Trump cancels signing of landmark bipartisan bill aimed at lowering housing costs

US President Donald Trump has cancelled the signing of a landmark bill aimed at lowering Americans' housing costs.

Both chambers of Congress earlier approved the legislation in a rare bipartisan move, signalling how pressing the issue has become for American voters across the political divide.

Trump wrote on social media that he would not sign the bill until a separate law on stringent voter ID requirements is passed. But unless the president vetoes the housing bill - or Congress adjourns - it will become law after ten days.

The bill, known as the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, has two key aims: reducing housing costs and increasing housing supply.

Experts have described the bill as the most comprehensive action from Congress on housing policy in the 21st century. It includes more than 40 provisions that target many housing-related issues.

But hours before he was expected to formalise its provisions into law, Trump posted on social media, saying: "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."

Housing has become a major issue in the US, with 89% of voters from across the political spectrum wanting action from Congress to make housing more affordable, according to a survey taken by the Bipartisan Policy Center this spring.

"Legislators and their staff really did their homework here to try to put together a package that was going to try to address a lot of concerns at once," said David Gonzalez Rice, of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).

Among the provisions in the bill are efforts to make it easier to build homes and limits on how many single-family homes institutional investors can buy nationwide.

With a shortfall of more than four million housing units last year, according to an estimate from Realtor.com, the legislation targets the supply issue directly.

"Everyone can understand the idea that the more supply you build, the more it's going to exert downward pressure on prices in your community," Jared Grigas, Legislative Director at the National Association of Counties (NACO), said.

It also works to empower local governments to improve housing supply, "more than trying to micromanage them," Grigas noted, getting rid of red tape and easing bureaucratic processes.

Both parties are taking the legislation's success as their own with November's midterm elections quickly approaching.

"It's an achievement in terms of bipartisan policymaking in Washington, which is itself a recognition of how important this issue of housing affordability has become for the American public," said Francis Torres, the housing and infrastructure director at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

He says there is a widespread recognition that there is an underlying housing supply problem that is driving America's housing affordability challenges.

The median home price in the US is roughly $403,000 (£306,350), up from about $223,000 in 2010, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.

A US family needs an income of about $117,000 a year to afford an average home on the market, according to the real estate broker Redfin, but that is nearly $30,000 more than what most US households earn, according to Census data.

Potential homebuyers also face high inflation and high interest rates, which have made homeownership even more out of reach for many Americans.

Republicans in Congress, especially those facing an uphill battle in their November races, have touted the bill's incentives to speed up home-building as they vie to maintain control of both chambers of Congress and need legislative successes to do so.

They have emphasized that the legislation will lower costs and help Americans achieve "the dream of homeownership".

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, one of the co-sponsors of the bill, said it encourages local government to speed up the process of homebuilding. Local governments that build more housing will get more federal money.

"If you don't build more housing, you should lose those incentives, and they should go to the places where you're building more housing," he said on the floor of the Senate on Monday.

Democrats like Massachusetts' Elizabeth Warren, who also co-sponsored the legislation, have been touting the restrictions on institutional investors purchasing single-family homes.

"Rent's too high, homes are too expensive and for too long the federal government (has been) totally asleep at the switch, and we changed that today," Warren said after the Senate vote.

In addition to the frequently discussed provisions included in the measure, several smaller ones will also have an impact on often forgotten communities, experts say.

There is a provision that will ensure that communities impacted by natural disasters will be able to get money on the ground to rebuild quickly. Another provision will ensure that affordable housing remains available in rural areas of the US.

"It's an accumulation of ideas, each of which moves the needle a little bit, but together they make up something meaningful," Torres said.

"This bill is not going to be the thing that will change your rent cost in the summer of 2026 necessarily, but it is a crucial first step at the federal level to facilitate some important actions to add housing supply."