When lawmakers return to Austin early next year, housing affordability — particularly reducing the property tax burden — will be a top priority. Gov. Greg Abbott has also signaled that he wants to do something about the impact of the purchase of residential rental properties by institutional investors on the supply and cost of single-family homes across the state.
There is also growing pressure to reform land use policies. A growing chorus of real estate experts, urban planners, cities and elected officials now say Texas should also adopt more flexible land use and zoning policies to alleviate housing availability and affordability challenges. One popular policy prescription involves reducing minimum lot sizes to allow multiplexes and townhouses to be built next to single-family homes, which advocates say would expand housing supply and stabilize home prices.
We have a housing supply problem, so it’s no surprise that Texans on the right and left have taken on the issue as a political priority. If zoning is so onerous that homebuilders have no flexibility, Texas won’t be able to solve that supply problem. But state and local governments must take a more nuanced view of zoning than that offered by leading partisan voices.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, recommends that lawmakers eliminate minimum lot sizes and adopt “no-use” zoning to allow lots to be used for almost any purpose that does not conflict with regulations. annoying Meanwhile, the Texas Democratic Party platform calls for “ending racially exclusive zoning,” and some in the party argue that single-family zoning is discriminatory.
Opinion
When opposing political poles recognize the same problem, it pays to work hard to find a bipartisan consensus. We are concerned that Lt. Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan are expected to push for statewide zoning reform to restrict cities’ local zoning powers. This is likely to pit the state’s big blue cities against the conservative Legislature in yet another battle between state rules and local autonomy.
Cities need to be more flexible in their land use policies, but clumsy efforts by state lawmakers to limit zoning and other powers of local governments risk unintended consequences that we worry won’t allow cities to do so. exclusive adjustments to their markets.
The solution, in our opinion, is not to eliminate minimum lot sizes or restrict single-family zoning. Cities must respect existing neighborhoods and the investments residents made based on the rules that existed at the time they bought their homes. But officials should relax zoning rules in other areas of their cities to encourage housing construction on undeveloped land and in commercial districts, where the land can be used for more density.
The exodus of people and industries from high-cost states like New York, California and Illinois to Texas is due in part to Texas’ long-standing competitive advantage as a more affordable place to live. The state’s largest metropolitan areas have become more expensive, reducing the historical advantages Texas has had over rival states and cities. This is especially true in the “Texas Triangle” of high-growth counties surrounding Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin and San Antonio.
The Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University has estimated that between 2020 and 2023, the annual median home price in Texas increased from $259,990 to $335,100, an increase of 28.9%. And that’s before property taxes, which are among the highest in the country, and insurance premiums that are skyrocketing due to violent climate costs and other factors that drive up the costs of homeownership.
This is an opportunity for neighborhoods, state and municipal governments to be collaborative partners. There are ways to protect existing neighborhoods and also provide housing options for other Texans. Our state will not stop growing, but it must be affordable and livable.
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