This week's episode of the trip Cast is sponsored by the Austin Board of Realtors, Unlock MLS, and the Texas Tribune Membership Program. Hello and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for May thirteenth, twenty twenty five. We are here. We are in the stretch run of the legislative session. I am joined as usual by co host Eleanor Klibanoff. Hello, Eleanor, Hey Matthew, how are you. I'm doing well. We had some fun on slack at eleven o'clock on Friday night
as you were hanging out in the House chamber. How is your session going so far?
You know, I'll be honest, the last four days last from Friday on have been a little rough. I cover as we've discussed women's health. I also cover you know, LGBT issues, and there has been.
A couple of bills.
I was following that we're supposed to come up Friday night, so I stayed till midnight waiting for them to come up. They did not come up, which meant that not only was my Friday night somewhat ruined, but then my Saturday was also ruined because that's when they came up. So you know, got to watch Friday night, got to watch Saturday. Then they came up for third reading yesterday, so what a what a fun stretch.
Eleanor was really enjoying my running commentary on random bills that I found interesting at eleven o'clock Friday. Human composting Bill, look it up HB twenty two hundred.
Matthew is like just walking around the office, walking into people's offices, being like human composting Bill.
Let's discuss he's.
Really desperately fighting the urge to assign someone a story on the human composting bill.
For those wondering at home, as I'm sure many are, human composting is the idea of when you die, being allowed to just like throw your body into the woods so you can sort of return to the earth. And yeah, they want to legalize it in the house, or at least someone does I care ever the author.
Is, which, as I said, I've just been doing that. Didn't realize that was a crime, you know, but now apparently it is. It has been illegal to just fling bodies into the woods.
The other fun thing about the legislative sub session right now, as we have reached the time where it is like truly painful to walk the two and a half blocks to the Capitol because it is now one hundred and five degrees outside.
Yes, and then also it is still arctic chill inside the chamber.
Somehow.
Yesterday on the House floor, Chairman Garan, Charlie Garran was handing out heated blankets too, because we're like all the members, particularly the women, have their space heaters going, and so he was handing out heated blankets to try to, you know, lift the pressure on the grid a little bit from the chamber itself.
So they weren't electric blankets or were they electric.
Blankets, They definitely were heated.
I'm sorry I started to throw you this.
Yeah, I'm benest. I didn't look at that closely. He had like a whole cart.
He was like handing them out, especially to the women, which you know, as we know, buildings do tend to be sort of air conditioned to the level of men in full suits, and so the women tend to have their blankets and stuff. So now they've upgraded to some blankets that are heated somehow.
Okay, yeah, okay, very good. Well we are not talking anymore. I don't think about human composting or blankets this session. Instead, this week's episode, we are talking about housing. When people talk about Texas's staggering growth in the past generation, they bring up, you know, low regulation, the job incentives and everything like that, but almost always the conversation turns quickly to housing and the affordable affordability of housing in Texas.
I remember living in Dallas more than a decade ago. The person who I who's cubicle was next to me was British and she had like moved from this like tiny flat in London to this like four thousand square foot house in the suburbs of Dallas and was like, Texas is the most amazing place. Yeah, but these days maybe not as amazing at least from the affordability standpoint. Places like Austin you can just not no longer legitimately claim for them to be legit inexpensive anymore. Big cities
and small towns have seen prices skyrocket. The medium sale median sales price for a home in Texas is three hundred and thirty nine thousand dollars, which you know, sounds somewhat affordable, but that's forty four percent higher than what it was in March of twenty nineteen, when it was two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars. This is an issue that's gotten the attention of state lawmakers. Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor, Dustin Burrows, the House Speaker, have been
listing housing prices as a priority this session. And so we're going to talk about this today, and we are joined by two experts on the topic. First off, Josh Fector, urban affairs reporter for the Texas Tribune. Hello, Josh, Hey, guys, thank you for being here, Thank you for sitting through all that random stuff going on here. And then we have Emily brisilera dove who's a policy advisor for the think tank Texas twenty thirty six.
Hello Emily, Hello, Thank y'all for having me.
All Right, Emily, I'm going to start with you, and it's going to be a very simple and also a very complicated question, which is how have we gotten here? What has caused Texas to become so much more significantly unaffordable in the last five years or so.
