(The Center Square) – Multiple bills addressing housing affordability become law Sept. 1.
Gov. Greg Abbott signed the bills in June but ceremoniously signed them this week to highlight what the legislature accomplished during the regular legislative session this year.
“The shortage of housing has increased the cost of living and has put the dream of home ownership out of the reach for far too many Texans,” Abbott said at a ceremony in Austin. “This session, Texas did more than any state in America to make housing more affordable. … We are going to take every step necessary to improve housing supply and improve affordability of housing.”
SB 15, filed by Republican state Sen. Paul Bettencourt and state Rep. Gary Gates, prohibits cities from requiring unreasonably large lot sizes to build homes on five-acre-plus unplatted tracts of land, allowing for smaller and denser development. It prohibits municipalities from implementing a range of requirements for small lots, including parking and ceiling height requirements, among many others.
It “cuts local red tape that hinders housing construction and will increase housing supply and bring down the cost of housing,” Abbott said.
“Texas has become the job creation nexus of the country,” Bettencourt said. “To follow along with housing affordability is simply just a continuation of the obvious. Because all these people coming to Texas, many of them coming from California, will have to have a place to live, so they can work here in the great state of Texas.
“The problem is really simple. We’ve got 340,000 units that we need to build and we’re not going to wait around like California [whose leaders] drive their people away to other states. No, we want everyone to come and work in Texas and have a place to live.”
Bettencourt said the regular legislative session was “a fabulous session for everyone” because of these bills and another half a dozen more, which “represent the greatest number of bills passed on housing affordability in the country’s history before there was a crisis.”
Unlike California, Bettencourt said, Texas is “getting out and ahead of the problem. We’re ahead of the problem in housing affordability. We even see it in tax policy, where in November, we’re going to have I think tremendously positive votes for homeowner exemptions,” he said, referring to a ballot initiative to reduce property taxes.
SB 840, filed by Republicans state Sen. Bryan Hughes and state Rep. Cole Hefner, allows for mixed-use and multifamily development in areas currently zoned for office, retail, or warehouse, to facilitate the immediate development of more housing in large cities. It also prohibits cities from adopting certain fees and requirements and removes bureaucratic or costly barriers for development in these areas.
“Many local governments make it too slow and too expensive to build more housing,” Abbott said. The new law “slashes regulations and speeds up the permitting process.”
“The American dream of home ownership, we cannot let that be out of reach of Texans,” Hughes said. “Many states have seen this happen,” he said, also referring to California.
“The Lord is not making any more land, so there’s already a supply and demand problem,” he added. “But we cannot add to that local governments making it harder and harder to develop.”
The new law “fixes an archaic law that makes it hard to develop property,” Hughes continued. “If there’s an existing office development, retail high-rise offices, they’re just sitting there empty, those could be converted to housing. Right now, you have to go through the process of rezoning, which is expensive, time-consuming, complicated. Everybody knows when we add those regulations, and add those expenses, and those delays, it raises the cost of housing and prices Texas families out of the market.”
HB 24, filed by Republicans state Reps. Angie Orr and Sen. Hughes, reforms an outdated valid petition process, referred to as the “tyrant’s veto.” The new law will make it easier for zoning changes to allow more residential development, thereby increasing supply, density, and affordability. It’s “central to increasing housing supply and affordability. It makes it easier to get approval to build more housing,” Abbott said.
Orr said the bill “addressed a 100-year-old mandate that was outdated. It got in the way of housing development and increased the cost of new construction. I’m really happy that we were able to get that through the through the Senate and the House.”
The new laws represent “a huge step to make the American dream and affordable housing a reality in the great state of Texas,” Abbott said.
