State Legislatures Make Bipartisan Breakthroughs on Policies That Promote Housing
How shared principles are driving historic reforms
In 2025, state legislatures enacted unprecedented reforms to improve the availability and affordability of housing, with lawmakers in Texas, Washington, and Montana leading the way with major successes. These states passed bills that target multiple regulatory barriers to increased housing—from parking requirements to building codes—demonstrating how individual reforms can cumulatively bring substantial policy change.
The momentum behind these new state laws reflects a growing national consensus around the strong connection between housing availability and affordability—and the types of changes that can improve both. A diverse coalition of policymakers, residents and voters, housing policy experts, and leaders from business, civil rights, property rights, tenant, consumer, and environmental organizations has united around the understanding that overly strict regulations are limiting the availability of homes, especially lower-cost options.
For example, Texas’ Republican leadership advanced housing supply reforms with Democratic backing, while Washington’s parking reform was supported by a diverse coalition of 56 organizations and cities.
Reflecting this broad consensus, dozens of leaders from business and nonprofit sectors from a range of ideological perspectives have signed onto shared "Principles for Enhancing Housing Availability and Affordability." The document articulates four key policy objectives. Policymakers should seek to:
- Enable more housing of all types, including smaller, less-expensive options.
- Avoid inflexible mandates.
- Spur the creation of apartment and condominium buildings and townhouses in high-use areas.
- Lower administrative barriers.
The breadth of signatories to the principles and 2025’s legislative victories demonstrate that when lawmakers and organizations unite around common-sense solutions, previously contentious reforms can advance through divided political systems to improve millions of lives.
Zoning reforms can expand housing near jobs and transit
Allowing more housing near jobs and transit is one of the fastest and most cost-effective ways to create a lot of new homes and lawmakers in many states are embracing this concept.
Several states enacted ambitious reforms to enable more housing in commercial areas. In Texas, S.B. 840 allows apartments in all commercial zones in large and midsize cities, while S.B. 2477 removes rezoning and parking requirements for office-to-residential conversions. Arizona’s H.B. 2110 requires large cities to allow multifamily housing redevelopment on 10% of their commercial and mixed-use land, while allowing developers to skip lengthy rezoning processes. In New England, New Hampshire’s H.B. 631, Rhode Island’s H. 5800, and Maine’s Legislative Document 997 all allow residential development in commercial zones. Montana’s S.B. 243 allows apartment buildings up to 60 feet tall in commercial and industrial zones, while Nevada's A.B. 241 requires local jurisdictions to allow by-right multifamily or mixed-use development in commercial areas.
States also took action to allow more housing near transit. Washington state enacted ambitious reform through H.B. 1491, allowing six-story apartments within a half-mile of rail stations and four-story buildings near bus rapid transit, with “funded inclusionary zoning” that requires some affordable residences but offsets costs through 20-year property tax exemptions. Hawaii’s H.B. 1409 provides generous incentives to cities to allow apartments near transit stops and prioritizes affordable housing funding toward transit-connected areas.
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Focusing on affordable homeownership
States enacted a range of reforms in 2025 to make it easier to build homes that are more affordable for middle-class families to purchase.
Texas enacted a state-level cap on the minimum lot size that localities can require through S.B. 15, the “Starter Homes Act,” allowing new single-family homes on 3,000-square-foot lots in new subdivisions in its large and midsize cities. That’s a sharp reduction in many instances from previous requirements. Rhode Island, meanwhile, expanded homeownership opportunities through H. 5798, with lawmakers allowing townhomes in more areas of the state.
Several states enabled lot-splitting to create smaller, more affordable lots. Washington’s H.B. 1096, Oregon’s H.B. 2138, and Rhode Island’s H. 5794 allow homeowners to subdivide their properties through streamlined processes.
Kentucky’s H.B. 160 and Montana’s S.B. 252 require parity between zoning requirements for manufactured housing and site-built housing, while Texas’ S.B. 785 expands where manufactured housing is allowed, boosting access to these lower-cost homes.
Multiple states reduced liability requirements for developers and contractors that have severely limited condominium construction. Hawaii’s H.B. 420, Washington’s H.B. 1403, Colorado’s H.B. 1272, and Montana’s S.B. 143 all include reforms to encourage new condominium development.
Oregon’s H.B. 2138 builds on earlier reforms to allow townhomes, duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes in more places around the state. It also legalizes up to six homes on all residential lots if at least one home is sold to a household earning up to 120% of area median income or meets accessibility standards.
Maine’s Legislative Document 1829 creates a state-level cap of 5,000 square feet on the minimum lot size that localities can require in urbanized areas, and municipalities must allow at least three dwelling units per lot. That increases to four in designated growth areas.
