House Speaker Mike Johnson announced Sunday he will transmit the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act to President Trump on Monday, starting a 10-day constitutional clock. The bill becomes law with or without Trump’s signature around July 11. Trump canceled a Capitol signing ceremony June 24, conditioning action on Senate passage of the SAVE America Act — election integrity legislation requiring proof of citizenship to register and photo ID to vote. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said his chamber lacks 60 votes to break a Democratic filibuster. The Senate did not move. The clock starts Monday regardless.
Trump’s position on the priority was straightforward. The SAVE Act addresses who casts ballots in federal elections. The House passed it in February. Polling shows more than 80 percent of Americans support voter ID requirements. A simple Senate majority can modify or eliminate the filibuster. Thune declined to use it. The SAVE Act stayed in procedure. The housing bill moves to Trump’s desk with nothing extracted on election integrity.
The housing bill is a supply-side incentive structure. Federal infrastructure grants flow to localities that authorize and break ground on new housing. No zoning mandates. No preemption of local land-use authority. The bill restricts institutional investors owning 350 or more single-family homes from purchasing additional properties — a provision covering roughly 0.34 percent of national housing stock, per a 2026 GAO analysis. It modernizes FHA small-dollar mortgage products. No locality is required to permit a single additional unit.
Colorado illustrates the bill’s limits. The state’s housing shortage exceeds 100,000 units. Permit wait times in Denver rose 75 percent between 2020 and 2023, adding up to $24,000 in costs per affected project. Seventy-seven percent of Denver land is zoned exclusively single-family. The state issued 32,185 residential permits in 2024, down 18.3 percent from the prior year. Colorado operates 334 separate zoning jurisdictions. The state legislature has passed incremental ADU and transit-oriented zoning measures since 2021. Local governments have not changed their underlying rules.
Federal housing money has reached Colorado before — HUD Community Development Block Grants, HOME Investment Partnerships, and American Rescue Plan housing provisions. The zoning structure did not change. The new bill contains no enforcement mechanism tied to long-term unit production. A locality can authorize a small number of units, collect the grant, and leave its zoning rules intact.
Trump called the bill “of minor importance” and has not threatened a veto. The 358–32 House margin and 85–5 Senate vote clear the two-thirds threshold for a veto override if he does. Johnson’s transmittal Monday sets the clock. The SAVE Act remains in Senate procedure. The housing bill becomes law on constitutional terms. Colorado’s 334 zoning jurisdictions will each decide what to do with the incentive — the same way they have decided before.
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