Opinion: Failed Housing Bills Could Signal California-Style Housing Crisis in Texas

For decades, Texas land use and zoning policy has gone in a different direction than much of California, writes Duncan Hosie in an opinion piece for The Dallas Morning News. “Its land use and zoning regulations are less stringent. And affluent homeowners and bureaucrats have less power to block housing. As a result, more housing gets built every year in Texas than anywhere else, and far fewer people are rent burdened.”

But after the failure of several zoning-related bills to pass in the state legislature, Hosie charges Texas state legislators with being “all hat, no cattle” when it comes to their staunch opposition to ‘California-style’ policies, noting that NIMBY obstructionism and the unintended consequences of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) have led to one of the nation’s worst housing crises.

The Texas bills in question would have permitted accessory dwelling units (ADUs), reduced minimum lot-size regulations, and “curbed so-called compatibility restrictions that limit the height of apartment buildings near single-family homes.” Hosie writes that “Disturbingly, many Democrats and Republicans in Texas trotted out the noxious NIMBY arguments that have reigned supreme in California to sink these proposals.”

According to Hosie, “while California offers a cautionary tale of bad housing policy, its growing YIMBY movement is charting a different course.” Texas legislators may want to look to this movement as a more effective model to “avoid the mistakes of its archrival.”