A Thousand Small Fixes That Might Actually Work. Conversation with Jack Farrell.

In this episode, research attorney with YIMBY Law Jack Farrell came back to the podcast to walk us through the newly passed Road to Housing Act. This sprawling, three hundred eighty-one-page bill is made up of small technical fixes. For Jack, that's a good sign: the sheer number of granular changes suggests that the authors understand how housing programs work on the ground. We cover the highlights: grant programs that now prioritize ADUs, missing middle housing, and single-stair reform; a fix that makes manufactured homes cheaper to build; the unlocking of Community Development Block Grant funds for affordable housing; and a change that cuts duplicate inspections for properties using multiple federal funding sources. We also dig into the bill's attempt to cap how many single-family homes big institutional investors can own — and why the data suggests Wall Street landlords aren't the main cause of high home prices. And, for a complete fun fact — there is a provision inside a housing bill that has nothing to do with housing: a ban on the U.S. ever creating its own central bank digital currency.