Yeah, So the struggles that Texas is having with housing affordability are not unique to the state. You know, the pandemic caused some pretty crazy swings and prices that we saw all across the country. But you know, our affordability issue, it is, in some ways, it's a great problem to have. It's indicative that people are coming here that we are a very business friendly state. But what we need to do is ensure that families are as welcome here and
as able to thrive as our businesses are. Josh has heard all of my one liners before, so some of this is going to be to us, I know. So he put, you know.
Feel afraid to recycle?
Okay, great, that's good to hear, you know, posting today, And I want to come back to that because I'm pretty sure I've been to one of those graveyards and now I want to know where the heck I was.
Okay, they were just throwing bodies into the woods.
It was my yes, and like they put a tree on top of you.
Okay, we're changing the subject of this, Like did you go for a funeral?
It was like and to be clear, we didn't get out and walk around, but it was my best friend. She was like, hey, here is this innovative graveyard and it was out east and we just kind of drove by and and they just yeah, but now I don't know.
I'm gonna have to look at the first story.
Maybe they're trying to fan it. I don't know anything about human composting. That's next week's episode. Tune in.
Yes, Yes, for those of us that are still alive, Yes, we need houses. Housing. Housing affordability is fundamentally a supply of supply problem, you know. The Controller. The Controller last summer put out this great report about housing affordability, and there is just a really wonderful housing coalition that is united around kind of working on this issue. And the kind of stat that we like to use is Texas needs about three hundred, three hundred and six thousand homes
to adequately house its population. That's a big barrier, but we are making strides towards accomplishing it.
Josh. What Emily is talking about here is is a supply issue. Right When a lot of people talk about the housing problems, not just in Texas as you described, it's it's sort of all over the place. What they're talking about is just there's not enough homes to meet the demand.
Right, right, So Texas it should be not builds a ton of housing. We build way more housing than a lot of our peers, we build more per capita. Our metro areas tend to build more. And that's really what, you know, a big source of like why we've been able to keep housing prices as low as they are, but they are, you know, we're just simply.
Not building enough to meet demand.
And there are a couple of reasons for that that we can get into that Texas lawmakers are trying to solve. But basically it just boils down to, you know, when people come here, you know, they're competing with folks who are already here for housing, right and so you know, if you don't have a place for that demand to go, you're going to see rice prices rise as rapidly as they did in say like Austin Round Rock, or as long as much as they have in DFW or Houston.
How much of this is a city problem, how much of this is an Austin problem, or how much your people feeling this in the other parts of the state.
So there are few places in Texas where you know, that have been untouched by the housing affordability crisis.
Prices have risen pretty much everywhere.
A lot of this can stem from what lawmakers have basically identified and what is kind of acting policy du jour the really sort of attract thing to housing policy advocates that sounds very dry and boring to everybody else, which is basically that there are local regulations that get in the way of building enough housing.
Right.
There are regulations that say that single family homes have to go on a certain amount of land. Right, So that means that there's a bare minimum that you're going to have to shell out for land if you want to buy a home, right, and as prices grow, you it's tougher to afford, you know, a new home that's built on that. Right, So lawmakers are looking at ways to basically reduce how much land cities require to be
built on. You know, how much land cities require single family homes to be built on, for example, Right, then there are bills that would make it easier to build accessory dwelling units, additional dwelling units in the backyards, or single family homes. These are you know, things that used to be sort of common in the early twentieth century
but slowly got sort of phased out in cities. A lot of Texas cities technically do allow those kinds of homes to be built, but there are rules that sort of discouraged them from being built, or you know, processes that are difficult to navigate. Then there are bills that are basically, you know, trying to allow say like more mixed use development in places that don't already allow it. So think of you know, those mixed use developments you see on South Congress and First and where shops in
the bottom, you know, apartments on top. And basically the name of the game here is like they're just trying to open the spigot, right, They're trying to make it easier to build homes and basically lessen the guardrails to or the hurdles to building homes. And I rattled off a couple but I'm trying not to monologue.
I swear.
