Scott, a free-market conservative, pivoted toward bipartisanship, partnering with Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a progressive firebrand long critical of housing inequities, to advance S. 2651, the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025—a sweeping omnibus bill that not only preserved but expanded every major program Trump targeted for elimination.
Their collaboration was methodical and rooted in pragmatism. Scott and Warren drew on years of committee groundwork, including a precursor 2023 ROAD Act co-led by Scott (then ranking member) and Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.). In early 2025, they convened multiple hearings with stakeholders—developers, nonprofits, mayors, and economists—to identify pain points like zoning barriers and administrative red tape.
Warren, leveraging her expertise from the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, pushed for tenant protections and anti-discrimination measures, while Scott emphasized supply-side incentives like tax credits to spur private investment. Together, they synthesized input into 40 member-driven provisions, 36 with House companions, ensuring broad buy-in.
The duo's chemistry shone in drafting: Warren championed expansions to safeguard vulnerable populations, such as permanently authorizing HUD's Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program by lifting its cap on converting distressed public housing to vouchers—directly countering Trump's plan to gut public housing funding.
This would preserve over 275,000 affordable units annually.
Scott secured reforms streamlining Housing Choice Voucher inspections, allowing federally financed units to bypass redundant checks, accelerating placements for 2 million low-income families and bypassing Trump's proposed two-year time limits on aid.
They also boosted the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) with enhanced allocations, modernized rural rental assistance to decouple it from maturing mortgages, and created a $500 million Innovation Fund for communities tackling homelessness through flexible grants—flipping Trump's 50% cut to HUD's Continuum of Care program.
By late July, their efforts culminated in a unanimous 24-0 committee markup on July 29, 2025—the first comprehensive bipartisan housing package in over a decade.
Scott introduced S. 2651 on August 1, framing it as "pro-growth" reform to "build more homes, faster."
Warren hailed it as a "lifeline" against evictions.
They then lobbied to attach it to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), rallying 28 housing groups and the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Though ultimately excised from the final NDAA amid GOP fiscal hawks, the bill passed the full Senate on October 10 before stalling in reconciliation. The move came after Scott urged his House colleagues to include the housing measures in the crucial defense bill.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, an Arkansas Republican, said that the Senate housing bill did not match his own proposal to tackle housing costs, and that he wanted to pursue a stand-alone bill in order to hammer out the differences.
“I share the president’s goals of expanding Americans’ access to housing that fits their needs by reducing regulatory roadblocks to development, increasing housing supply and choice, and strengthening accountability," Hill said. "Next year, we look forward to working with our Senate colleagues to send a bill to the president’s desk that reflects the views of both chambers and leads to more affordable choices for America’s homeowners and renters.”
Scott-Warren's unlikely alliance—bridging Scott's opportunity zones focus with Warren's equity lens—demonstrated the Senate’s capacity for compromise amid polarization, but by expanding LIHTC by 12.5%, launching whole-home repair pilots with $1 billion in forgivable loans, and reforming disaster recovery grants, S. 2651 projected to add 100,000 affordable units yearly, defying Trump's austerity and prioritizing supply over cuts repeats a recipe for disaster.
Their model of shared hearings and repetitive drafting offers a blueprint for future gridlock-busting legislation, proving housing's transcendence of partisan vows.
However, S. 2651’s massive expansion of vouchers, LIHTC, and public housing subsidies could flood markets with demand while supply lags. Artificially inflated rents, overleveraged developers, and moral hazard from permanent guarantees risk a 2008-style bubble: when federal funding inevitably tightens, values crash, leaving taxpayers holding trillions in defaults.
Editorial comments expressed in this column are the sole opinion of the writer.
