Y’all-itics: Is there a solution to the Texas housing crisis?

by Michael McCardel

WFAA

What if saying “yes” more solved the housing crisis in Texas?

A growing movement argues that those three letters can lead to more supply and lower prices.

The idea is to make it much easier to build by removing red tape, from minimum lot size requirements to single-family zoning to easing local land use laws.

“In overly regulated markets compared to moderately regulated markets, 45% less projects will get off the ground,” Nicole Nosek told us on Y’all-itics. “45% less housing supply will not be there if there’s all of these insane regulations that make it so a developer or an affordable housing company goes, you know, I wanted to build in Austin, but we don’t even know whether we’re going to get our permits within three to four years and our capital will be tied up.”

Nicole Nosek is the chair of Texans for Reasonable Solutions.

The group says its goal is find common sense solutions for problems facing Texans every day. And during the 2023 legislative session, it focused on the housing crisis, calling it the greatest challenge of Texas’ time.

Nosek points to Austin as an example of onerous regulations that make it easy for governments to slow roll projects, or for citizens to destroy them altogether.

“20% of the people within 200-feet of where they’re trying to upzone, that’s when you’re trying to add more units, can kill the project,” she said. “So, if you live 200-feet away, you could decide you don’t want to add 20 more units to something blocks away from you that would ultimately be housing for a senior citizen who couldn’t really afford retirement or a firefighter.”

And Nosek argues that if Texas can’t tackle this problem, the state is on a potential path to ruin.

“I really worry that we’re on the path to not only becoming like San Francisco, but possibly even becoming like Michigan, Detroit, Michigan, where it becomes somewhat of a ghost town,” she said. “I don’t think that will happen in the next five years. But if we continue on this trajectory, it could be a 15-20 year thing…”

There were several bills filed during the legislative session attempting to address the housing crisis in Texas. Few survived. Listen to the full episode of Y’all-itics to learn how supporters say they would help… and why they failed, including what Nosek describes as a “misinformation campaign” on the floor of the Texas House. Cheers!

Source: https://youtu.be/i5hoFsHMl-U?si=yK3IX8Ej0IQqnQaE