Texas lawmakers are expected to debate how to curb rising home costs this year as the state continues to grow. Celina in North Texas is one of the fastest growing in the United States. Photo by Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune
A likely fight over how much power to take away from local governments may dominate the debate.
DALLAS — Buying or renting a home in Texas used to be relatively cheap. Amid the state’s economic boom, its once-celebrated housing affordability has slipped.
Texas renters now spend more on keeping a roof over their head than ever. As home prices have vastly outpaced incomes, homeownership has become a distant fantasy for many Texas families.
The state’s high housing costs have caught the attention of state officials — who worry that Texas could lose its competitive edge with other states if it doesn’t get a handle on home prices and rents.
Here’s how Texas lawmakers may address housing costs when the Texas Legislature returns to Austin later this month — and how the debate could unfold.
Tackling the state’s housing shortage
Texas needs about 320,000 more homes than it has, according to a recent estimate by housing policy organization Up For Growth. That deep shortage, housing advocates argue, drove up home prices and rents as the state’s economy boomed and competition increased for a limited supply of homes — even though Texas builds more homes than any other state.
State lawmakers must find ways to address that shortage, real estate experts and housing advocates warn, if they want to keep housing costs in check as the state grows.
“Our population is going to continue to increase in the next 30, 40 years,” said Scott Norman, Texas Association of Builders CEO. “All of those people have to live somewhere.”
State lawmakers, backed by a coalition of outside groups that span the political spectrum, will likely look for ways to build more homes and put a dent in the shortage. One avenue they may go down: addressing local regulations that critics say prevent the state from adding enough homes to meet demand.
Cities restrict what kinds of homes can be built and where using rules called zoning regulations. Research shows those rules limit how many homes can be built and contribute to higher housing costs— and relaxing them can help cities add more homes and contain housing costs.
Texas lawmakers considered ways in 2023 to relax cities’ zoning rules, but those ideas went nowhere. Some are certain to make a comeback.
“The starting point is to make sure that we don’t have obstacles like regulatory issues and local government that are making things worse,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston-area Republican.
Lawmakers could make it easier for homeowners to build accessory dwelling units — also known as ADUs, granny flats, mother-in-law suites or casitas — in the backyard of single-family homes, considered a relatively low-cost housing option. Texas House lawmakers shot down a bill during the 2023 regular session that would have overridden any city bans on ADUs or regulations that researchers have found can prevent ADUs from getting built. Out of 11 major Texas cities surveyed by the Tribune, most allowed ADUs but also had rules that hindered development.
State Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Mineola Republican, and state Rep. Cody Vasut, an Angleton Republican, have each filed bills that essentially revive the ADU proposal that died during the last regular session.
Lawmakers also may consider reducing how much land cities require single-family homes to be built on. Those rules, known as minimum lot-size requirements, drive up the final cost of a home by encouraging larger, pricier homes and leaving less land behind to build other homes. The most common minimum lot-size requirements among major Texas cities the Tribune surveyed last year is between 5,000 and 7,500 square feet.
Vasut’s bill would also reduce lot-size requirements to 2,500 square feet — though it would only apply to cities with more than 85,000 residents and those that sit in counties with at least 1 million residents.
Whether the Legislature should force cities to reduce their lot-size rules across the board, including in existing neighborhoods, will likely be a major point of discussion. Advocates have said state lawmakers should at least encourage smaller lot sizes in new developments outside of existing neighborhoods.
Another idea would allow homes to be built in places that now only allow commercial businesses — a practice not allowed in Texas’ largest cities. And as Texas’ urban areas see high office vacancies, housing advocates are also crafting ways to encourage developers to convert empty office buildings into residences.
Both ideas hold some appeal for homeowners who may not welcome other types of housing in their neighborhoods — and will likely put up stiff resistance to any proposal that attempts to allow more housing there.
A fight over single-family neighborhoods, local control
A likely point of contention is whether statewide changes to boost the housing stock will apply to neighborhoods that only allow single-family homes — and mostly don’t allow other kinds of housing.
Texas cities tend to allow standalone single-family homes to be built nearly anywhere dwellings are allowed. But it’s usually illegal to build denser, cheaper housing — like townhomes, duplexes and smaller apartment buildings — in many of those places.
Proposals to allow more kinds of homes in existing single-family neighborhoods can draw stiff resistance from existing homeowners and neighborhood groups. Doing so, they often argue, will upset their neighborhood’s character.
A bill filed by state Rep. Carl Tepper, a Lubbock Republican, seeks to shield predominantly single-family neighborhoods from attempts by cities to allow more housing in those places. The bill is in direct response, Tepper said, to a measure passed by the Austin City Council in 2023 that allows developers to build up to three units in most places where detached single-family homes are allowed. If passed, the bill would reverse the Austin reform and effectively give homeowners across the state greater authority to resist such changes.
