Housing affordability is one of the Lone Star State’s – and greater Houston’s – most pressing challenges.
Recent estimates suggest Texas’ statewide housing shortage exceeds 300,000 homes, applying upward pressure on rents and prices in ways that squeeze working households, young families, and seniors looking to downsize. The gap is especially severe for first-time homebuyers, with their participation in the housing market “near an all-time low.”
In response, the Texas Legislature passed numerous reforms to increase housing supply where it is needed most. Critical among them is Senate Bill 840, a practical, market-oriented reform that requires larger cities to allow townhomes, multifamily, and mixed-use residential development “by right” in zoning districts already open to commercial, office, retail, warehouse, and similar uses. This key reform received broad support in both the Texas House and Senate, and is backed by more than 7 out 10 Texans across the political spectrum.
The law’s goal is straightforward: Cut red tape, unlock infill housing where infrastructure already exists, and increase supply to help reduce costs for everyday Texans.
To be clear, SB 840 does not force certain projects or strip cities of all authority. It simply prevents local governments from using zoning to block the very types of housing needed to address the affordability challenge. Nationwide experience shows that such reforms lead to more construction, help stabilize and slow rent growth, support walkable neighborhoods, reduce pressure for sprawl, and generate more tax revenue. Similar reforms to unlock housing opportunities in job-rich industrial areas have passed on the state and local level in Florida, Montana, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Virginia.
Despite ample evidence and strong public support, some cities have responded with targeted rules designed to frustrate the law’s intent. In North Texas, the cities of Arlington, Frisco, Irving and Plano have enacted rules that apply extra burdens almost exclusively to projects enabled by SB 840.
The Texas House’s Committee on Land & Resource Management convened July 20 to hear invited testimony from subject-matter experts on housing affordability. Testimony showed that, despite a promising estimate of 8,400 housing units unlocked across the state through SB 840, some cities have attempted to stymie this much-needed development by adding “poison pill” requirements, including expensive luxury amenities like Olympic-size swimming pools, rooftop lounges, and saunas. Others have layered on costly mandates — mandatory minimum heights that effectively prohibit garden-style multifamily communities, public-art requirements running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, building caps, enhanced parking rules, and unit-mix quotas — that do not apply to other developments in the same zones. Other tactics include creative redefinitions, such as Frisco’s move to permit “heavy industrial” uses by special permit in commercial districts, in an apparent effort to create an exemption from the law.
These are not neutral standards applied evenly across all projects. They are selective obstacles designed to make SB 840-enabled housing economically infeasible. “It’s clearly designed to thwart what we were trying to do,” Rep. Gary Gates, R-Richmond, chairman of the committee, said of these damaging mandates after the hearing. The game is obvious and the result of these rules is predictable: fewer homes built and sustained upward pressure on the cost of housing.
This matters deeply for greater Houston families and communities. The Houston-Pasadena-Woodlands region added the largest number of new residents of any metro between July 2024 to July 2025, bringing its population total to 7.9 million. By the next decennial census, Pearland will likely have a population greater than 150,000 and will be subject to the requirements of SB 840 — a reality that is already sparking city-level resistance to future planned developments. If the region continues this trend, several other Houston-area cities could reach the population threshold as well. To handle this growth, cities must be ready to work within the law to supply more housing supply in appropriate locations, especially through efficient conversion of abandoned space. When cities undermine these reforms, it deprives the market of increased supply, lower prices, and greater choice. Texans cannot afford for activist city governments to trample on these much-needed gains.
Cities maintain the power to enforce reasonable, generally applicable rules protecting health and safety. However, what they may not do is single out certain projects for punitive treatment that effectively nullifies legislative intent—as evidenced by silly ordinances requiring saunas and dog spas. Such tactics not only risk legal invalidation but also harm residents by limiting housing options and driving up costs.
SB 840 represents a thoughtful, supply-side step toward improving affordability for nurses, teachers, and firefighters who want to live in the very communities that they serve. In conjunction with other recent reforms aimed at increasing supply and reducing regulatory friction, it has the potential to make that ideal into reality.
Instead of fighting these free-market-minded reforms, city officials should welcome the new housing and tax base they promise. In so doing, their constituents will experience opportunity, not scarcity. Abundance, not shortage. Affordability, not crisis.
Dan Akeroyd is Chief Operations Officer of Texans for Reasonable Solutions, where he works with policymakers, experts, and community leaders to promote housing affordability, grid reliability, and prosperity for every Texan.
James Quintero is the policy director for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Taxpayer Protection Project. He joined the foundation in 2008 and his work has generally focused on local government matters, especially where it involves taxes, spending, and debt.