By admin 
California House Democrats gathered Monday in Sacramento’s River District to showcase the type of housing development that they say a newly enacted bipartisan federal law will help make easier.
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The legislation, called the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, became law last month and seeks to speed up housing building across the nation. The majority of the provisions in the law will take time to implement and not immediately help the cost of rent and ownership in America.
Even so, the Sacramento-area House members — Reps. Ami Bera, D-Elk Grove ; Doris Matsui, D-Sacramento; and Mike Thompson, D-St. Helena — called it the most significant housing legislation passed in decades. Under the law, they said residents should expect more projects like Mirasol Village, a 427-unit mixed income housing community on Richards Bouelvard.
The final phase of Mirasol Village was completed last year after more than a decade of collaboration between the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, city, county, state and federal partners to secure the $330 million needed to build the community. The land was previously the site of the Twin Rivers public housing complex.
“We have to have projects like Mirasol Village — that provide affordable housing, that provide rental housing, that are close to transit-oriented light rail for folks to move around,” said Bera, as he and the others stood in the Mirasol Village park at the center of the community.
The landmark new federal law contains dozens of components including loosening regulations to build housing, making it cheaper to build manufactured homes and rewarding communities that build. It also limits home purchases by large corporate investors, expands federal eligibility for affordable housing grants and creates a pilot program for local governments to prioritize housing on vacant lots.
Matsui said many of these provisions will be particularly beneficial to the Sacramento region “we already know how to use these programs.”
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“For years, SHRA, our local governments, and our community partners have made federal programs … go further than anyone had the right to expect to turn aging properties and underused land into housing,” Matsui said. “This law hands them a better set of tools.”
What is unclear is how quickly Sacramento residents will begin to see the benefits of the law. Any new housing often takes local municipalities years to plan and build.
“Nothing will be immediate,” Thompson said. “All of it has to be finalized, and all of it has to go through a process to ensure that the public has maximum opportunity to comment.”
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law through an unusual process. After overwhelmingly passing both chambers in Congress, President Donald Trump declined to sign the bill in protest for Senate Republicans failing to pass the SAVE America Act — an unrelated bill that would tighten voting restrictions.
His decision was largely symbolic as he did not veto the housing bill, and it became law automatically 10 days later.
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