Austin's bold move: Smaller lots to solve the housing crisis

Photo bySteven Baltakatei Sandova/commons.wikimedia

AUSTIN — Austin City Council voted on Thursday to allow single-family homes in the city to be built on smaller lots, in an effort to help resolve the city's housing affordability crisis. The changes would make for a part of a broader strategy to increase housing supply and bring down costs.

Following heavy debate and at times rowdy testimony during a two-day hearing, the council voted to shrink the minimum lot size for single-family houses. Supporters of increasing housing density say this legislation is necessary to help make housing affordable, but opponents fear it will encourage gentrification and displacement in existing neighborhoods. "Austin has an affordability crisis, and City government has been too slow and inefficient addressing it," Mayor Kirk Watson said in a statement via the social media platform X after the vote. "We needed to act on Austin's needs and with real results. Today, we did that."

The decision was the confluence of years of effort by city officials and housing advocates to address skyrocketing home prices and rents. For much of the previous decade, Austin has tried to loosen housing restrictions to allow more development. But many of these efforts have been blocked by homeowners and neighborhood associations that resisted higher housing density.

The fact that record home prices are already at record levels due to the growth the region experienced during the pandemic has created a sense of urgency, locally. Texas lawmakers pushing the issue have only accelerated how fast local lawmakers are moving to make those reforms, the most significant to Austin's housing policies in more than 40 years. Council Member Leslie Pool championed the cause, dubbing the HOME initiative "Home Options for Mobility and Equity." She put together a coalition that ranged from homebuilders, environmentalists, and historic preservationists to labor unions, business groups, and advocates for older adults. "The status quo hasn't worked," Pool told the Tribune in an interview. "We have to acknowledge that those pressures exist for many, many households. We can and should do more to reform our zoning code to provide relief. A more affordable, sustainable, and inclusive city makes Austin a home for everyone."

This reform package is an enormous victory for pro-development forces in Austin—forces that are often derisively labeled "YIMBY," for "Yes In My Backyard." Members of the group have been long-standing supporters of denser housing stock inside the city and contributed to the election of a supermajority of pro-housing City Council members in the 2022 elections.

Friday's vote was another milestone in the growing power of the YIMBY movement at City Hall, which has for decades been controlled by powerful — and vocal — groups of residents who oppose new development. In addition to the package, rules were passed that would allow for buildings with more apartments near single-family homes, and for more intensive development near a planned light-rail line.

As Austin barrels ahead with these reforms, city leaders and advocates have pushed to roll out reform that will defuse the heat of the housing crisis and cool off the city to make it more affordable for residents. Making the policy a reality is likely to be problematic, with potential legal battles ahead as opponents move to reverse the measures.