The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed a bipartisan bill aimed at boosting the nation’s supply of homes on an 89-10 vote, setting up a showdown in the House over a contentious provision to limit Wall Street’s footprint in the housing market.

The bill bars investors with more than 350 houses from purchasing additional single-family homes — a late change to the legislation that was critical to getting the White House on board, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, told reporters last week.

Builders and mortgage lenders oppose a specific provision of the investor restrictions. While build-to-rent homes are largely exempt from the ban – over concerns that cutting incentives to construct them would limit housing production – the measure does include a requirement that investors sell certain homes, including those built to rent and renovated to rent, within seven years.

Twelve housing and real estate industry groups came out against the provision in a letter to Senate leaders Tuesday, calling for changes in the legislation around build-to-rent homes. Their objections could threaten the bill’s chances in the House, even as leaders of both parties are eager to show they are doing something to tackle voters’ cost-of-living concerns ahead of the November midterm elections.

“It is critical we get the details right and mitigate some of the concerns raised by House members with the Senate bill,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman French Hill, an Arkansas Republican, said in a statement following the Senate vote.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, negotiated the provision with the White House. But the seven-year disposition requirement has split the Democratic leadership.

“There’s literally no reason for this,” Sen. Brian Schatz, a Democrat of Hawaii, said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “They wrote it wrong.”

Schatz said the provision would limit developers’ ability to construct affordable housing using the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit – an incentive Congress expanded last year.

“The condition of receiving the LIHTC benefit is that you keep it in rental housing for 30 years,” Schatz said. “What does this mean? It means all these LIHTC projects are going to die.”

Democrats who support the bill say the industry is overstating the potential downside. But industry maintains it could take supply off the market just when a housing shortage is already driving up prices. The seven-year disposal requirement would “effectively shut down BTR development, leading to less supply and fewer options for renters,” the industry groups wrote in the letter.

The bill as written “would take hundreds of thousands of housing units off the market over the next decade, many of which would serve lower-and middle-income households,” they added.

Even if investors didn’t balk and pull financing for the construction of build-to-rent units, they wrote, the legislation “would lead to the forced displacement of thousands of renters each year as their housing providers are forced to sell. It also threatens to negate the other pro-supply elements of the larger bipartisan housing package.”

‘Make changes’

None of the amendments to the bill submitted by the deadline on Tuesday make the groups’ desired changes, though, and industry is now largely relying on the House to make the revision.

So far the bill has received a mixed reception in the House, where the White House’s populist impulse is chafing against traditional Republican free-market beliefs.

“We have come a long way using regular order, and there’s no reason why the House shouldn’t get an opportunity to make changes,” said David Dworkin, president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, which signed onto the letter.

“There’s no such thing as take it or leave it in negotiations,” he added. “The president wants to sign good legislation and we should send that to him.”

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