January 20-26, 2025by Robbie SequeiraNew state laws taking effect this month aim to confront the nation’s ongoing housing crisis in various ways, from expanding housing options, to speeding up the development process, to protecting struggling tenants from eviction.Similar bills are in store for this year’s legislative sessions.The new laws include measures to combat landlord retaliation in Illinois and Minnesota, to seal eviction records in Idaho and, in California, to streamline the process for building backyard accessory dwelling units, known as ADUs.Other states focused on the barriers preventing housing from being built by relaxing zoning laws to allow for new types of development, and put the onus on cities to make affordable housing available.Surveys show most Americans, of all backgrounds, communities and political persuasions, want to see more housing built. The need, experts say, is overwhelming. Freddie Mac estimates the current housing shortage at about 3.7 million homes. For extremely low-income tenants, that shortage is more than 7 million rental homes, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.“I expect that it will be a banner year for housing legislation, because many state legislators and governors ran for the first time on a platform that included addressing housing cost inflation,” said economist Salim Furth, a senior research fellow and director of the urbanity project at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. “Now they need to deliver.”Furth, who is tracking 135 housing-related bills this year, said he expects a return of last year’s popular issues: making it easier to build an ADU, allowing residential development in commercial zones, and streamlining permitting processes.Perhaps no state did more last year than California, which enacted more than 60 housing-related laws. Most encourage more development in a state with an estimated shortfall of 2.5 million homes.Among the new laws in California are measures that eliminate parking requirements for certain residential developments near transit stations, ease the development of more housing in existing neighborhoods, and strip local governments of the power to block some affordable housing in-fill projects except on the grounds of public health or safety.The state also enacted several laws to encourage more construction of ADUs. Among other provisions, the measures offer up-front transparency on ADU regulations, encourage the building of ADUs in coastal zones, and offer flexibility for ADUs on multifamily lots.Accessory dwelling units have gained a lot of bipartisan traction in state legislatures. Gretchen Baldau of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council praised new laws in Arizona and Nebraska that allow ADUs and modular homes on residential lots, and said she sees momentum for legislation in Delaware and Georgia that could allow for ADUs.“Housing reform can be a tricky issue for lawmakers because the topic literally hits close to home,” Baldau, who is the senior director of the commerce, insurance and economic development task force for ALEC, as the think tank is known, said in a statement to Stateline.ALEC has offered legis …
See the full article on Arizona residential development, or, read more Arizona real estate investing news. Feel free to share our site with your investor friends.
