run more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.