Trump Cancels Bill Banning Hedge Funds from Buying Family Homes — For a Voter ID Law Congress Won't Pass
For millions of Americans priced out of the housing market while corporate landlords snap up entire neighbourhoods, Wednesday was supposed to be the day help finally arrived. Instead, President Donald Trump cancelled the signing of a landmark housing bill just hours before it was due to become law, tying it to a separate voter ID measure that Congress has repeatedly refused to pass.The median home price in the US now sits at around $403,000, up 77% from roughly $227,000 in 2011, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis. And to afford the average home today, a household needs an annual income of $116,780. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act had been widely seen as the most serious federal attempt in decades to address that crisis, until Trump abruptly pulled the plug on its signing ceremony.Housing Bill Promised A Rare Crackdown On Mega-LandlordsThe legislation is the most comprehensive housing bill in decades, aimed at increasing housing supply and bringing down costs, including by limiting institutional investors from purchasing certain single-family homes. A provision in the bill would cap the number of single-family homes that institutional investors can buy across the US at 350 properties, targeting private equity firms and real estate investment trusts that have accumulated large residential portfolios since the 2007-08 housing crash.The scale of the problem those provisions were designed to fix is not evenly spread. In Jacksonville, Florida, investors own more than 20% of single-family rental homes, according to a 2026 US Government Accountability Office analysis. Between 2018 and 2024, Dallas and Phoenix each added at least 16,000 investor-owned homes, rising 177% and 114% respectively over that period. For renters and first-time buyers in those markets, the bill's delay is not a political abstraction.
Trump cancels housing event, ties it to SAVE AMERICA Act.
Screenshot from TruthSocial/@realDonaldTrump
Trump's Last-Minute Change Of CourseTrump posted on Truth Social on Wednesday morning, writing: 'Today's Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.' The post appeared roughly an hour before he was due at the Capitol.The bill he shelved had earned rare, cross-party support. The Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act by a vote of 89 to 10 in March, while the House had earlier approved it with similarly strong bipartisan backing. Rep. French Hill, who chairs the House Financial Services Committee and led the housing bill in the House, said on Wednesday that Trump 'picked the day, and now he's chosen to change the day.'The Voter ID Law Trump Is DemandingThe SAVE America Act, the legislation Trump is now conditioning his signature on, would require individuals to provide documentary proof of US citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, and mandates that states remove non-citizens from voter rolls.It has not come close to passing. The bill needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. Republicans hold 53 seats and would need at least seven Democratic votes, which have not materialised. Attempts to force it through via budget reconciliation have also failed, with four Senate Republicans, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis, joining all Democrats to block its inclusion on two separate occasions.Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been unambiguous about the arithmetic. 'We don't have the votes either to proceed, get on a talking filibuster nor sustain one if we got on it, but that's just a function of math, and there isn't anything I can do about that,' Thune told reporters, adding: 'It's about the votes. It's about the math. And I'm — for better or worse — I'm the one who has to be the clear-eyed realist about what we can achieve here.'
Ten-Day Countdown Puts Families In LimboUnder Article I, Section 7 of the US Constitution, if the president does not sign a bill within ten days of presentment while Congress is in session, the bill automatically becomes law. Speaker Johnson indicated that window is now being used as leverage. 'He has a window of time before he has to sign a bill, and he's going to use a little bit more of that window of time,' Johnson said. 'He'll do it within that 10-day window.'What that means in practice is that the families, renters and first-time buyers who had the most to gain from the housing bill are now caught in a political standoff with no clear resolution, waiting on a voter ID fight that Congress has already shown, twice, it cannot resolve.
