Texas is currently experiencing a housing shortage. According to the Texas Comptroller, “Texas was 306,000 homes short of what was needed” in 2023 (Texas Comptroller, 2024). The primary factors influencing the cost of housing are the price of labor and building materials, interest rates, the availability of land, and zoning regulations, according to Robert Dietz, the Chief Economist of the National Association of Home Builders (Dietz, 2023). Of these factors, two of the most important and controlling are the regulations surrounding zoning and land-use space.
Under current Texas law, Texas Local Government Code Section 211.006 (d), owners of 20% of “the area of the lots or land covered by the proposed change; or the area of the lots or land immediately adjoining the area covered by the proposed change and extending 200 feet from that area” may block proposed changes to zoning (Texas Local Government Code Section 211.006 (d)). This is “referred to in statute as a ‘valid petition’ but is known more commonly as the ‘tyrant’s veto’” (Bonura, 2024). The tyrant’s veto may only be overridden by a vote of at least three-fourths of the municipality’s governing body (Texas Local Government Code Section 211.006 (f)). However, “when city councils take action to remove these regulations a minority of landowners should not be able to delay or even completely deny the implementation of these pro-housing reforms” (Bonura, 2024). House Bill 24 (2025) seeks to rework this process, so that a minority of property owners may not control the use of their neighbors’ property nor infringe upon their neighbors’ respective private property rights.