Texas Just Had Its Most Pro-Housing Legislative Session Ever
Multiple bills mark a turning point in the fight for zoning reform
This year, Texas quietly became one of the most pro-housing states in the country.
You wouldn’t know it from the national headlines. But while Congress spins its wheels and coastal states fight bitter local battles over single-family zoning, the Texas Legislature just passed several major bills that chip away at the bureaucratic barriers that have worked to keep housing scarce and expensive.
These bills took up quite a lot of my bandwidth at the Texas legislature this session. The Institute for Justice was part of a broad housing coalition advocating for these bills, and I spent a lot of my time in Austin reviewing legislative language, testifying in committee hearings, meeting with legislators and staff, and taking part in various activism events to raise awareness and build support for the entire legislative package on housing reform.
Taken together, these reforms mark a major shift in how Texas cities are allowed to regulate housing; and they offer a roadmap for other states looking to fix a broken status quo.
Here’s what passed, and why it matters:
SB 15 - Minimum Lot Size Reduction / Starter Homes
This bill reduces the minimum lot size that cities can set for new (greenfield) development to a maximum of 3,000 square feet. It applies to cities with more than 150,000 people in counties of more than 300,000 people, covering many of the fast-growing urban and exurban centers of the state. While the originally filed bill aimed to reduce the minimum lot size to 1500 square feet, similar to Houston (the “gold standard” in the state, this is still a significant reform that will open up new, more affordable housing types for many Texans.
HB 24 - Valid Petition Reform / Ending the Tyrant’s Veto
Many states have some variation of a “valid petition” process, whereby a small minority of neighbors can gang together and object to the upzoning of adjacent land, kicking over the issue to the city council and requiring a supermajority of the council to override their protest. Hence the nickname “tyrant’s veto” over new housing. This bill tips the scales back in favor of property rights and democracy, changing the threshold to create valid petition from 20% to 60% of adjacent property, and changing the council override threshold from a 75% supermajority to a 51% bare majority. This should see a big difference in cities like Austin, where the valid petition process has been extensively abused to curtail new housing (and even overturn entire changes to the city’s zoning scheme).
SB 840 - Residential building in Commercial Zones
This bill will allow mixed-use and multifamily residential units to be built by right in areas currently zoned for commercial use - opening up the possibility of bringing life back to underutilized commercial areas, and creating new walkable, mixed-use districts - the kind of neighborhoods that were standard until Euclidean zoning and the strict separation of land uses started to disfigure American cities in the mid 20th century.
SB 2477 - Office to Residential Conversion
This bill legalizes housing in vacant offices and land zoned for office use, potentially unlocking millions of square feet for new housing. While not likely to be broadly taken up everywhere, this bill has the potential to revitalize certain downtown and business districts where the move toward remote work has left large swathes of vacant office space.
SB 1567 - Occupancy Limits
While testifying on a similar bill in New Hampshire, I made the point that occupancy limits - ordinances that restrict the number of people that can live within a particular unit, often according to whether or not they are related by blood - would prevent many of the lovable groupings that Americans have come to know through TV sitcoms (Friends, Golden Girls, The Big Bang Theory). Often used as a cudgel to prevent students from living in certain areas of town, occupancy limits respond to imagined issues (nuisance, littering, noise, etc.) by preemptively banning certain living arrangements, and in so doing they infringe on private property rights. Though SB 1567 is heavily bracketed to only apply to certain college towns in Texas (such as College Station), it is in those cities where it will make the biggest difference. Student government leaders from Texas A&M University (including student body president Ben Crockett) were instrumental in advocating for this bill, and gave very articulate testimony during multiple committee hearings.
SB 2835 - Single Stair Apartment Buildings
SB 2835 legalizes small apartment buildings (up to six stories, with no more than four dwelling units per floor) served by a single exit stairway — a common and safe building type in Europe, Japan, and much of the world. Under many current municipal codes, even modest three- or four-story multifamily buildings in Texas needed two separate stairwells, which consume valuable floor space and drive up construction costs. SB 2835 allows for “single-stair” buildings under defined safety standards, making it easier to build small, lower-cost walk-up apartments, especially the kind that fit well in neighborhoods without feeling like towers. This reform doesn’t compromise safety; it updates outdated code assumptions and gives architects more flexibility to design efficient, human-scale housing. Emily Dove from Texas 2036 and architect Chris Gannon of AIA Austin were some of the prime movers behind this bill.
