# What This Bill Does: Making It Easier to Build Affordable Housing

This bill creates a federal grant program to help cities, towns, and tribal governments speed up the process of building affordable housing. The key idea is to use pre-approved building designs—sometimes called "pattern books"—that have already been checked against local building codes and zoning rules. Instead of developers having to wait months for each new housing project to go through the approval process, they can use these pre-reviewed designs and get permits faster.

The grants would go to local governments and organizations to select and adopt these standardized housing designs for smaller residential buildings. The bill specifically focuses on buildings with up to 25 units, including duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, townhouses, and other small multi-family housing types. The goal is to create mixed-income developments where people earning different amounts can live together in the same community. Importantly, the grant money can only be used for planning and design work—not for actually building the houses. The bill requires that at least 10 percent of the funding go to rural areas to ensure smaller communities benefit too.

To make sure the program actually works, the bill requires cities and towns receiving grants to report back on how many housing units actually got built using these designs and how many building permits were issued. If a community receives a grant but doesn't actually adopt the designs within five years, they may have to return the money. The federal government will also collect information about which designs work best and share that information publicly so other communities can learn from successful examples.

To authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to award grants to eligible entities to select pre-reviewed designs of covered structures of mixed-income housing for use in the jurisdiction of the eligible entity, and for other purposes.