The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act —
and what it could mean for Portsmouth

This is the one provision that directly obligates Portsmouth. As a CDBG entitlement city, Portsmouth will need to inventory and publish its undeveloped holdings. City land disposition has been the central constraint on nonprofit-scale housing here — a required public inventory makes that conversation concrete and visible.

Portsmouth fits the targeted profile — high costs, low vacancy — almost exactly. This cuts both ways: documented production gains could increase Portsmouth's CDBG grant, while lagging production could reduce it. It puts a modest federal price tag on inaction for the first time.

Portsmouth's annual CDBG allocation gains a new use: it can now be stacked into the capital budget of an affordable construction project — alongside the Housing Trust Fund and city land — rather than being limited to rehab and program support.

Portsmouth is already moving in this direction: a June 2026 Council motion directed exploration of pre-approved ADU plans. If Congress funds this program, Portsmouth would have a federal grant source for exactly that work instead of carrying the cost alone.

A future revenue possibility, not a present one — Congress must appropriate the money first. If funded, communities that can document supply gains will compete well. Portsmouth's ability to show measurable production (and to measure it credibly) becomes the qualifying credential.

Any Portsmouth project using federal money — LIHTC deals, HOME funds, CDBG-assisted construction — currently absorbs NEPA review time and cost. Faster reviews shave months off exactly the kind of nonprofit-partnered projects Portsmouth is trying to initiate on city land.

Timing is the story. Portsmouth's Master Plan update lands in early 2027, with a comprehensive zoning rewrite to follow. Federal model codes arriving in that same window give the rewrite a vetted, national reference point — useful cover and useful content.

Portsmouth's downtown-adjacent lots are small and expensive; double-stair requirements make modest apartment buildings hard to pencil on them. Federal guidelines give the city a technical basis for considering single-stair allowances in the zoning rewrite — a building-code conversation, not just a zoning one.

Financing, not zoning, is often the binding constraint for a homeowner considering an ADU. A federally insured loan product for ADU construction addresses the practical question — how does an ordinary household pay for this — that local pre-approved plans alone cannot answer.

Much of Portsmouth's naturally affordable stock is old housing held by longtime owners and small landlords. Repair support is a preservation tool — it keeps existing units in service, which matters in a market where replacement units come in at far higher rents. Contingent on future appropriations.

In a tight rental market, voucher holders lose units to unassisted applicants during the inspection wait. Anything that shortens that window modestly improves voucher usability in Portsmouth, where the vacancy rate leaves no slack.

Candidly: limited local effect. Large institutional investors own a small share of single-family rentals nationally (~3%) and are not a major presence in Portsmouth, where most rentals belong to small local landlords. This provision matters more in Sun Belt metros than on the Seacoast.

Factory-built housing is one of the few paths to lower per-unit construction cost, and financing friction has been a real barrier. The near-term Portsmouth relevance is indirect — through regional builders and ADU fabricators — but cost reductions in factory-built units eventually reach infill and ADU projects here.

HOME funds (which reach Portsmouth-area projects through the state and regional consortia) are a standard layer in the capital stack of nonprofit affordable developments. A stabilized, more flexible HOME program improves the financing environment for the larger projects Portsmouth hopes to see on city-controlled land.