Texas suburbs resist new state law allowing more apartments

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DALLAS — Until last month, if a developer wanted to build a run-of-the-mill apartment complex in Irving, that building could reach up to three stories and had to have plentiful places for kids to run around.

Now, that apartment complex must have eight floors. It must include a swimming pool, a dog park, a gym and a workspace for remote workers. Builders must also pick from a menu of amenities to add, such as a yoga room, a place to wash pets or cars or a station for cyclists to repair their bikes.

The Irving City Council enacted those rules in August on the eve of a new state law intended to force Texas’ largest cities and suburbs to allow more apartments and mixed-use developments to be built. Texas lawmakers passed that law this year as part of a slate of bills aimed at putting a dent in the state’s high home prices and rents, mainly by overriding local rules to allow more homes to be built.

The law “unlocks new opportunities for more housing,” Gov. Greg Abbott said at a bill signing ceremony last month. “Many local governments make it too slow and too expensive to build more housing. (The bill) slashes regulations and speeds up the permitting process.”

State legislators effectively sapped a good chunk of cities’ ability to determine what kinds of housing can be built and where — a power they’ve enjoyed for nearly a century.

That idea hasn’t gone over well in some of the state’s largest suburban cities, places where devotion to the single-family neighborhood runs deep and attempts to alter that have often been met with stiff resistance. The pushback persists even as Texas suburbs have morphed from mere bedroom communities with cheap, plentiful housing into major corporate centers home to some of the state’s most prominent employers — as well as some of its highest housing costs.

The new law, however, appears to have left wiggle room for cities to determine other factors like design and size.

Irving, Arlington, Plano and Frisco — all nestled in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, the state’s largest economy — have capitalized on that and thrown up a slew of new rules within the past few weeks intended to put a check on just how many new apartments can get built under the new law, if any. Among the new rules are stricter building codes, height thresholds, infrastructure requirements, design standards and mandates that apartments provide a certain amount of amenities to their tenants.

“It is completely unsurprising to me that when (cities) think they are facing an edict from the state that strips them of the powers to make decisions that they think are in the best interest of their citizens, they push back,” said David Schwarte, who heads the Texas Neighborhood Coalition, a group that opposed many of the statewide housing bills this year.

Officials in those suburbs opposed the bill as it moved through the Texas Legislature. Now they argue new local restrictions are needed to maintain some control over what kinds of homes get built, make sure new development isn’t unsightly for existing residents, is suitably habitable for new tenants and doesn’t strain city infrastructure.

“Make no mistake, I have always supported more housing in this city,” Plano Mayor John Muns said during an August hearing on his city’s measures. “What (new state housing laws) have done is they've taken complete authority away from what our community would like to see. … We would just like to be self-assured that those developments are at the highest quality that belong in the city of Plano.”

Those rules, critics say, undercut the law by either driving up the ultimate cost of a housing development or making those projects financially infeasible. Builders, meanwhile, are waiting for the dust to settle to see which cities embrace the law before they move forward with any new projects unlocked by the law.

The law’s proponents warn that such rules will make it harder for builders to put up enough homes to put a dent in housing costs. If suburbs resist measures to allow more housing, they put the state’s housing affordability and economic success in peril, housing advocates argue.

Nicole Nosek, who chairs the housing advocacy group Texans for Reasonable Solutions that pushed for the law, said her organization is preparing a potential lawsuit to try to force the cities to comply with the law. If they don’t, Nosek said, the state’s housing shortage will worsen and housing costs will climb higher, further putting homeownership out of reach for families.

“The Legislature acted to stop this exact cycle, but if these rules stand, local obstruction wins and Texans lose,” Nosek said.

State lawmakers who pushed the bills aren’t happy, but they likely won’t be able to act until the Legislature convenes for its next regular meeting in 2027.

“What we're seeing from some jurisdictions is that they believe that somehow they're leading the resistance,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who shepherded many of this year’s big housing proposals. “But they're leading the resistance to good ideas like housing affordability.”

A spokesperson for Frisco declined to comment. Officials from Arlington and Irving were not made available for comment.

What are the suburbs doing and why?

Texas needs about 320,000 more homes than it has, per one oft-cited estimate — a key driver of the state’s higher home prices and rents. To put a dent in that shortage, lawmakers this year passed Senate Bill 840, which automatically allows apartments and mixed-use developments to go in places that previously only allowed stores, offices and warehouses in 19 of the state’s biggest cities. Previously, most major Texas cities made it illegal for residences to be built in those places. Cities tend to allow single-family homes to be built pretty much anywhere they allow people to live, but allow apartments in much fewer places.

