The Washington Report

On Tuesday, July 29th, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to provide a detailed plan for distributing fair housing program grants for FY 2024. The Order stems from a class action lawsuit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) and the Tennessee Fair Housing Council (TFHC) on June 24th, 2025, alleging that HUD halted the release of new grant awards and froze the second and third years of existing multi-year grants.

The Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP), created by Congress in 1992, funds the local organizations that investigate housing discrimination and educate real estate professionals and consumers about civil rights laws. When funding is available, HUD publishes Notices of Funding Availability (NOFOs). Last September, HUD published NOFOs to fund new private enforcement initiatives (PEIs) and develop education and outreach programs targeted to consumers. HUD also designated money to fund active PEI awards. Funding for FY 2024 grants must be allocated by September 30th, 2025.

NHFA alleges that it applied for new FHIP awards under the FY 2024 NOFOs. NFHA also claims that it has an active three-year PEI grant and that a HUD grant officer told NFHA that HUD could not move forward with the procedures to begin the second year of the grant. Without the award, NFHA maintains that it could lose up to half a million dollars per year of its fair housing enforcement budget. TFHC alleges that it applied for a new PEI grant through the FY 2024 PEI NOFO and that HUD’s refusal to grant new awards has caused it to drastically reduce staff operations and halt its fair housing testing work.

In response to the Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order that NFHA and TFHC filed on July 7th, 2025, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan of the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia ordered HUD  to provide a detailed plan regarding how it intends to meet its statutory obligations for new grants for FY 2024 by August 4th, 2025, and file status reports every seven days thereafter detailing its progress. For the multi-year grants, Judge Sooknanan ordered HUD to submit a status report by August 1st, 2025, detailing its progress toward funding these grants.

Download the U.S. District Court's Memorandum Opinion

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs unanimously passed the bipartisan Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream to Housing Act of 2025 (ROAD to Housing Act) in committee markup on Tuesday.

The legislation represents a comprehensive federal response to housing challenges, targeting barriers that have made it increasingly difficult for families to achieve homeownership. With housing costs consuming an ever-larger share of family budgets nationwide, the bill offers a multi-pronged approach to increasing supply, reducing barriers to development, and creating new pathways to homeownership.

The ROAD to Housing Act includes provisions designed to meet America's diverse housing needs:

• Building More Homes and Cutting Red Tape: Helps communities overcome zoning and other barriers, streamlines environmental reviews for housing projects, and creates grants for communities that build more homes.
• Opening Doors to Homeownership: Removes barriers that make it harder to get smaller mortgages, improves the home appraisal process, helps families save for homes, and ensures veterans know about their home loan benefits.
• Supporting Housing Innovation: Updates rules and financing for manufactured and modular homes and encourages new building technologies that make housing more affordable.
• Helping Communities Recover from Disasters: Permanently authorizes disaster recovery efforts to help communities rebuild while incorporating resilience measures to reduce repetitive losses and maintain insurability.

NAR sent a letter of strong support for the bill to Committee Chair Tim Scott and Ranking Member Elizabeth Warren. The letter stated: "We commend your leadership in crafting this landmark, comprehensive piece of legislation that addresses the full spectrum of housing needs while prioritizing pathways to homeownership for American families. NAR previously endorsed many of these provisions as standalone measures, and we appreciate this collaborative approach to addressing our nation's housing challenges."

"NAR strongly supports this bipartisan legislation that addresses housing supply, affordability, and homeownership pathways," says Shannon McGahn, executive vice president and chief advocacy officer for NAR. "At a time when homeownership increasingly feels out of reach, this legislation offers meaningful, pragmatic solutions to restore opportunity for millions of American families."

The bill now moves to the full Senate for consideration. The unanimous committee vote demonstrates bipartisan commitment to addressing America's housing affordability challenges.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has provided a Real Estate Professionals VA Home Loan Tool Kit with resources designed to help real estate professionals better serve veteran and active-duty service member homebuyers.

The VA has designed this webpage to ensure real estate professionals have access to educational and promotional materials about the VA home loan in order to inform and support eligible homebuyers as they consider using a VA home loan to purchase a home.

The toolkit aims to address common misconceptions about VA loans and provide real estate professionals with the tools they need to assist Veterans effectively. The toolkit includes downloadable resources such as quick reference guides for answering VA loan questions, basic information flyers for prospective homebuyers, eligibility guidelines, and pre-written social media and newsletter content for marketing materials.

The VA Home Loan Guaranty program has helped American veterans secure more than 28 million home loans. In 2023, the VA Home Loan Guaranty provided financing for roughly 400,000 home purchases and refinances. Over half of the 300,000 purchase loans were for first-time buyers.