S.Amdt. 4317

SA 4317 is an amendment intended for H.R. 6644, a bill to increase the housing supply in America. Its purpose is to add a section to the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 to identify regulatory barriers to housing supply.

The amendment aims to add a requirement for grant recipients to prepare and submit a description of their land use policies at least once every 5 years before receiving certain grants. Specifically, recipients must report on:

• Whether the jurisdiction adopted certain types of land use policies in the last 5 years.
• Plans to adopt and implement those policies.
• How the planned adoption of these policies would benefit the jurisdiction.

The policies to be considered include:

• Expanding by-right multifamily zoned areas.
• Allowing duplexes, triplexes, or fourplexes in areas zoned for single-family homes.
• Allowing manufactured homes in single-family residential zones.
• Allowing multifamily development in light manufacturing, office, and retail zones.
• Allowing single-room occupancy development where multifamily housing is permitted.
• Reducing minimum lot size.
• Coordinating historic preservation requirements to encourage housing in historic buildings and districts.
• Increasing allowable floor area ratio.
• Creating transit-oriented development zones.
• Shortening or streamlining permitting processes.
• Reducing or eliminating off-street parking requirements.
• Ensuring utility investment and impact fees reflect infrastructure needs and mitigate impacts on affordability.
• Allowing prefabricated or off-site construction.
• Reducing or eliminating minimum unit square footage.
• Converting office units to apartments.
• Subdividing single-family homes into duplexes.
• Allowing accessory dwelling units on all lots with single-family homes.
• Establishing density bonuses.
• Relaxing or eliminating residential property height limits.
• Using property tax abatements for mixed-income communities and higher density.
• Donating vacant land for affordable housing development.
• Other high-density, single-family, and multifamily zoning policies the recipient chooses to report.

The amendment specifies that these submissions are not binding for the distribution of funds, and the Secretary cannot use the information for enforcement or to preempt local zoning and land use policies.