Advocates Are Builders

What the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act means for Jackson, and why August is the month to speak up

On July 16, 2026, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act was signed into law. It is the most significant federal housing legislation in more than a decade, and it passed with bipartisan support at a moment when very little does. Habitat for Humanity helped shape more than a dozen of its provisions, and several of them land directly on the work we are doing in Jackson County.

A law is a beginning rather than an ending. Congress has now authorized a set of programs that could change what is possible for Jackson families. Whether those programs receive the money to operate is a separate decision, and that decision is being made right now. Michigan's legislators are home in their districts through the August recess, which makes this the most useful month of the year for a Jackson resident who cares about housing to say so out loud.

What the Law Actually Changes

Four provisions matter most for the work we do here.

Community Development Block Grant funds can now build homes.

For years, communities like ours could use CDBG dollars to repair housing but not to construct it. That single restriction shaped what Habitat affiliates and municipal housing partners could accomplish with federal money. Lifting it turns an existing funding stream into a construction tool, and it arrives while we are actively building toward twenty homes through the 20 by 28 campaign.

More Jackson households now qualify for homeownership help.

The HOME Investment Partnerships Program raised its income eligibility ceiling for homeownership assistance from 80 percent to 100 percent of area median income. In practical terms, that reaches the households who earn too much to qualify for most assistance and too little to compete in the current market. Many of the people who call our office describe exactly that position.

The small-dollar mortgage gap closes off the few homes still within reach.

Housing costs in Jackson County have risen faster than local incomes, and entry-level homes have grown scarce. The modest, older houses that do come available at the lower end of our market represent one of the last realistic paths a working family has to ownership here. Those are precisely the homes that lenders are least willing to finance. Originating a mortgage costs a lender roughly the same whether the loan is $75,000 or $375,000, so smaller loans return less and many lenders have stopped writing them. A family can do everything the system asks, save the down payment and repair the credit, and still be turned away from the one house they could actually carry. The new law directs the Consumer

Financial Protection Bureau to study this barrier and report on how to address it. Attention alone will not close a mortgage, though a problem that federal regulators have never formally examined has little chance of being solved.

Homeowners can get help keeping the homes they already have.

The Whole-Home Repairs Act, folded into this legislation, creates a pilot program of grants and forgivable loans for health, safety, and accessibility repairs. Jackson's housing stock is old. A roof, a furnace, or a set of stairs can become the reason a longtime homeowner leaves a house they have every intention of keeping. Preserving affordable homes that already exist is as much a part of solving this crisis as building new ones.

The law does more than this. It creates a pilot for converting vacant commercial buildings into housing, which several Michigan cities are watching closely. It restricts large corporate investors from buying up single family homes and directs the resulting penalties toward down payment assistance. It modernizes USDA rural housing programs and establishes a $1 billion Innovation Fund for communities willing to modernize their zoning codes. Each of these will play out differently across Michigan, and each depends on the same next step.

Authorization Is Not Money

Here is the part that gets lost in the celebration. When Congress authorizes a program, it creates the legal framework and sets the rules. When Congress appropriates funds, it decides how much money the program actually gets. A program can be authorized at an ambitious level and funded at almost nothing. That happens regularly, and it happens quietly, because appropriations decisions rarely make headlines the way a signing ceremony does.

Everything described above is currently a framework. The CDBG construction authority means something only if CDBG is funded. The expanded HOME eligibility helps Jackson families only if HOME has dollars behind it. The repair pilot exists on paper until it exists in a budget. Those decisions belong to the appropriations process, and appropriations respond to what constituents make clear they care about.

Why This Month

Members of Congress spend August in their districts. They hold town halls, attend county fairs, tour local businesses, and meet with the organizations doing work in their communities. Their schedules are more open and their attention is closer to home than at any other point in the calendar. What they hear during these weeks shapes how they weigh competing priorities when they return to Washington.

Housing rarely tops the list of issues constituents raise, which means the constituents who do raise it carry more weight than their numbers suggest. A short, specific message from someone who lives and votes in the district is one of the few inputs that reliably reaches a member of Congress directly.

How to Do It

You do not need policy expertise to be effective here. The most persuasive messages are brief, local, and personal.

Call or email the district office of your representative and senators. Tell them you are a constituent from Jackson County. Name the ROAD to Housing Act and say that you want the programs it authorized to be funded in the appropriations process, specifically the Community Development Block Grant program, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, and the Whole-Home Repairs pilot. Then say why it matters to you. Maybe you know a family renting in Jackson who cannot save a down payment because rent keeps climbing. Maybe you have watched a neighbor’s house deteriorate around them. Maybe you have volunteered on one of our build sites and seen what a closing day looks like for the family standing in the doorway. That sentence, the one only you can write, is the part that lands.

If a town hall or community event appears on the calendar near you this month, go and ask a question about housing. Public questions travel further than private ones.

Advocacy Is Part of Building

At Habitat, building has never been limited to what happens on a job site. The people who donate build. The people who shop and donate at our ReStore build, and every transaction there funds construction through the 20 by 28 campaign. The people who volunteer build. The people who pick up the phone and tell an elected official that Jackson County needs affordable homes are building too, and this month their work is the most time sensitive of all.

We will keep doing our part. Greater Jackson Habitat for Humanity is at the table with policymakers at the state and federal level, and we will keep pressing for the resources that turn this law into homes. We would like Jackson to be loud alongside us.

Twenty homes by 2028 is our commitment. What Congress decides this fall determines how much easier or harder that work becomes, and what comes after it. August is when they are listening.