If landowners in those cities wanted to build apartments or mixed-use buildings on property that doesn’t already allow it, they would have to go through a city process to rezone the land. That process can often be lengthy, with any delay driving up that housing’s ultimate cost. It’s also an uncertain process because it gives people opposed to more housing near them an avenue to pressure local officials to kill the project. The idea behind the bill was twofold: unlock more land in the state’s most populous cities for apartments and mixed-use buildings to go while removing a barrier to that development.

Places like Minneapolis that have enacted similar reforms have seen apartment building surge and rents decline in newer, high-end apartments and older, cheaper apartments alike, research from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows. Similarly, the Austin-Round Rock region has undergone a massive apartment building boom since the start of the decade. As a result, rents have fallen for more than two years straight.

Still, suburbs have tried to exert some control over what gets built.

Arlington, Irving and Plano put in place rules ahead of the bill taking effect Monday that say apartments and mixed-use developments must reach a minimum height to be built, an unusual requirement. Many modern apartment complexes commonly sit at around three to four stories tall, though cities sometimes allow them to go taller in some places.

If a builder wants to put up an apartment building on land in Irving where one wasn’t allowed before the new law, it must be at least eight stories tall. In Arlington, that building would have to be at least six stories tall if it sits along a major commercial corridor. In Plano, the city will require apartments in many commercial areas to be at least 45 feet tall and office areas to be at least 75 feet tall.

Irving will require new apartments and mixed-use developments built using the law to meet stricter building standards than those previously applied to such developments, like measures to require apartments to be more energy efficient and have cleaner indoor air quality. Apartments tend to use less energy than other kinds of residences like detached single-family homes, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Arlington increased the number of residential amenities, like swimming pools or basketball courts, the city requires apartment builders to put on their properties. The city also enacted rules that at least 15% of parking spots must include electric vehicle charging stations.

Frisco has gone further than many of its North Texas counterparts, attempting a novel approach to sidestep the law altogether. The new law explicitly forbids apartments and mixed-use developments in zoning categories that also allow heavy industrial uses. The Frisco City Council changed its zoning code to allow heavy industry in the same places new housing is allowed under the law. The City Council retained the right to approve heavy industrial use in those places, an unlikely move given the city’s tony vibe.

Not every move is aimed at discouraging housing altogether. To try to maintain the city’s single-family character, Plano will allow denser single-family housing types like townhomes in some places where state law now allows apartments and mixed-use developments. So whether it’s a single-family home or an apartment, housing is allowed in more places in Plano.

Officials in those suburbs cast new housing as a potential strain on local infrastructure like police, roads, water and sewage systems. But studies have shown that it’s less expensive to provide those services to denser developments like the ones encouraged by the law than suburban sprawl dominated by single-family homes, including a study by researchers at Texas 2036 and the University of Texas at Austin. Those developments also generate more property tax revenue per acre than single-family homes.

The law comes along at a time when Texas cities, counties and school districts are facing financial strain, in part owing to stagnating property values. Testifying against a bill to put stricter limits on cities’ property tax revenue, Irving City Manager Chris Hillman told state lawmakers in August that the city’s tax base routinely isn’t enough to cover its police and fire departments.

Enacting new state housing laws could help ease that financial strain, said Emily Brizzolara-Dove, a policy analyst with Texas 2036 who focuses on housing affordability.

“The benefits are so great that I think that if there were a couple of first mover municipalities who embraced those principles and saw the resulting fiscal benefits that it would be tremendously impactful for the rest of the state,” Brizzolara-Dove said.

Critics of the new law worry the opposite will happen: that the change will drive down property tax revenue because it strips land from commercial use, which can generate more tax revenue.

Meanwhile, the state’s biggest cities don’t appear to be putting up much if any resistance to the new law, the bill’s proponents say. Dallas and Fort Worth seem to be embracing the law, they note. It’s even possible that Dallas, whose population has been stagnant for years, could once more see its population grow given its acceptance of the law, said Cullum Clark, director of the George W. Bush Institute’s Economic Growth Initiative at Southern Methodist University.

Even if Dallas and Fort Worth see a resulting building boom owing to the law, any rent relief those cities see as a result will be limited if the neighboring suburbs don’t play along. It’s possible that other suburbs may join their ranks. McKinney officials have said they’re eying similar measures to what Arlington, Plano and Irving have passed.

“We're learning that when there's a reform in a place, it's not like all the people who really didn't want to see that kind of reform just say, ‘guess we lost that forever,” Clark said. “The fight goes on.”

Disclosure: George W. Bush Institute, Southern Methodist University, Texas 2036 and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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