“The problem we have is that many of these homeowners put their life savings into these homes with the expectation that they would be single-family neighborhoods,” Tepper said. “I think it’s really an overreach of the cities to allow a major sea change to these neighborhoods that would completely change the face and the intent and the design of those neighborhoods.”
The idea baffled Austin City Council Member José “Chito” Vela, a strong proponent of the three-unit reform. Austin’s high home prices and rents have been a core if not dominant theme in recent city elections — in which the capital city’s voters elected a supermajority of members to enact such reforms.
“There’s just no reason for the Texas Legislature to step in and try to undo any of this,” Vela said.
Proponents of changes to allow more housing hope the severity of the state’s housing crisis will push lawmakers to overcome “not-in-my-backyard” sentiments and enact laws that will meaningfully address the state’s high housing costs.
“I don’t think 1,000 NIMBYs showing up at a hearing [at the Texas Capitol] will get a sympathetic ear,” said Jay Blazek Crossley, executive director of the nonprofit Farm & City, an urban planning advocacy group.
Another likely flashpoint: how much state lawmakers may override cities’ zoning regulations in order to allow more homes to be built.
Republican lawmakers over the last decade have aggressively sapped authority from the state’s bluer urban areas, culminating in a sweeping bill during the 2023 session aimed at preventing cities from enacting progressive policies. Democrats in the Legislature have been on guard against any attempts to further erode cities’ authority — which propelled a majority of House Democrats to lead the charge to defeat the ADUs bill.
Texas Democrats have since shown openness to allowing zoning reform at some level — adopting a party platform this year that calls for rolling back local zoning regulations that get in the way of adding more homes. But it’s unclear to what extent Democrats in the Legislature will embrace those ideas — and skepticism toward state intervention remains.
“If we’re going to try to create a blanket law for the entire state, can we craft something that fits everyone’s needs and fits everyone’s community?” said state Rep. Gene Wu, a Houston Democrat who leads the Texas House Democratic Caucus. “I don’t know the answer to that.”
One reform floated by advocates may please enough people on both sides of the local control argument: making it harder for neighbors to object to new housing.
An obscure state law gives landowners the power to make it harder for cities to move forward with proposed developments near them. If a proposed development requires a rezoning and 20% of neighboring landowners object, the city council needs a supermajority to advance the new building. A group of Austin homeowners deftly wielded the law in recent years to convince a judge to kill a series of changes aimed at allowing more homes to be built.
The law saw renewed attention this year when neighbors near a proposed affordable housing development in San Antonio used the law to help stop the development — which then failed to get enough votes on the City Council to move forward.
That vote has fueled a new push to defang the law, creating unlikely alliances. The Texas Municipal League, an interest group that lobbies on behalf of cities, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the highly influential conservative think tank, are among those who want lawmakers to raise the petition threshold to 50% of neighboring landowners and reduce the required council vote to approve the project as a result of the petition to a simple majority.
What else is on the table?
Tweaking cities’ zoning rules isn’t a silver bullet for the state’s housing woes, housing advocates and experts caution. And lawmakers will likely look at other ways to reduce housing costs.
After enacting more than $12 billion in property tax cuts in 2023, tax-cut hawks in the Legislature have eyed the state’s projected $21.2 billion surplus to deliver a new round of cuts. The skyrocketing cost of homeowners’ insurance also will likely get lawmakers’ attention.
Lawmakers have also filed proposals aimed at speeding up cities’ building permitting processes so homes can hit the market more quickly.
Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have indicated they’re concerned that so-called institutional investors — or investors and corporations that buy single-family homes to rent them out — may be crowding would-be homebuyers out of the state’s home-buying market.
Institutional homebuyers own a small slice of the country’s overall housing stock, estimates show, though their buying activity noticeably ticked up during the COVID-19 pandemic. Economists and housing experts have shown skepticism that laws curtailing investors’ home purchases would give first-time homebuyers a better shot at finding a home and improve housing affordability.
Texas has a dire shortage of housing affordable for the state’s poorest families — and the state spends little on housing for low-income families, housing advocates note. That’s unlikely to change in the GOP-dominated Legislature, they acknowledge, even with the state surplus.
Still, state Sen. Nathan Johnson and state Sen. Royce West, both Dallas Democrats, have each filed bills intended to encourage the construction of housing specifically for poorer families. Another West bill would require many cities and counties to identify land they own that could be suitable for affordable housing development.
Disclosure: Texas Association of Builders, Texas Municipal League, Texas Public Policy Foundation and Economist have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
