the Oasis

By Scott Morgan, Managing Editor
July 1, 2026

It’s hard to be an optimist in the press. 

I remember when the 21st century was set to be the century of optimism; the one where we’d finally get over ourselves and would get to witness the fruits of painful lessons learned about little things like autocracy, media weaponization, and genocide.

And yet, here we are, in the Year 2026 AD. Perhaps you’re familiar with it.

I don’t see many bills in Congress with optimistic names. But I have to give it to one of our senators here in South Carolina. Tim Scott, Republican, has a knack for being optimistic in the legislation he pushes. Opportunity Zones was his baby. Like all babies, it grew up to be a person who didn’t live up to its potential.

But the big one is the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a sweeping magnum opus of a bill that, in its original Tim-Scottified version, ages ago, legislatively tackled everything wrong with the American affordable housing landscape. 

To no one’s surprise, ROAD got thinned out over time and bent to the priorities of the changing administrations it has had the bad fortune to coexist with. 

But ROAD still has a good set of bones. It takes on rental assistance; corporate investment; financial literacy; rehab and home repair. It pays attention to builders (in a good way); carves out ways to use development grants to build affordable housing; provides for $200 million a year to communities and tribes that develop measurable growth plans for affordable housing.

ROAD was so well-received that it got what almost nothing gets in the Year 2026 AD – bipartisan legislative support. Affordability in housing is actually chic conversation in political circles now; a problem so egregiously troublesome that Democrats and Republicans actually agree on why it’s a problem 

On June 22, Scott and his main ally in ROAD legislation, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, put out a statement when the Senate passed ROAD.

The bill, Sens. Scott and Warren said, “puts families first, increases supply, expands access to affordable housing, and addresses the housing crisis.”

And on June 24, on the way to signing this landmark bit of cooperative legislation, Donald Trump opted to politicize it instead; to hold it hostage to the SAVE America Act – a divisive bit of reactionary legislation having to do with voter registration championed by a guy who still can’t accept that voting is actually secure enough for him to have lost in 2020.

That statement, lauding the triumph of common sense and empathy and cooperation, does not exist on either Scott’s or Warren’s website now.

Politicizing affordable housing is as old as affordable housing. The day that shelter was commoditized as a wealth-building asset, access to housing became the same old battle of have and have-not; what you get vs. what you deserve.

Being a jaded reporter is nothing new either. It’s so boringly cliche that I found it looking for a needle in a haystack.

But even I’m surprised by Trump on this one. 

And I’m sad for Americans being held hostage to stupidity politics. That includes Tim Scott. His vision in ROAD is a compromised one, but the effort to put solutions to the housing crisis in the hands of the entire federal government is the first meaningful step in housing market reform in decades.

I was looking forward to lauding South Carolina as the leader in affordable housing reform. I forgot we were in the Year 2026 AD.