Austin Council Pushes New Zoning Laws For Missing Middle Housing

Austin city lawmakers bent on ensuring the Texas capital sustains momentum in a housing supply expansion that cuts into a home shortage and slows price growth took another step last week.

Thursday, the Austin City Council approved a new package of land-use changes that would accelerate construction of missing-middle housing types such as duplexes, fourplexes and small apartment buildings in walkable, transit‑served areas of the city.

Austin’s planning and zoning staff must draft ordinances and zoning text amendments by March 2027.

Austin’s land-use reform has become a nationally celebrated model for inducing housing supply to bring down prices. Michigan pro‑housing reform advocates, for example, now cite Austin as a standard-setter for what their state should do.

A study on how to stem housing price growth

Austin’s housing prices had been rising before the COVID‑19 pandemic as the metro area’s technology sector rapidly expanded.

The city kicked off a density push in 2019, after voters approved a $250 million housing bond the previous year. City leaders set a goal of producing 135,000 new units by 2027, with roughly half of them constructed for income‑restricted households. Developers received extra height or density in exchange for setting aside income‑restricted units.

In the years since, Austin overhauled its development rules to allow more homes in more parts of the city. Officials opened most traditional single‑family neighborhoods to multiple-unit lots and loosened restrictions that had limited the number of unrelated people who could share a home.

The city also cut the amount of land required for a single house, making it easier to split lots and build smaller homes or cottages. Rules governing building height, setbacks and parking have been relaxed so projects can add more units, especially along major streets and near transit.

Together, these steps made it easier for builders to produce more housing of different types across Austin. The efforts appear to have worked. A recent study from The Pew Charitable Trusts shows how effective the reforms have been in slowing rent growth. Austin now leads the country in rent price declines after several years near the top for rent increases.

Lawmakers push for missing-middle homes

Austin housing officials point to the recent cooling in home price growth as evidence that the rapid pace of new construction is beginning to ease pressure on buyers and renters.

Under the latest resolution, city staff must draft new zoning districts and development standards to make it easier to build smaller multiunit projects that fall between single‑family homes and large apartment complexes.

“Expanding these options helps support more attainable housing over time, creating neighborhoods where people can live closer to jobs, small businesses, and daily needs,” Council Member Paige Ellis, the lead ordinance sponsor, wrote in a social media post. “It also allows Austin to grow more efficiently by making better use of existing infrastructure and supporting a more connected, sustainable city.”

The council’s focus on expanding housing supply by increasing missing-middle options marks the latest front in Austin’s years‑long effort to overhaul its development code, after earlier attempts to rewrite the city’s Land Development Code collapsed amid neighborhood opposition and legal challenges.

Supporters say the incremental packages adopted since 2018 have already allowed thousands of additional homes to progress from blueprint to reality.

Critics warn that faster entitlement and added height could accelerate redevelopment and displacement in vulnerable areas if the city fails to pair them with stronger tenant protections and anti‑displacement tools.

Those concerns will play out over the next year.

Once Austin’s planning and zoning staff finish their work, another round of public hearings and votes will determine how much more capacity the Texas capital can unlock in its remaining underused residential land.