Texas lawmakers laid the foundation for a housing boom. Here’s how.

Not every proposal to boost the state’s housing supply made it over the finish line. Bills to make it easier to build additional dwelling units in the backyards of single-family homes and allow houses of worship to build homes on land they own. State lawmakers also did not pump additional funds toward building housing specifically intended to help lower-income families. And they largely sidestepped ideas to tame the rising cost of property insurance — a cost borne by homeowners and renters alike.

More homes in more places

Lawmakers passed Senate Bill 15 by Bettencourt, which aims to give homebuilders the flexibility to use less land when constructing a single-family home in some parts of the state’s largest cities. If that home doesn’t have to sit on as much land, it will cost less than it otherwise would have, the thinking goes. Reducing those requirements also leaves more land behind to build additional homes.

Houston experienced a home-building boom after it reduced how much land the city requires single-family homes to sit on — a boom that researchers and housing advocates argue helped contain the city’s home prices.

Texas’ biggest cities often require single-family homes to sit on around 5,000 to 7,500 square feet of land, a Texas Tribune analysis found. SB 15 forbids major cities from requiring homes built in new subdivisions to sit on more than 3,000 square feet.

“I feel confident when people see that their kids’ Montessori school teacher or their local policeman is able to live two miles away, Texans will appreciate this law,” said Nicole Nosek, who chairs Texans for Reasonable Solutions, a group that spearheaded a coalition that pushed for several housing bills this year, “especially when their own kids, grandkids and employees have a promising future and a piece of the American dream and Texas Miracle.”

The bill doesn’t apply to existing neighborhoods. New subdivisions built under the bill’s standards must sit on at least five acres of land.

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.

“It’s what every state and every city should be doing,” said Cullum Clark, director of the George W. Bush Institute’s Economic Growth Initiative at Southern Methodist University.

Places that have adopted similar ideas have seen more homes built and rising rents tamed, research shows. Minneapolis officials enacted policies in 2018 to encourage apartment construction along transit and commercial corridors. Apartment building surged and kept the city’s rents in check, according to analysis from The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Building more apartments in general has shown to curb rents, housing experts argue. The Austin region witnessed a significant apartment building boom amid its pandemic-era population explosion. Now, rents there have fallen for nearly two years — though they remain above pre-pandemic levels.

The bills will apply only in cities with at least 150,000 residents that sit in counties with a population of 300,000 or more — some 19 cities, according to a Tribune calculation.

More power to cities

Lawmakers also gutted a Jim Crow-era law that made it easier for property owners to stop new homes from being built near them. Critics recently have dubbed the obscure law the “tyrant’s veto,” arguing it deters builders from pursuing needed housing projects because neighbors might have the power to kill them.

Under current law, if a developer seeks to rezone a property to build homes and 20% of neighboring landowners object, the city council can only approve the rezoning by a supermajority vote.

Last year, a group of San Antonio homeowners near a proposed housing development touted by Gov. Greg Abbott wielded the law to effectively kill the project.

Years before, Austin homeowners took the law even further, using the provision to persuade a judge to stop a citywide zoning plan that aimed to allow more homes to be built.

“It’s just not democratic at all to allow small minorities to stop developments that actually a significant majority, even a super majority, in a neighborhood, are willing to do,” Clark said.

House Bill 24 by state Rep. Angelia Orr, R-Angelina, raises the petition threshold for objecting property owners to 60%. Even if neighbors meet that mark, the city council would only need a simple majority to approve the rezoning. Property owners also could not use the law to block citywide zoning changes to allow more housing as they did in Austin.

Other measures

Lawmakers also passed bills intended to make it easier to convert vacant office buildings into residences, compel cities to allow manufactured homes and enable cities to adopt building codes that effectively allow smaller apartment buildings. They also eased rules in college towns that say how many unrelated adults can live in a home.

For Texans who own their home, state lawmakers took aim at a perennial target: Texas’ high property taxes. Lawmakers boosted the state’s homestead exemption, the amount of a home’s value that can’t be taxed to pay for public schools, from $100,000 to $140,000. Homeowners over the age of 65 or those with disabilities would see even greater savings under a separate proposal. Voters must approve both measures at the November ballot box for them to take effect.