Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL) has introduced legislation expanding affordable housing and investment in distressed communities.
Distressed communities refer to areas with high poverty, high unemployment rates, and low income rates.
Rep. Cherfilus-McCormick's Housing Opportunity Act expands the designation of qualified opportunity zones, which are federally designated areas designed to spur economic investment through tax benefits -- from 10 years to 20 years -- thereby increasing the certainty of long-term investment.
The election period for deferred capital gains, which allows investors to defer paying taxes on money invested in qualified opportunity funds, will be extended from the end of 2026 to the end of 2036.
Provisions related most directly to housing include enhanced incentives for residential rental projects that meet income-qualified occupancy requirements for individuals earning 100 percent or less of the area median income (AMI) and rules on rent increases and tenant protections in residential properties within qualified opportunity zones.
"Communities across our nation deserve access to investment that creates real opportunities and affordable places to live," the Florida congresswoman said in a press release. "The Housing Opportunity Act of 2026 builds on the promise of Opportunity Zones by encouraging long-term investment while ensuring that development includes affordable housing for working families."
Cherfilus-McCormick's bill comes on the heels of Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz's (D-FL) Fair Housing for Survivors Act, which expands the Fair Housing Act to include survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and severe forms of trafficking, thereby preventing their eviction or being penalized for being victims of those crimes when seeking housing.
"We cannot continue to force survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and human trafficking into an impossible choice between forced confinement with their abusers, or living on the streets," Rep. Wasserman Schultz said regarding her bill. "Even as they face daily abuse and exploitation, people are evicted or denied housing based on the outlandish grounds that they're involved in criminal activity. Discrimination like this, which overwhelmingly hurts women and children, must end now."
