For a generation, Arkansas communities have faced different housing pressures. Northwest Arkansas is working to keep pace with rapid growth. Rural communities struggle to attract builders, while older cities contend with vacant and aging housing. These challenges may look different, but they share a common cause: Arkansas needs more homes, in more places and at prices more people can afford.
Now, with Congress' passage of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, Arkansas isn't just part of the national response. It's leading it.
Signed into law July 11 with 443 votes, the act is the most significant federal housing package in decades, touching regulatory barriers, housing finance, rural and manufactured housing, and providing the tools communities need to build more. House Financial Services Chairman French Hill was one of its principal architects, building the House package, steering it through committee and floor votes, and negotiating the final deal with the Senate. It was a genuinely bipartisan effort involving leaders from both chambers and both parties, but Arkansas should recognize that one of the champions for the legislation was a member of our own congressional delegation.
Passing a bill is only half the job. Now another Arkansan will play an important role in determining how much of that policy becomes reality.
Congressman Steve Womack chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development. Womack's position gives him an influential voice in determining whether the law's best ideas, planning grants, pattern-book grants, conversion programs, and pilot programs receive the resources necessary to help communities produce housing.
However, Arkansas shouldn't wait for Washington. Provisions included in the law validate what my organization, Groundwork, has argued: No single fix solves this. We need more homes, in more places, at lower cost.
Solutions include a proposal for Arkansas to become the first state with a comprehensive catalog of pre-approved housing plans, and the act's new Pattern Book Grant Program can help local governments select and implement exactly that kind of pre-reviewed design for accessory dwelling units, duplexes, quad-plexes, townhouses and even small apartment buildings. There needs to be a review of Arkansas' building code to make small apartment buildings and missing-middle housing cheaper to build without cutting corners on safety, and the act directs HUD to write guidelines for single-stair apartment buildings and fund testing of their safety and feasibility. To attract more modular home builders and factories, states should adopt a single, consistent statewide building code for modular housing. The act reinforces this by directing HUD and the FHA to fix financing barriers so modular projects can access the capital they need.
Other policy work that will build on this includes advocating for smaller multi-family buildings to be built more efficiently, expanding where multi-family housing is allowed, establishing a state land-bank authority, and re-examining lot sizes for starter homes. All to make development approvals quicker and more predictable.
The ROAD to Housing Act gives Arkansas an extraordinary opportunity, but opportunities are not self-executing. Our cities must plan and prepare. State officials must modernize outdated rules. Developers, lenders, nonprofits, churches, and philanthropic organizations must build partnerships. Groundwork will continue working to connect these participants and translate federal, state and local policy into practical housing solutions.
Two of our own led this law into existence. Arkansas should use that momentum, and the General Assembly and local governments should treat this as their cue to move now: Pass code reforms, rezone for missing-middle housing, and ensure as few barriers as possible exist between an empty lot and a new home. Federal law only opens the door; leadership means being first through it.
Chairman Hill helped turn years of bipartisan housing work into federal law. Chairman Womack now has an opportunity to help ensure that its most productive provisions have the resources to succeed. Communities throughout the state must be ready, and willing, to use those tools.
Read the article on the Democrat Gazette here: OPINION | DUKE McLARTY: Housing policy is running through Arkansas