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<\/p>\nDuring a hearing on Monday, state lawmakers examined the impact of laws passed in 2025 while brainstorming ways to boost housing affordability in 2027.<\/p>\n
AUSTIN, Texas \u2014 Texas lawmakers are taking another look at how to make housing more affordable as home prices remain high and the state continues to face a housing shortage.<\/p>\n
The Texas House Land & Resource Management Committee held a hearing on Monday at the State Capitol to examine the effects of housing legislation passed during the 89th legislative session and discuss potential policy changes lawmakers could pursue when they return to Austin next year.<\/p>\n
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According to research from Texas A&M University, median home prices in Texas increased 40% between 2019 and 2023. Another report by Up for Growth, a nonprofit organization that focuses on housing poli\u00adcy, estimated the state was 306,000 housing units short of meeting demand in 2023.<\/p>\n
One of the committee’s main topics was House Bill 24, which lawmakers passed during the 2025 session. The law changed a decades-old state process for protesting zoning changes by raising the threshold required for petitions to block development and reducing the number of local council votes needed to override those petitions.<\/p>\n
Supporters told lawmakers the changes have already helped move housing projects forward.<\/p>\n
Robin Stallings, trustee and treasurer of South Austin Christian Church, said HB 24 gave his church the confidence to move ahead with an affordable housing development near South Congress Avenue.<\/p>\n
“HB 24 gave a seller like our church the confidence to proceed, gave our development partner a predictable, bounded process, and most importantly, will give 64 Texas families a home near jobs, transit and opportunity that might otherwise have been delayed or lost to procedural obstruction,\u201d said Stallings.<\/p>\n
John Bonura, a policy analyst with the Taxpayer Protection Project, said the legislation created conditions that make it easier to build more housing, even if its effects cannot be measured immediately.<\/p>\n
Bonura also told lawmakers that multifamily rents in Austin have fallen between 4% and 6% since the law took effect, though he acknowledged it is difficult to attribute those changes solely to HB 24.<\/p>\n
Kimberly Levinson, vice president of the Downtown Austin Neighborhood Association, said lower-income renters have seen even greater savings.<\/p>\n
“It has dropped their rents by 11%, and to a family that is struggling for every dollar, that makes a huge difference,\u201d said Levinson.<\/p>\n
During the hearing, lawmakers also discussed additional ideas to improve housing affordability in future legislative sessions. Those proposals included reviewing development fees, exploring ways to safely speed up construction permitting and expanding the use of preapproved residential building plans.<\/p>\n
Because the Texas Legislature is not currently in session, no new housing legislation can be passed until lawmakers reconvene in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During a hearing on Monday, state lawmakers examined the impact of laws passed in 2025 while brainstorming ways…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380390,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-380389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}