Opinion: TX shows CA how to build more homes—fast

Texas’s “kill the protest veto” blueprint offers Silicon Valley a cheat code re: improving affordability: turn empty offices and 8,000-sq-ft lot minimums into housing, since SB 330 (Texas’ "Housing Crisis Act of 2019") failed to tame NIMBYs. Texas Policy explains.

At the heart of the affordability problem is the lack of housing stock. It’s simple economics: when supply is low and demand is high, prices go up. Yet government action keeps compounding the shortage by layering on added costs, stretching approval timelines, smothering new ideas, and giving organized neighborhood opposition veto power. Instead of solving scarcity, cities are reinforcing it.

Texas Policy’s analysis points to one of the most damaging mechanisms: the protest petition. Current statute allows owners of just 20% of the land near a proposed rezoning site to derail a project with a formal objection. Once triggered, the bar for approval jumps to a three-fourths supermajority of the city council. In practice, that means a tiny minority can dictate outcomes for the entire city. In one recent case, a mere 1.4% of Austin’s population was enough to block zoning reform.

Go Deeper:

• Housing law expert: San Jose CMs bite their nails over “builder's remedy”—for nothing
• Everything you need to know about Santa Clara County's housing crisis: the causes, the mistakes, the way out
• CA responds to housing crunch by--get this--building fewer homes

Every blocked rezoning is another missed opportunity to increase supply, ease competition, and slow the relentless upward march of prices. Worse, the existence of the protest petition discourages councils from even taking bold reforms to a vote. When political math starts with a supermajority requirement, reformers often don’t bother trying.

The proposed reforms are striking because they cut through this gridlock. Easing the so-called ‘Tyrant’s Veto’ would put decision-making back in the hands of elected majorities, not entrenched minorities. Pair that with office-to-residential conversions and reductions in excessive lot-size mandates, and the state has a clear roadmap for flipping underused land into new homes at scale. For Silicon Valley, where sprawling office parks sit vacant from San José to Mountain View, this playbook reads like a ready-made strategy: kill the protest veto, rezone dead commercial space, and shrink outdated 8,000-square-foot minimums.

Read more here.

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