Housing Development News - August 31, 2025 | News Glare

Trump Administration Seeks to Eliminate Key Rural Housing Grant Washington, D.C. - President Donald Trump and House Republican leaders unveiled plans today to cut funding for the Section 533 Housing Preservation Grant, a program that has supplied crucial capital to rural communities for the construction and rehabilitation of affordable housing. The proposal, embedded in the Fiscal Year 2026 spending blueprint, would eliminate new grant awards, effectively curtailing a lifeline relied upon by dozens of small towns across the country.

According to the administration, the grant’s elimination is part of a broader strategy to prioritize direct homeownership assistance over subsidized rental development. “American citizens will be prioritized,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner declared, emphasizing that public housing authorities (PHAs) found to be in non-compliance with immigration verification audits risk losing federal funding altogether.

Rural housing advocates immediately decried the move. “This grant underpins workforce housing in communities that cannot attract private investment,” said Mary Thompson, executive director of the Rural Housing Coalition. “Without it, construction starts on affordable rental units could drop by 40 percent in the next year.”

Malaysia Releases White Paper on Reforming National Housing Model Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia’s Urban Well-Being, Housing and Local Government Ministry published a white paper today detailing sweeping reforms aimed at addressing a chronic shortage of affordable homes. Titled “Fixing Malaysia’s Broken Housing Model,” the report identifies systemic barriers-such as fragmented land rezoning processes, burdensome developer levies, and opaque allocation of low-cost housing units-to the delivery of over 200,000 homes annually for lower-income families.

Key recommendations include:

Establishing a single digital portal for planning approvals to reduce average permit turnaround from 180 to 60 days.
Capping developer contributions at 3 percent of project value, down from the current average of 8 percent.
Mandating transparent online registries of new low-cost home allocations to curb malpractices in unit assignment.

“Borrowers currently see funds disbursed in staged tranches that often stall projects,” the report notes. “Streamlining approvals and stabilizing financing will be essential to meeting our 2030 housing goals.”

The ministry has opened a 60-day public consultation on these proposals, with legislative drafting slated for December 2025.

This report was compiled from U.S. News and Malaysia Today sources.