Easing pathways to housing for middle-class Texans
Texas 2036 Policy Advisor Emily Brizzolara-Dove offered testimony Wednesday in front of the Texas House Land & Resource Management Committee in favor of House Bill 14, which focuses on housing affordability.
Here are highlights from her testimony:
Texas 2036 approaches the housing policy discussion from the lens that homeownership is the single best tool for most Texans to accrue wealth and achieve a middle-class lifestyle. To that end, we are supportive of policies like this one that will ease pathways to creating abundant and diverse housing for middle-class Texans.
Our state is facing a statewide affordability crisis.
In 2018, the median price of a home in Texas surpassed three times median income, which is a common metric to measure affordability. This was before the skewing effects of COVID supply chain issues that spike in demand. On top of this, we are massively underbuilt.
In the decade since the financial crisis, the United States built fewer housing units than it has in any decade since the 1960s. So we need to build a lot and we need to do it quickly.
In a recent Texas 2036 Voter Poll, we found that 91% of voters are concerned about housing affordability and 88% are concerned about recent increases in housing costs. So easing these administrative barriers will allow for increased options for Texans to buy homes.