The capital city has built a significant amount of new housing in recent years, but its restrictive land use laws have prevented it from building enough, said Jenny Schuetz, an expert on urban economics and housing policy at the Brookings Institute.
Reducing minimum lot sizes has worked elsewhere in Texas to boost housing construction. Houston has significantly increased its housing supply since cutting its minimum home lot size from 5,000 to 1,400 square feet in 1998.
"It would have been great if this had happened many years ago, but it's definitely better late than never," Greg Anderson, director of community affairs at Austin Habitat for Humanity, told Insider."This is definitely going to move the needle and allow for a lot more folks to live in high-opportunity areas."
"There's an awakening of importance to the issue of housing at the Capitol," Anderson said."Step one is to realize that there's a problem. Step two is to start looking for solutions. And that conversation is growing pretty fast." squashed other pro-housing legislation, including a bill that would have loosened restrictions on the construction of accessory dwelling units, which are secondary units on the lot of a primary home.