Excellent. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about just like the political moment we're in right now, because it's an interesting situation. Right. Housing seems to be one of those areas where it sort of crosses partisan lines in an interesting and unusual way. Right, we mentioned one of the bills that recently just passed, I believe SB twenty three or is it three, the the UH hold HB twenty four excuse me, that would allow, you know, take away some of the kind of make it easier
to pass certain zoning changes and things like that. When that one bill came up, you know, it was made a priority by the House leadership. It it passed, I believe, Josh, your story said with majorities by with a majority of Republicans and Democrats. But you had, you know, John Bryant,
a Democrat, speaking up against it. You had some Republicans speaking up against it too, And you know, this idea of sort of melding sort of free market capitalists with people you know who live in cities and are concerned about affordability that more frequently align with Democrats, sometimes going against you know, neighborhood groups that are you know, supported by Democrats or or environmentalist groups and things like that
that are opposing it. I mean, can you just talk a little bit, Josh about kind of the interesting alliances that have popped up around this issue.
Yeah, everybody has reasons to like these bills, and everybody else that has reasons to hate them. Democrats, you know, have traditionally sort of been sort of like the Party of Local Control.
For example, there's.
Been a big.
You know, if you've been paying attention to the legislature for the past decade, Republicans have really tried to sort of like sap authority away from like the blue or urban areas, right, And you know, Democrats traditionally have been on the side of basically trying to play defense against any kinds of measures like that. And you know, on some of these land use bills, at least in the Senate, we haven't seen a lot of these bills go through
the House yet. On some of that, you know, like that local control divide is being sort of tested in the legislature, right, So Democrats, who sometimes would be you know, very wary of like GOP attempts to like curtail cities authority, are kind of embracing some of these some of these proposals, right.
And in the House, on that bill that you just mentioned should be twenty four, that's a bill that housing advocates of pretty much billed as being something that would enhance local control, but you also had Democrats who were voting against it. And so, like, I find some of the the crosswinds they're kind of fascinating. But you zooming out from that, you know, Republicans like the stuff because you know, it is an unleash the free market sort
of move, it's a deregulatory move. Democrats like these things because you know, they're trying to enhance cities, they're trying to make those cities more affordable and you know, just make it easier to live there, and there are environmental
reasons that you might want to do it. But then you also have you know, Republicans and Democrats who don't want their neighborhoods, you know, being messed with, don't want new housing near their neighborhoods, which is kind of an omnipartisan and it's not These things don't break cleanly along partisan lines. So that's been sort of refreshing to cover, honestly in the legislature, where so many things boil down to just pure partisanship.
Emily, what's that like for you? I mean, navigating these like you're sort of moving between different factions even within each of the parties on this issue.
Yeah, housing policy is I think foundational for pretty much every other area of policy that Texas twenty thirty six in particular works on, and so for that reason it is, it's incredibly important and I think the understanding of that importance is increasing in the legislature. But it's also really a fun area to work on. It's a very optimistic area of policy. You know, fundamentally, you know, what we're trying to do at TEX twenty thirty six is increase
opportunities for homeownership. Some of the ways you can do that, as Josh said, Josh said, we're you know, getting some of this like extraneous regulation out of the way, improving the diversity of the housing stack and that kind of thing, and the inevitable I believe result of these bills is cities that are more beautiful, more walkable, better for people, more efficient, allows people to work closer, to live closer
to where they work, which is good for cities. And so, you know, do messages need to be tailored depending on who you're in front of. Yes, but that's pretty much the case for any any area of policy. And yeah, you know, there are a couple of leaders in the Capitol who are have just done a tremendous job at getting this stuff start, you know, shifted forward, and so it's kind of like following their lead.
And who would those leaders be? Who do you point to is really taking charge.
On this, Yeah, I would say, and Josh, you can chime into. I think Senator Paul Bettencourt, who's the chairman of the Local Government Committee, has done a tremendous job of embracing the approach of reforming land use, which you know last session was kind of the first attempt to do this on any kind of comprehensive level. So really look to him for for a lot of leadership there.
Senator Brian Hughes, he's the one that has the companion to HB twenty four, which I think is the most important thing that we'll do for housing affordability of this session. Chairman Gary Gates in the House, I think he's I think he's a first time chairman for he's a first time chairman for the Land and Resource Management Committee and has also just done a great job at shepherding this stuff too. And those are you know, they're Republicans.