Parking reform achieves breakthrough victories
States also have begun enacting laws to limit the amount and types of parking that localities can require for certain home types. These local mandates often require providing more parking than necessary and can make it difficult to build new housing on existing lots because of limited space or by driving up costs significantly.
Washington enacted parking reform through S.B. 5184, preventing localities from mandating more than 0.5 parking spaces per home for multifamily housing and one parking space per home for single-family housing. There are now no parking requirements for homes under 1,200 square feet, subsidized housing, and senior housing. Montana’s H.B. 492 also removes parking mandates for a wide range of homes. New Hampshire’s S.B. 284 limits municipalities from mandating more than one parking space per residence.
Texas capped parking mandates at one space per home and prohibited mandates for covered parking or multilevel parking structures in commercial zones and for small-lot houses through S.B. 840 and S.B. 15. Lawmakers also removed parking mandates for office-to-apartment conversions through S.B. 2477.
Building code reforms enable new housing types
Single-stair reforms emerged as a breakout area of bipartisan agreement, with states recognizing that requiring two stairwells in small apartment buildings limits design options and increases costs without boosting resident safety. Montana’s S.B. 213, Texas’ S.B. 2835, and Colorado’s H.B. 1273 all allow single-stair buildings up to five or six stories. New Hampshire’s S.B. 282 permits single-stair buildings up to four stories, while Maryland’s H.B. 489 and Hawaii’s House Concurrent Resolution 66 entail study of six-story single-stair proposals. Research from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the Center for Building in North America has found having one stairway for small buildings reduces costs and poses no added fire risk. Fourteen states have passed some type of single-stair bill since 2023.
Rhode Island modernized its building codes through S.B. 840 and S.B. 15. The state now allows three and four family homes under the residential code rather than the costlier commercial code, reducing costs to build small multifamily housing.
Accessory dwelling units gain broad support
Legalization of basement and stand-alone cottages in single-family areas—commonly known as accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—continues to achieve broad reach across party lines. Eighteen states have now passed ADU laws.
This year, Arizona extended its existing ADU law to unincorporated county areas through H.B. 2928, ensuring rural residents can add housing on their properties. Maryland’s H.B. 1466 requires all jurisdictions to permit ADUs, while Nevada’s A.B. 396 requires local jurisdictions in Nevada’s two most populous counties to allow these homes. New Hampshire’s H.B. 577 guarantees ADU rights statewide while limiting parking requirements to one space per unit. Arkansas’ Act 313 and Iowa’s Senate File 592 also allow ADUs on single-family lots. Maine’s Legislative Document 1829 strengthens existing law by requiring municipalities to allow at least one ADU per lot with a single-family home and waives or weakens certain restrictions on these homes, such as owner-occupancy, density limits, and fire sprinkler requirements.
Process reforms reduce costly delays
Lawmakers increasingly recognized that lengthy approval processes add substantial costs to housing development, which, in turn, reduces the number of new homes that can get built and contributes to high rents and home prices. Arizona’s S.B. 1353 allows single-family home construction permits to be approved by designated third-party professionals rather than waiting for a limited number of municipal inspectors. Rhode Island’s H. 5803 expanded electronic permitting to streamline and speed up the permitting process while increasing transparency. Hawaii’s H.B. 1406 establishes a task force to identify redundancies between state and county review processes, and Texas’ H.B. 24 prevents a small minority of residents from blocking rezoning. California’s A.B. 130 creates a streamlined permitting process for multifamily housing in already-developed urban areas by exempting these developments from the California Environmental Quality Act. And Maine’s Legislative Document 1829 specifies that projects with four residences or fewer must go through an administrative review process rather than a time-consuming and discretionary planning board review. It also streamlines wastewater certification requirements.
Arizona and Oregon, meanwhile, created preapproved plan systems to expedite development. Arizona’s S.B. 1529 requires municipalities to establish standard preapproved housing design plans for single-family homes, duplexes, triplexes, and ADUs. Oregon’s H.B. 2258 allows the state to preapprove residential building plans for structures with up to 12 homes and requires cities to auto-approve these structures in most locations.
Bipartisan consensus drives policy reforms
The housing policy reforms enacted across many states in 2025 represent unprecedented progress driven by an emerging bipartisan consensus around practical solutions to expand housing supply to bring down housing costs. From zoning changes and parking reforms to streamlined permitting processes, these policy victories demonstrate that when lawmakers unite around common-sense approaches, previously contentious housing issues can be addressed—despite divided political systems—to meaningfully improve housing availability and affordability for millions of Americans.
Tushar Kansal is a senior officer and Alex Horowitz is a project director with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ housing policy initiative.
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