College students traditionally turn to co-living arrangements to make housing affordable, splitting rent among more roommates than a conventional household might. On-campus housing is often insufficient to meet demand, forcing students to seek accommodations in surrounding neighborhoods. This dynamic exemplifies the housing shortage found in many communities in the state.
In recent years, construction of new homes has not kept pace with Texas’s growing population—over 31 million residents as of 2024. I am honored to chair the House Committee on Land and Resource Management, which considers land-use and housing policy. During the 89th Legislature, Regular Session, the committee grappled with the nuances of municipal zoning, minimum lot sizes, mixed-use development, property rights, and multiple housing typologies, among other policies that aim to spur residential development and reimagine land use in urban areas. We advanced bills to encourage density and the construction of new and various types of housing, while scrapping red tape that hampers development and precludes affordability.
Senate Bill 1567
The committee passed Senate Bill 1567 (Senator Bettencourt/Representative Cody Vasut) to prohibit certain municipalities from adopting or enforcing an ordinance that limits the number of people who may occupy a dwelling unit based on age, familial status, occupation, relationship status, or whether occupants are related to each other by a certain degree of consanguinity. A municipality may not adopt a more restrictive occupancy limit than one occupant per sleeping room with a minimum of 70 square feet and one additional occupant for each additional 50 square feet in the same sleeping room. Previously, some cities imposed occupancy limits based on familial status, an arbitrary ordinance not based on health and safety concerns that restricts individual property owners and tenants from maximizing a dwelling’s potential and forces tenants to seek more expensive living arrangements. A cap on unrelated occupants largely affects students, who disproportionately rely on group living arrangements to make rent affordable on limited income.
As introduced, the bill applied to all municipalities, regardless of size or location. Following public testimony during the Senate hearing, a committee substitute bracketed the bill’s provisions to municipalities with a public institution of higher education, imposed occupancy-per-square-footage minimums, and prohibited municipalities from inspecting leases to investigate or enforce the number of unrelated individuals living together. Testimony revealed that some cities were probing the co-living arrangements of college students who had moved off campus into nearby neighborhoods in search of suitable and affordable housing.
Later amendments further narrowed the bill’s remit to a home-rule municipality with a population of less than 250,000: (1) in which the campus of an institution of higher education with a student enrollment of more than 20,000 is located; or (2) that is adjacent to the campus of that size. As passed, the bill applies to nine municipalities, all of which have implemented its provisions and revised local ordinances accordingly.
The bill passed with overwhelming, bipartisan support. For next session, my office is contemplating scrapping the population brackets so that no home-rule city, regardless of size or proximity to a college or university, can regulate a dwelling's occupancy based on the familial status or relationships of its inhabitants. While certain college towns proved egregious examples, a municipality’s interest and authority should extend only to life-safety concerns, regardless of resident population.
As people continue to move to Texas—whether for school, employment, or other quality-of-life reasons—the state must meet the demand for housing in college towns and major cities alike.
