Texas Legislature’s Surprising Pro-Housing Swing

Texas lawmakers passed several laws aimed at boosting the state’s housing supply, seeking to relieve the growing housing burden faced by many Texan households, reports Joshua Fechter in The Texas Tribune.

Among the laws that passed, Senate Bill 15 will let developers build smaller homes on smaller lots, barring cities from requiring minimum lot sizes larger than 3,000 square feet for new neighborhoods. “Another bill, Senate Bill 840 by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola, will allow apartments and mixed-use developments in more places. The legislation allows owners of lagging shopping malls, strip centers, offices and warehouses to reconfigure those properties to give people more places to live.” The bills both apply to cities of over 150,000 in counties of over 300,000 people.

Another key bill “gutted” a law known as the “tyrant’s veto,” which required a city council vote if 20 percent of neighboring landowners object to a rezoning request for housing projects. The law has been criticized as a Jim Crow-era tool to keep people deemed undesirable out of neighborhoods. A new law, House Bill 24, raises the threshold to 60 percent. “Property owners also could not use the law to block citywide zoning changes to allow more housing as they did in Austin.”

A bill aimed at criminalizing homelessness failed, while another that speeds up the eviction process passed, causing concern among advocates that more people will end up homeless.