The 21st Century Road to Housing Act

Affordable housing, good intentions, and negative effects on Greenwich

Congress recently passed the 21st Road to Housing Act with strong bipartisan support. An amazing accomplishment for this Congress. It was bipartisan because regardless of whether it is a blue state or a red state, the voters want more affordable housing and it’s an election year.

The law became effective on July 11, 2026, without President Trump’s signature. He wasn’t opposed to the act but was using it to try to get other unrelated legislation passed. In Greenwich, this Act is likely to have a slightly negative effect on Greenwich.

Title 2 - NEPA

This is a massive bill with dozens of provisions. For example, Title 2 of the Act gives housing projects an exemption from review under the National Environmental Policy Act. NEPA review was very rarely needed for projects in Greenwich, because we have few places for large projects. Making housing projects exempt in Greenwich when we were already not subject to them means no change.

Title 3 – Manufactured Housing

Title 3 is an unusual provision unless you were raised in a trailer park. Until passage of the 21stCRHA, trailer homes had to have a metal chassis so that they could be safely transported on highway. Trailer homes are considered a type of manufactured housing, and this category has expanded to a variety of types of manufactured housing.

For example, I’m working with a start-up created by a local architect, builder and financial backer to build manufactured accessory dwelling units in most areas of Greenwich. The units run from 600 to 1,200 s.f. so they comply with Planning and Zoning 2023 revised ADU regulations. These are high-end units that are made in Pennsylvania, trucked to Connecticut and dropped in place with a crane. The goal is to go from contract signing to certificate of occupancy in 2 – 3 months.

The 21stCRHA eliminates the requirement that these ADU, and all manufactured housing units have a steel undercarriage. This makes sense as these ADU units are not trailers, but ride on flatbeds. At the present time, the company is working through the town regulations one department at a time.

The elimination of chassis requirements could also open the door to small trailer parks in Greenwich. Just that phrase “trailer park” gets a visceral reaction from many people. Surprisingly, Westport had had a trailer park with a dozen or so trailers for decades with no problems.

The easiest way to increase the amount of affordable housing is to increase the density on a piece of property. Two units cut the land cost in half, but they need to be designed so that they have minimal impact on the neighborhood. Getting rid of steel chassis is a very small step.

Title 10 – Institutional investors

A variety of investor groups have bought thousands of homes across the U.S. to rent them out. The problem has been that in these areas, taking these houses off the market has resulted in fewer houses for sale and some argue higher rental prices. Now institutional investors are limited to owning only 350 houses. As far as I know, no institutional investors have bought any houses in Greenwich, given our $3.7 million median house price

The CDBG "growth penalty" (Build Now Act provision): The 21stCHRA law reduces future Community Development Block Grants by 10% for local governments where housing growth falls below the median growth rate for peer recipients. Greenwich, like many low-growth, land-constrained wealthy suburbs, is likely to take a 10% hit in our CDBG allocation. In reality, this is not much of a penalty given that our CDBG grant is under $1 million. The BET could easily cover this cut.

Lots of inapplicable or de minimis provisions

Greenwich is easily in the top 1% for luxury properties. Our price points are just way above the limits in the 21stCHRA so we are economically excluded from many grants. For example, the FHA loan limit increases, but not enough to buy anything but a small condo in Greenwich.

One exception is to have a much lower loan-to-value ratio, say a 40 or 50% LTV FHA loan. However, if you can put down 60%, the odds are good that you can qualify for a normal bank loan.

There is a grant for changing our zoning rules, but the Greenwich P&Z Commission and the RTM are very unlikely to do this to compete for a small grant. The total is only $200 million spread out among all 50 states.

The law also provides for pattern-book design grants. This actually isn’t a bad idea; it’s just that cookie-cutter doesn’t sell in Greenwich. It might work for ADU’s, but not for single-family homes.

Overall, Greenwich is just too different from other towns for any of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act to have a noticeable effect here. We get less than $1 million for the Community Development Block Grant. A 10% cut is a rounding error in our town budget, which is over half a billion dollars.

Mark Pruner and Russ Pruner are the founders of the Greenwich Streets Team at Compass. Mark can be reached at 203-817-2871 or [email protected].