HOUSING | Bigger Isn’t Always Better in Texas
How citizens can play a significant role in getting land use reform (almost) passed.
Written By Ryan Puzycki
When my husband and I first toured the East Austin house we’d eventually call home, we were enchanted by its front-porch view of the Texas Capitol off in the distance. Little did I know that, just one year later, I would be roaming the Capitol’s subterranean office blocks advocating for the rights of other Texans to secure their own slice of the Lone Star State. When pro-housing bills, including Senate Bill (SB) 1787, missed the final Texas House of Representatives deadline by just a few hours, I could take some comfort in knowing that I had been a small part of the fight for housing affordability here. Here’s how we almost won that fight.
After moving into our new home, we began to observe a strange pattern of development in our neighborhood. Central East Austin is literally within walking distance of downtown sites like Stubb’s, Waterloo Park, and, of course, the Capitol—so we couldn’t understand why all the newer developments were boxy McMansions or renovated bungalows with big yards and price points north of $1 million. Wouldn’t developers want to build as densely as possible on such favorably situated land?
As we would learn, this phenomenon was not the result of market forces and developer choices but of Austin’s outdated zoning code. Austin imposes residential lot size minimums of 5,750 square feet, compared to just 1,400 square feet in Houston. With land values comprising around 25 percent of the total cost of a home, the consequences of large minimum lot sizes are clear: At just $340,000, the median price for a single-family home in Houston is significantly cheaper than Austin’s $570,000. The pattern holds throughout Texas: Homes in large-lot Dallas (minimum 5,000 square feet) cost $414,000, while homes in small-lot San Antonio (minimum 1,250 square feet) cost only $275,000.
Introduced by Houston Senator Paul Bettencourt, SB 1787 sought to bring Houston-style affordability to counties with more than 300,000 people by prohibiting municipalities from requiring lot sizes to be larger than 1,400 square feet. The bill was part of a suite of pro-housing legislation introduced this session to address skyrocketing home prices caused by a severe housing shortage all across Texas, which has reduced housing affordability and threatens the economic model referred to as the “Texas miracle.”
The bills were backed by groups including Texans for Reasonable Solutions, Appleseed, Urban Reform Institute, Texas 2036, Texans for Housing, Habitat for Humanity, the Texas Conservative Coalition, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
In part, the way a bill (almost) becomes a law is through person-to-person persuasion and compromise.
As submitted, SB 1787 would have affected the 18 most populous counties while exempting properties with rules or deed restrictions imposed by homeowners’ associations (HOAs). The bill also limited municipal regulations on small lots with respect to unit density, lot dimensions, setbacks, building heights, parking requirements, and permeable surface areas.
The bill would have allowed homes to be built on lots less than one quarter of the size required under current regulations in Austin and on lots less than one third of current minimum sizes in Dallas—reforms that would have been striking for two cities experiencing some of the sharpest drops in affordability in Texas.
Perhaps too striking, for some.
At the same time, an identical companion bill, House Bill (HB) 3921, was working its way through the legislative process when it got stuck in the Land & Resource Management Committee. Up to that point, I had been learning about housing politics from afar, but I responded to a call to action from the groups supporting the bill. That call led me down into the bowels of this process and into those of the Capitol itself, where most legislators’ offices are housed in an underground annex. While stalking the halls, I tried to convince staffers working for members of the committee that HB 3921 deserved to be voted out of committee and brought before the House of Representatives.
It worked. Sort of.
The bill that emerged from committee had some key changes. It limited the impact to municipalities in the state’s top six counties and changed the lot size minimum to 2,500 square feet. Meanwhile, SB 1787 appeared before the equivalent Senate committee, which updated the bill to expand protections for HOAs while also adding exemptions for property owners—safeguards that attracted enough votes to advance that version out of committee.
Nevertheless, the clock ran out on HB 3921, and it died before ever reaching a floor vote in the House. The Land & Resource Management Committee instead took up the new version of SB 1787 and passed it out of committee on May 18th.
And then the nail-biting began.
With only days left in the legislative session, SB 1787 advanced to the House Calendars Committee, which has the power to decide whether and in what order the House will vote on legislation. As the last date for Calendars to schedule bills arrived, and pushback from skeptical representatives mounted, the bill’s sponsors agreed to increase the minimum threshold to 3,500 square feet in cities with populations greater than 500,000 in counties of more than 1 million people. The compromise excluded cities like the Dallas suburb Arlington but was enough to survive Calendars, which voted to place the bill on the House’s General State Calendar for May 23rd.
Where, of course, it died awaiting a floor vote just hours away.
This experience of watching pro-housing bills work their way through a once seemingly opaque process was eye-opening. Though I still think it’s somewhat arcane, the episode demystified some aspects of the process by demonstrating that, in part, the way a bill (almost) becomes a law is through person-to-person persuasion and compromise.
Although it’s tempting to focus on SB 1787’s failure, pro-housing reformers should take heart that such a bill made it so far in the legislative process. Importantly, the coalition did pass a permitting reform bill which will revolutionize permitting timelines for projects—saving 5 to 25 percent on home prices. With the legislature out of regular session until January of 2025, the onus of addressing the state’s housing affordability crisis falls back onto local governments for now. Helpfully, cities like Austin are beginning to wake up to the consequences of housing unaffordability after decades of inaction.
As the local reform movement gains steam, I wonder if I can see City Hall from my front porch…
Ryan Puzycki spent nearly a decade building and managing Montessori schools on both coasts. He is currently working on a new venture in Austin, Texas.
I thought you were going to talk about the Capitol View Corridors, which give Austin both hierotopy and instant hutongs and provide variety in the skyline.