Lessons Learned
I intend to write a separate piece reflecting on all of the lessons learned from our successful legislative session for housing reform here in Texas, but for now I think it is worth highlighting a few key points:
Targeted, piecemeal housing bills do better than big omnibus legislation. With some honorable exceptions, big omnibus housing reform bills have tended to stall, while more specific bills focusing on individual issues (minimum lot size, ADUs, missing middle housing, third party permit review, occupancy limits, etc.) have seen more success - often as part of looser, more informal legislative packages. This certainly held true in Texas, where we quickly realized that a single omnibus bill would make a very attractive, vulnerable target for NIMBY forces, while issue-by-issue bills seemed less threatening and attracted a bit less opposition (or at least forced opponents to split their resources and efforts opposing a broad array of legislation).
Broad coalitions are winning coalitions. It’s not every day that elected representatives hear from groups as diverse as the AARP, Americans for Prosperity, the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops, Campus Democrats, local urbanist groups (which generally lean progressive) and the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice (where I work) all advocating in support of the same bill, but that’s exactly what happened with the housing reform package at the Texas legislature this session. This cross-ideological support was vital - the last thing that the YIMBY / pro-housing movement needs is to become partisan coded, and thus far, we have successfully avoided that in Texas.
The right bill sponsors make all the difference. One of the most important elements of a successful legislative strategy is recruiting strong, committed bill sponsors - especially committee chairs or influential members with the relationships and procedural leverage to shepherd a bill through the process in the face of determined opposition. In Texas, several of our most impactful housing reform bills were carried by exactly the right people: Senator Paul Bettencourt, a longtime champion of property rights, carried both SB 15 and SB 1567; Senator Nathan Johnson was a committed advocate for the single stair reforms; and Senators Bryan Hughes and Tan Parker advanced SB 840. Having sponsors who not only understood the policy but were willing to work the bill, defend it in hearings, and negotiate language when needed was crucial to getting these reforms across the finish line.
Lobbying is effective when done on a city-by-city, metro-by-metro basis. Housing and property rights advocates have come to learn that the push for housing reform doesn’t fall neatly along partisan lines. While many of the successful bills in Texas were sponsored by Republican representatives and senators, other Republicans opposed the efforts. And while some Democrats supported the bills, others balked at the idea of more state preemption of Blue city powers and voted against the bills. We found it helpful to meet with entire delegations from particular cities when we felt there would be opposition, seeking to allay their concerns (where possible) and at least know where to target our resources.
A rapid-response activism capability pays dividends. I’m sure this isn’t news to most people, but it’s something that became very clear to me in my first year in a quasi-lobbying role. It was a privilege to work as part of the committed, broad-based coalition led by Texans for Reasonable Solutions. Because our coalition built and maintained links with so many offices, we benefited from good political intelligence and often knew when a vote was wavering or further outreach was necessary. An extensive email list and several lively WhatsApp chats also meant that we could quickly coordinate outreach to particular members or committees ahead of a key hearing or vote. This can - and did - make a difference when a bill is languishing waiting to be called for a vote ahead of a key deadline.
All things are possible when you don’t mind who gets the credit. I have worked on legislation that has been very much a solo effort or personal “pet project”, but this does not describe our work on the Texas housing legislative package. Different members of our coalition took more prominent roles with some bills, and more supportive roles with others, according to their expertise and credibility with the target audience. When many of us were also working on other bills (or in my case, also in other states!) it was great to be able to share the burden, taking on more or less responsibility as our other commitments required. This session, I submitted 29 written testimonies and gave oral committee testimony in 20 hearings, many of which were devoted to the Texas housing bills. IJ was an active and engaged member of the coalition, but it took all of us working together to get it done.
This was a landmark session for housing reform in Texas, not just because of what passed, but because of how it passed. These bills didn’t succeed by accident; they passed because a coalition of dedicated advocates, legislators, and everyday Texans made the case for change, built cross-ideological alliances, and stayed focused on practical and achievable reforms with real-world impact. There's still more to do; plenty of restrictive zoning remains on the books, and local resistance won’t vanish overnight. But together, Texas housing and property rights advocates have shown what’s possible when you combine smart policy with persistent, well-organized advocacy.
Texas is now a national leader on state-level housing reform. Let’s make sure it stays that way.
