Texas Law Lets Neighbors Block Housing Development

A Texas state law requires a supermajority (three-fourths) vote in city councils to approve zoning amendments “when property owners of more than 20% of the adjacent property are opposed to the change in zoning” regardless of how many property owners are adjacent to the property in question, effectively killing many housing developments, according to reporting by Iris Dimmick in the San Antonio Report.

Under the current law, “The voices of current property owners have higher priority under the valid petition law than the potential tenants or beneficiaries of affordable housing.” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg supports eliminating the supermajority rule, noting that “Placing a supermajority threshold for the purposes of giving some members of the community an outsized voice to exclude people is, in my view, anti-democratic.”

Zoning amendments are the only type of change that requires a 75 percent supermajority, Dimmick adds. “Examples across the state show that the valid petition law has interfered with several affordable housing projects, from a single garage apartment, to multifamily projects like Vista Park and acres of single-family homes.”

The ‘valid petition’ law can be traced back to a 1920s New York City zoning ordinance that became part of the federal Standard State Zoning Enabling Act, which stemmed from the desire of Fifth Avenue merchants to exclude Jewish businesspeople from opening shop near them. Today, at least 20 states have a valid petition process on the books. 

According to researcher Salim Furth, the law has a chilling effect on new multifamily development, even when it is not officially used to block a project. For housing activists, reforming the law would clear up a bottleneck for new housing development and prevent a small number of property owners from blocking new affordable housing.