Dallas is the latest U.S. city looking to reform decades-old land-use rules that proponents say limit housing development during a time when affordable homes are in short supply.

Local zoning regulations limit where, and how densely, housing can be built. Zoning codes are a land management tool that historically was used to discriminate against low-income and nonwhite people.

The Dallas City Council is expected to address potential zoning reform on Wednesday at a briefing, which was rescheduled after the Jan. 17 briefing was canceled.

Talk of zoning changes has spurred strong opposition among homeowners in single-family neighborhoods, including many residents who spoke out in force at a December meeting at Dallas City Hall.

“Stop this blatant attempt to destroy our single-family neighborhoods,” Oak Cliff resident Anga Sanders said at the meeting. “We bought what we wanted, many years ago for some of us. And to ask us now to be forced by right to give that up and change our lifestyle, our peace of mind, our quality of life goes against the democratic process.”

But reform advocates say cities’ changing their development and building codes is the best way to increase the housing supply, housing types like townhomes and multiplexes and affordability.

Nathaniel Barrett is a local real estate developer and sits on the city of Dallas’ zoning ordinance advisory committee and the comprehensive land use plan committee.

Barrett said the zoning reforms Dallas is weighing — reducing minimum lot sizes and allowing multiplexes in single-family neighborhoods — are relatively modest compared to efforts in other cities.

“These are rather low-hanging fruit in some ways,” Barrett said. “The beauty … is that the really small ones are things that are very achievable and possible everywhere.”

Reducing the minimum lot size requirement has the greatest potential to increase a single-family neighborhood’s density, Barrett said, and the least likely to disrupt the aesthetic consistency of an area.

Barrett says, as a small developer, he does not undertake projects that would require a public hearing through a rezoning process, meaning he can develop “by right.”

“‘By right’ just means that as long as you follow the letter of the law that is laid out in the city code, your project will be approved,” Barrett said. “You don’t need to have a public hearing where you have the risk of having your project denied.”

Here’s a look at how two Texas cities and the state changed their zoning rules:

Houston

The most prominent test case cited by zoning reform advocates is in Houston, which remains the only major city without ordinances regulating land use.

In 1998 the city relaxed its minimum lot size requirement from 5,000 square feet to 3,500 square feet, which spurred housing development dramatically, according to a study by the University of Texas at Austin sponsored by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Researchers found that from 2007 to 2020, over 34,000 townhomes were built on land mostly formerly zoned as commercial, industrial or multifamily properties.

Minimum lot size requirements add to urban sprawl, reduce a city’s walkability and access to transportation, and perpetuate racial segregation, according to the UT Austin study.

These reforms also decrease the market pressure that would typically lead to more gentrification, according to Salim Furth, senior research fellow and co-director of the Urbanity Project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

“So instead of young people who want to live in the city, buying flip houses in poor neighborhoods, they’re buying newly built houses kind of on the edges of more affluent neighborhoods,” said Furth, who studies nationwide housing policy.

Austin

Austin City Council voted 9-2 in December to reform some of its zoning rules, allowing by-right development of three units per lot and loosening restrictions on tiny homes

A built-in mechanism in both Houston and Austin is the ability for neighborhoods to opt out by organizing through homeowner and neighborhood associations.

“State law makes it so homeowner associations can create their own mandates on lot sizes and different kinds of housing,” said Nicole Nosek, chair of Texans for Reasonable Solutions, an organization focused on statewide reforms to expand housing development. “So if somebody really does not want a smaller or a moderate lot size in their neighborhood, they can easily create a homeowner’s association to get out of it.”

Austin reform advocates faced fierce opposition from neighborhood associations and homeowners, which is often labeled as Not In My Backyard, or NIMBY, sentiments.

“Again and again, we’re seeing a small group of incumbent homeowners who are closing the door of American homeownership behind them,” Nosek said.

State of Texas

Texas lawmakers weighed a host of reforms aimed at easing housing development in the last legislative session.

In a victory for housing advocates, House Bill 14 passed, which went into effect in the fall. It allows developers to streamline the residential permitting process by allowing a third-party review of plans instead of waiting for cities’ often slow permitting and inspection process.

Elizbeth Markowitz, vice president of public affairs for Texans for Reasonable Solutions, said her organization advocated for the bill’s passage as a way to speed up housing production across the state.

“The longer it takes to get these permits reviewed, it just adds to the total cost of the home, which gets passed down to buyers,” Markowitz said.

The legislative session clock stopped efforts to pass a bill that would override local ordinances and require cities in counties with more than 300,000 residents to adopt a minimum lot size of 1,400 square feet for a single-family home.

A bill that would have allowed by-right development of accessory dwelling units in backyards of single-family homes failed to pass by one vote in the Texas House.

President Joe Biden’s administration also announced a series of actions in July aimed at reducing barriers caused by restrictive land-use laws, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s creation of an $85 million federal program that would allow communities to work toward policy reform and remove barriers to housing production.