Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville is running for governor telling voters he wants to make housing more affordable. So when a rare bipartisan bill to do exactly that came up in the Senate, you'd think he'd be for it.

He voted against it — twice. And to explain why, he went on Fox News and said something that wasn't true.

What he said

On Fox News on June 24, 2026, Tuberville described the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act like this:

"This is a bill that might touch a little bit of the middle classes, but it's going to go to a lot of people that are here illegally to build houses for them."

PolitiFact checked that claim and rated it False.

Why it's false

Two simple facts blow up what Tuberville said.

First, the law already blocks this. Under a 1980 law, federal rental assistance programs cannot be used to benefit immigrants who are in the country illegally, or people with temporary legal status. That's been the rule for more than 40 years. The housing bill does not change it.

Second, the bill isn't about immigrants at all. Its actual job is to build more homes and make them cheaper to buy. It expands access to mortgages under $100,000, raises FHA loan limits, and speeds up how fast new homes can get built. Fact-checkers noted the bill's text doesn't even contain the words "alien" or "illegal immigrant." The people it's written for are ordinary renters and first-time homebuyers.

Could more housing eventually help everyone, including people here illegally, the same way it helps every resident? Sure — that's just how supply works. As Columbia University professor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh told PolitiFact, "Adding housing will always affect the entire real estate ecosystem… You cannot suspend the laws of economics." But that's true of any new home built anywhere. It is not the same as Tuberville's claim that the bill is designed to "build houses" for people here illegally. That part is simply made up.

He's dressing up a bad vote with a scary story

This wasn't some far-left bill. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed the Senate 85 to 5. Republicans and Democrats backed it. Trump himself had pushed for its centerpiece — a section that stops Wall Street firms from buying up single-family homes. Only five senators voted no. Tuberville was one of them.

So Tuberville had already voted against a popular, bipartisan plan to lower housing costs. Then, instead of owning that vote, he reached for the oldest trick in the book: tell scared voters their tax dollars are going to undocumented immigrants. It's a false claim, and he used it to justify killing a bill that would actually help the Alabama families he says he's fighting for.

Why it matters for Alabama

Housing costs are real. Alabama families are feeling them. Tuberville keeps saying that's the very thing he wants to fix as governor.

But when a chance to fix it landed on his desk, he voted no — and then went on national TV and lied about what the bill does. That's the opposite of leadership. It's using a made-up immigration scare to walk away from help his own constituents need.

A man who wants to run Alabama should be able to tell voters the truth about a housing bill. Tuberville couldn't. We deserve better.

Source

This post is based on the PolitiFact fact-check: Is the bipartisan housing bill for "a lot of people that are here illegally"?