Why YIMBY Action Supports the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act

Read the Housing Coalition letter of support HERE.

The Senate's bipartisan permitting reform package is mostly being talked about as an energy and infrastructure bill. But tucked inside are significant federal housing reforms: changes that would cut red tape on federally funded affordable homes and help get more housing built, faster.

The coalition of supporters includes the National Association of Home Builders, the National Community Development Association, Up For Growth Action, the Niskanen Center, the Institute for Progress, and National Multifamily Housing Association. YIMBY Action brings our grassroots support of chapters from Tucson to Pittsburgh to Marin in urging Congress to pass it.

The problem: we're millions of homes short

America is short roughly 3.78 million homes, according to Up For Growth's 2025 Housing Underproduction Report. That gap shows up as rising rents, bidding wars, longer commutes, and neighbors priced out of the places they call home.

Policymakers in both parties now agree we need to make it easier to build. Congress took a real step last year with the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (P.L. 119-101). But this multifaceted problem requires many more steps to achieving housing abundance. BAAJA takes on one of these key problems: the federal paperwork attached to federal housing dollars.

Here's the irony. When the federal government helps pay for affordable homes, those projects face more red tape than private market-rate housing. Federally assisted housing can trigger lengthy environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and historic preservation reviews under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. That's on top of whatever local red tape they might face.

The costs are real. Affordable housing developers report delays of a year or longer to clear environmental review, and up to three months just to confirm a project is exempt from review, even for infill projects that barely disturb the ground. Often a project ends up in review not because of what it is, but because of which funding sources it uses. Sometimes the delays drag on so long that the whole project, and its funding, falls apart. Frequently, affordable housers avoid using federal funds that would otherwise benefit the project, all in an effort to avoid triggering these cumbersome reviews.

What BAAJA does, in plain language

BAAJA stops treating federal money as a reason for a full federal review. In practice, it would:

• Take loans and loan guarantees out of NEPA. If the only federal involvement in a housing project is a loan or loan guarantee, that alone would no longer trigger environmental review. Most grant-funded projects would be exempt too, unless the federal government is the one really running the project. That could cover FHA multifamily mortgage insurance, which backed about $9.8 billion in loans in FY2025, pending a HUD determination.
• Take financial-assistance-only projects out of Section 106 historic review, unless the money is mainly for historic preservation.
• Stop duplicate reviews. Qualifying state or Tribal environmental reviews could stand in for federal NEPA review, so projects don't do the same work twice.
• Speed up what's left. It makes categorical exclusions easier to use and sets deadlines for federally supported housing reviews.
• Streamline Clean Water Act permits, which could save up to an estimated $425,000 in permitting costs per project and helps private home builders too.

The programs that stand to benefit include Community Development Block Grants (CDBG and disaster-recovery CDBG-DR), HOME, public housing assistance, Homeless Assistance Grants, USDA housing loans, and HUD Economic Development Initiative grants. All told, at least $10 billion a year in federal housing and community development funding would move faster.

BAAJA builds on the ROAD to Housing Act, which streamlined reviews for small HOME infill projects and USDA infill. BAAJA extends that relief to a much wider set of programs, written into law.

Why it matters

For local YIMBY advocates, this isn't abstract. Our chapters fight hard to get affordable homes approved at city hall, but if the federal funding for those homes is locked up by additional cumbersome reviews, communities won’t get the affordable housing they desperately need.

Consider Palatine Meadows in North Carolina. After Hurricane Florence destroyed homes in 2018, the state used HUD disaster-recovery funds to build a 60-unit affordable apartment complex for displaced residents. A public records review by Grist found the project took more than five years, including nearly two years in environmental review before construction could even start. By then, many of the families it was meant to help had already moved away.

Under BAAJA, a project like that could skip much of that duplicative review and break ground far sooner. Because affordable projects usually benefit from stacking several funding sources, including tax credits plus HOME, CDBG, FHA or USDA financing, they stand to benefit most by reducing the administrative burden placed on each of those revenue sources.

What's next

On Monday, November 9, the Senate voted 73–25 to advance BAAJA and open floor debate (CNBC). Amendments and a final passage vote are expected this week. Some senators who voted to advance the bill have said they're still uncommitted on final passage, so every call counts.

If it clears the Senate, BAAJA heads to the House, where leaders in both parties will need to bring it to the floor. YIMBY Action and our coalition partners are already urging House members to pass it too. You can send an email to your Congressperson here.

Most of the debate over this bill has been about energy and infrastructure, and recent amendments address many of the top concerns environmentalists and tribal leaders have expressed. Our job is to make sure senators know it's a housing bill, too.

Federal legislation is rarely single-issue, which presents a major challenge for single issue organizations like YIMBY Action. How do we engage on federal legislation that - by definition - concerns issues that divide our membership and are out of our scope? In order to be effective at the federal level, YIMBY Action must choose to advocate loudly for portions of legislation that benefit housing and support bills that advance housing production, even when they contain other complex and unrelated issues. This advocacy will ensure that more legislation in the future contains pro-housing provisions, that those pro-housing provisions are not seen as expendable to legislators, and that increases the likelihood of single-issue bills in the future.

Take action: call your Senators today

The Senate vote is happening now. A two-minute call can make the difference.

1. Find your Senators at senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm, or call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected.
2. Use this script: "Hi, my name is [NAME] and I'm a constituent from [CITY]. I'm calling to urge Senator [NAME] to vote YES on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, S. 5653. Its housing provisions would cut federal red tape on affordable housing and help build more homes, faster. Thank you."
3. Tell us you called at [LINK], and share this post with your neighbors.

We can't solve a 3.78-million-home shortage while affordable projects sit in federal review for years. BAAJA is a rare bipartisan chance to fix that. Let's get it done.