By Alex Putterman,
A 4-story 68 unit multi-family residential building on the Post Road West in Westport photographed on December 11, 2025.
Federal legislation aimed at spurring more housing construction, including in Connecticut’s Fairfield County, awaits President Donald Trump’s approval, after the president reneged on plans to sign it Wednesday.
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, who represents southwestern Connecticut, introduced several provisions in the bill and described it this week as a productive step toward creating more housing in his district and elsewhere.
“The whole country has a housing crisis, and Fairfield County has a particularly intense housing crisis,” Himes, a Democrat, told CT Insider. “It is the rare 20-something that can afford to live in Fairfield County.”
The housing legislation cleared both the Senate and House by wide margins this week, and Trump had planned to sign the bill Wednesday. An hour and a half before a scheduled ceremony, however, he announced he would not do so until the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, an unrelated bill that would introduce new voter identification requirements.
The White House did not immediately respond Wednesday when asked whether Trump would veto the housing legislation.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have touted the newly passed bill, which includes dozens of proposals aimed at spurring construction and increasing affordability in different ways. Among other things, it would reduce federal regulations, streamline environmental reviews and curb the influence of corporate landlords by limiting their ability to purchase single-family homes.
While some pro-housing lawmakers and advocates, including U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, have questioned whether the bill will meaningfully bring down housing costs, Himes said it was worth celebrating nonetheless.
“I wouldn’t try to sell it as a profound change, but on the margin, especially since it comes out of a polarized and dysfunctional Congress, it’s something to be proud of,” he said.
Himes, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, contributed two provisions to the final product. One would offer more Community Development Block Grant funding to municipalities that increase their housing supply, while the other would allow for more loans to help finance manufactured homes — meaning homes built in a factory.
The block grant proposal, Himes said, is intended to spur construction in towns that receive significant funding through that program, including Fairfield County communities, such as Norwalk and Fairfield.
“It would give those towns that accelerate their rate of housing construction additional CDBG funds, and it would penalize communities that fell off in their construction of housing,” Himes said.
Erin Boggs, executive director of the Hartford-based Open Communities Alliance, said she was glad to see Congress pass housing legislation and particularly appreciated provisions providing new zoning guidance and placing restrictions on corporate ownership of homes.
“Any forward progress on housing affordability in this political climate is worth celebrating,” Boggs said. “The fact that we have this bill at all demonstrates the growing bipartisan recognition that the nation’s housing crisis is a real thing.”
Still, she said, she hopes future legislation can go further, such as by establishing new funds for rental assistance, the preservation of deeply affordable housing and rewards for communities whose zoning laws allow for more affordable units.
Murphy, according to The Hill, called the new legislation “marginally helpful in my state” but lamented that there were “no new real dollars” and “doesn’t unlock a lot of our permitting and zoning problems.”
In a statement, Murphy nonetheless praised the bill as “a necessary first step to addressing this crisis by making it easier to build more homes, simplifying how we repair older homes, and creating consequences for the greedy corporations gobbling up single-family homes in our neighborhoods just to jack up rent on families.”
Another Connecticut congressman, Rep. John Larson, also praised the legislation in a statement this week, hailing its “common-sense solutions to build more homes in our communities, bring down costs and take action to protect renters from corporate landlords.”
While housing policy has often been highly partisan in Connecticut — with Democrats supporting reforms to increase construction statewide and most Republicans preferring “local control” of housing decision — the federal legislation proved fairly uncontroversial, passing 85-5 in the Senate and 358-32 in the House.
That didn’t stop Trump from balking Wednesday, seeking to create leverage to pass his bill on voter identification requirements, which lacks sufficient support in the Senate.
Republicans and Democrats both expressed surprise and confusion about Trump’s cancellation of the signing ceremony, with U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina proclaiming the president’s reversal “makes no sense” and Himes saying he “threw a tantrum.”
“He doesn’t give a damn about helping Americans,” Himes said on Facebook.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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