Claiming to deliver on President Donald Trump’s promise to stop corporate landlords from buying up single-family homes and fueling the housing crisis, an industry-backed Republican senator is circulating legislation that could actually block states from regulating the institutional investors purchasing hundreds of thousands of homes nationwide.

At the same time, the purported federal “ban” would carve out exemptions for many of the country’s largest institutional homebuyers.

If passed, such legislation could derail ongoing efforts in at least eighteen states to limit large corporations from buying up residential properties and using them as investment vehicles. The phenomenon has been shown to lead to higher numbers of evictions, neglected property maintenance, and rising rents and may limit families’ ability to access the housing market.