A new bipartisan bill that is aimed at reducing housing costs and encouraging construction of multifamily housing units in the suburbs is getting a much wide support among the lawmakers, Fox News informed.
Senators Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, and Todd Young a Republican from Indiana, made another introduction of the YIMBY Act or Yes In My Backyard Act on March 13. The legislation, which was first revealed in the Congress in 2019 and went on hold because of the global pandemic, encourages local and state jurisdictions to approve policies aimed at removing the current zoning that is more single-family-only.
The bill covers 20 policies such as, eliminating the requirements for off-street parking, allowing to convert offices into apartments, authorizing high density single-family, as well as multifamily zoning, cutting down the minimum lot size and many others.
According to the YIMBY Act, all the jurisdictions that would receive funding from the $3.4 billion Community Development Block Grant programme, will have to file a report to the US HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) in which they will need to specify which policies were adopted and which were not adopted, further explaining the reasons for their decision.
The executive director of Up for Growth Action Mike Kingsella, for the Reason magazine said that YIMBY Act is a bit different from other bills that cover housing development and stands somewhere in the middle.
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