Housing affordability is an issue top of mind for 9 out of 10 Texans (Adams et al., 2024). Median priced, newly constructed homes are out of reach for 74% of Texas families (Zhao, 2024, p. 8). Local regulations, like restrictions on minimum lot size, account for 20.4% of Texas home prices (King, 2018, para. 8). Senate Bill (SB) 15 seeks to mitigate the soaring cost of housing by prohibiting municipalities from preventing the development of small lots on which starter homes can be built. Eliminating this aspect of municipal government interference promises to help increase the supply of housing and permit market forces to better cater to prospective homebuyers.
May 2026’s Top 10 Most Expensive School Bonds
Next month, independent school districts (ISDs) will, again, ask voters to approve massive new borrowing schemes that threaten to unleash a wave of tax hikes and bigger bureaucracies. These fiscal excesses appear widespread too. Taxpayers in nearly 60 different counties will decide on one or more of the 109 individual propositions up for a vote this election cycle, according to the Texas Bond Review Board’s (BRB’s) bond election database. If these measures are entirely successful,...