New federal housing law takes effect, bringing new tools — and open questions — to San Juan County

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, July 22, 2026

At midnight on July 10, the “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act” became federal law without a presidential signature. The president had threatened to veto the bill, H.R. 6644, but failed to act within the Constitution’s 10-day review window, allowing it to become law automatically. For San Juan County, the law’s fine print may matter as much as its headline goal of increasing the national housing supply.

The Act, passed by the 119th Congress, is organized into seven titles touching nearly every corner of federal housing policy, from mortgage lending and manufactured housing to rural development and veterans’ housing. Buried within its roughly 140 pages are several provisions that could be directly relevant to a rural county like San Juan — though local housing providers caution that many of the law’s effects will depend on federal rulemaking still to come.

County sees promise, with caveats

San Juan County Council member Kari McVeigh said she was encouraged to see that much of the law dovetails with what the County is already working on. Separately, she pointed to the proposed $200 million innovation fund, the rural funding set-aside and expanded loan limits for manufactured homes and ADUs as encouraging signs for the County’s housing goals. But she cautioned that federal money often comes with conditions. “So the strings attached to this federal government’s … funding and grants are very onerous and may in fact mean that this County can’t accept those funds at all,” she said — though she stressed she was still reviewing the law at “a very high level” and wanted to see more detail before drawing conclusions.

A new federal definition for community land trusts

Federal law has long included a definition of “community land trust,” but the new law broadens and updates it — adding a minimum 30-year affordability period, a preemptive purchase option and monitoring requirements to preserve long-term affordability. “It’s pretty close to what we already do, but it may give us more flexibility,” said Suzanne Olson, director of advocacy and fund development at OPAL Community Land Trust on Orcas Island, noting that OPAL already exceeds the new standard by a wide margin through its 99-year renewable ground lease, which she calls “permanent affordability.”

She welcomed the new definition mainly for the clarity it provides. The old federal definition of a CLT, she said, “is really buried in a statute for a long defunct program,” and moving it into the government’s general housing definitions provides that clarity. She added that a federal definition, once more widely recognized, could eventually help open up mortgage lending and funding opportunities built around the CLT model — though she cautioned there’s “nothing to point to right now.”

The law also directs HUD to study statewide mechanisms — including land banks and community land trusts — for preserving affordability over the long term. Olson said it’s too early to know what that support might look like. “We’re not counting our eggs before they hatch,” she said.

Rural housing repairs and home financing

One of the clearest wins for the County, according to Olson, is a doubling of the cap on Section 504 home-improvement loans and grants for low-income rural homeowners, from $7,500 to $15,000. OPAL, which owns more than 100 acres of land and stewards 120 homeownership homes and 104 rental homes across the county, sees the increase as directly useful. “Having more money for repair grants is really positive,” Olson said, pointing to costs like new roofs, water system upgrades and septic work — “some of the things that are part of rural living.”

The law also raises HOME program income eligibility from strictly low-income to up to 100% of area median income, a change Olson called “a welcome shift” that could broaden the pool of islanders who qualify for OPAL housing. But she was careful not to overstate its impact: “We still have people up to more than 200% of AMI that can’t afford a home on Orcas Island,” she said. “So it’s not a wholesale game changer, but it’s a move in the right direction.”

Untangling USDA mortgages from rental assistance

Olson pointed to one lesser-known provision she considers especially significant for the County: properties financed through USDA Section 515 mortgages — including OPAL’s Lavender Hollow — may now be able to continue receiving rental assistance for tenants even after the underlying USDA mortgage is paid off. Previously, she said, paying off such a mortgage early would have disqualified renters from that assistance, discouraging landlords like OPAL from doing so. Under the new law, she said, “OPAL may be able to pay off that mortgage and renters would still have full access to rental assistance.”

Pattern-book designs meet island skepticism

The law creates a new HUD grant program funding “prereviewed designs” — pre-approved building plans for duplexes, cottage courts and small multifamily buildings — with at least 10% of funding set aside for rural communities. County officials have flagged the program as a possible way to speed up local permitting. Olson, however, was skeptical that it would change much for OPAL’s own developments. “It seems unlikely that OPAL would be adopting template home designs,” she said, noting the organization has deliberately shaped its designs around the county’s island culture, privacy, green space and long-term energy efficiency — priorities she said don’t always align with standardized federal templates.

The law separately expands the list of activities eligible for Community Development Block Grant funding to include new construction, a change Olson said OPAL is watching with interest, though its practical effects remain unclear.

What’s still uncertain

Many of the law’s provisions require HUD and USDA rulemaking over the next one to two years before taking full effect. “One of the main things to be aware of is that it’s going to take time for the government to implement,” said Jess Blanch, executive director of the San Juan Community Home Trust. “So while there are some exciting changes that will aid in rural affordable housing development, we won’t see those impacts overnight. This law also doesn’t have any new funding appropriations attached to it, so we must also keep advocating for funding that serves rural communities.” (Section 208 explicitly authorizes $200,000,000 in new appropriations for the Innovation Fund.) Olson echoed a similar wait-and-see approach: “I think there’s no other way forward, but to wait and see how these details get codified and implemented,” she said, noting that OPAL’s next major project, likely to intersect with the law, at Bartel Road, is still five to 10 years out.

Asked where the law falls short for a place like San Juan County, Olson pointed to what it doesn’t address rather than what it does. Much affordable housing funding still targets denser urban areas, she said, and the deepest remaining need locally is faster permitting and simpler mortgage lending for the community land trust model. “It can take an extraordinarily long time just to go through the bureaucracy of some of the mortgages and get people into their homes,” she said. “We’d like to shorten that timeline.”