Landmark federal housing legislation could help provide more subsidized affordable housing if local elected officials make full use of its provisions, but its potential effects on market-rate housing are less certain.
That’s the analysis offered by Tucson’s Director of Housing and Community Development Ann Chanecka and Southern Arizona Home Builders Association President David Godlewski, who spoke with AZPM.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is a mashup of housing bills the House of Representatives and Senate have been working on for months. The two chambers are currently resolving differences between their respective versions before likely sending the legislation to President Donald Trump, whose administration has endorsed it. Several versions of the bill have enjoyed widespread bipartisan support in Congress.
Chanecka said three reforms currently on the table could be most impactful in Tucson. One would allow Community Development Block Grants — one of the most common and versatile types of federal funding received by local governments — to be used for new affordable housing construction. Chanecka said Tucson usually receives between $5 million and $6 million in those grants each year.
She said provisions easing environmental reviews for some affordable housing projects receiving federal funds could provide new housing faster and more cheaply.
“Even areas that have been developed multiple times, there’s still quite a bit of a process and it can be costly,” she said.
Taken all together, local housing agencies like Chanecka’s, which subsidize affordable housing projects, receive over two-thirds of their funding from the federal government, according to the Urban Institute.
Chanecka also highlighted a provision in the bill ending a requirement that manufactured homes be built on a metal chassis.
“Originally, it was in part a requirement to be able to help transport them, move them, but what we’ve found today is about 95% don’t move,” she said.
Ending that requirement could make manufactured homes between $5,000 and $10,000 cheaper, the Niskanen Center think tank estimated. Chanecka said that many modern manufactured homes don’t resemble traditional mobile homes. She said that, in the future, allowing them across more zoning districts, such as single-family residential areas, could greatly expand lower-cost housing options.
Chanecka said there is one policy she hoped to see in the bill’s latest version that appears not to have made the cut: an affordable housing waiver for requirements that federally funded infrastructure projects be built with American-made materials. She said that requirement can significantly drive up costs for builders of affordable housing.
While Chanecka’s department deals mainly with housing projects subsidized by the government, most new houses and apartments built across the country are market-rate and don’t receive government funds. Godlewski, the builders association president, said the federal bill’s impact on market-rate housing is less clear.
“It’s good, but it will require, I think, time for us to know for sure, and then, steps taken by local government to try and implement the essence or the key elements and apply it to market-rate housing,” he said.
Godlewski pointed to parts of the bill funding grant programs local governments could apply for to help them streamline their permitting processes, which he said can eat up significant time and resources for builders. Chanecka said Tucson recently received a similar grant for affordable housing specifically.
But Godlewski said market-rate homebuilding in southern Arizona remains slow because of deeper, underlying issues.
“We’ve not created the jobs, we don’t have the increasing wages and income to create the demand for the housing,” he said.
According to census data, Pima County saw about 4,600 new housing units built in 2025, while Maricopa County saw over 31,000. That’s almost seven times as many, despite Maricopa County being only about 4.3 times as populous as Pima County. Godlewski attributed the difference in growth patterns partly to local attitudes toward development projects.
“It seems like when we do have interest, there’s a lot of community opposition. And so, there’s concern that we’re sending signals to employers that southern Arizona isn’t open for business,” he said.
Godlewski specified that houses in fast-growing places aren’t necessarily more accessible to buyers. According to census data, the average cost of a single-family home in Maricopa County is over five times the county’s median household’s annual income, compared to 4.5 times in Pima County. Average rent as a fraction of median household income is also higher in Maricopa County than in Pima County.
The number of housing permits issued in the Tucson area began dropping sharply in 2005 and has not significantly rebounded since.