So, Josh, I was not going to make it through this podcast without bringing up our favorite topic of conversation these days, which is Abundance, the book by Ezra Right, that book which which we both read. You know, I know a lot of people have been reading right. It sort of makes the case of like really kind of
redirecting particularly. You know, these are two liberal authors, more closely ideologically aligned with the Democratic Party, but really trying to push them toward a more like agenda, toward building and producing more and everything like that. And in that book they point to Texas a lot, and in interviews after that book they point to Texas a lot and say, you know, you know, look at Texas. Look at what
Texas is doing. Texas has state leaders who are vocally and openly at times opposed to different types of green energy, but they are Texas is producing more new green energy by far than California, where you know, leaders are falling all over themselves to talk about how much they support it. They point to housing in the same way. Look at how much easier it is to build a house or an apartment complex in Texas than it is in California,
where things are so much more expensive. It's interesting, though, to be seeing that national discourse, Josh, while we are also seeing Texas sort of be like, we really need to address this problem.
Yeah, and some of the.
I think it was Jerusalem Denzlis said something recently where it's like what the Median sales price gets that three hundred and thirty k, and Texas leaders declare that like a crisis. Right, It's like it's we are we're really far ahead of the rest of the country on those like things look expensive here to to folks who live here and they are renters are spending a lot more on housing than they were, you know, even five years ago.
It's harder to buy a house here, but like we're doing better than a lot, you know, most of the nation, certainly our peers in California and New York and Florida, and you know, it's been really interesting to see kind of where Republican lawmakers have have kind of gotten out ahead of this, right, they don't want to wind up in a place where they are and the median sales price is seven hundred k in California and where people are fleeing the state and where you know, their their
economic miracle is you know, jeopardized. So they're really trying to you know, get out ahead of that. And because once you get there, as California has found and have New York has found, it's a lot it's very difficult to unwind.
Well.
I feel like housing is kind of like it's like traffic. It's like wherever you live, you feel like this is the worst it could be, right, Like this is so expensive, like I used to live, as I've talked a lot on this podcast about I used to live in Louisville, Kentucky, where you know, you could buy like a nice house for maybe you know, two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars.
But even then, like we talked a lot about, like housing prices are increasing, right, and now it's like people are spending almost three hundred thousand dollars on like and it's like it there is always a pressure to like bring that number down or it feels very like heavy no matter likes as long as it's increasing, I think people are sort of discontented with that.
And you know, to be clear, like these bills fundamentally, they're just attempting to allow market forces to work on land. And if you love your small town and don't want it to change, then like let's make sure that people can live where they want to live and that they're
not spreading out trying to find cheaper housing. So you know, I think that there has been some pretty successful fear mongering over what the effects of these bills will be and you know, if you live in a town or a city that does not have a six story apartment building, one is not going to pop up as a result of these bills. It's going to be gradual. As land prices increase, we should ensure that the most appropriate housing
for that land is legal. And you know, these don't they're pretty I mean, I kind of think they're almost light touch bills. They're just removing barriers and we're going to see what the market produces.
I want to get into the weeds here about what those bills are. But first let's pause and hear from our sponsors. Unlock MLS delivers Central Texas's most reliable real estate marketplace, prioritizing data, integrity and accessibility for home buyers, sellers, and rental renters. Start your home buying journey at unlock mls dot com. The Texas Tribune Spring drive is on. We're asking for five hundred Texans to take action for
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Oh my gosh, please yes.
Yeah, and Texas Realtors with more than one hundred and fifty thousand members. Texas Realtors is a professional membership organization that represents all aspects of real estate in Texas. We are the advocate for realtors and private property rights in Texas. Learn more at Texas real estate dot com. Okay, Emily, you said, I believe, if I heard you right, that you think HB twenty four is perhaps the most important of these housing bills.
Yeah, I do.
Do tell us what this bill does.
Great, So, HB twenty four reforms a one hundred year old statute. It's in the local government code, and it says that if you want to change, if you want to build more housing on your property, and you need to seek a zoning change to do so, then owners of twenty percent of the land that surrounds your property within two hundred feet can sign a petition saying we don't want that to happen, and then your zoning change has to be approved by three quarters majority of the
city council. This provision of state law is very very good at killing housing. One of the most recent kind of prevalent examples was last summer there was an eighty four unit apartment complex in San Antonio City Council had approved it once they had gotten some tax credits for it, neighbors protested it, and the zoning change was lost on a vote of seven city councilmen in favor and four a posts Beyond just the concrete examples, we know that and kind of the term we're using is the tyrants
veto has a pretty significant chilling effect on new development. Builders are not going to build somewhere if the neighbors are going to cause them a lot of heartburn about it. You know, this, this provision of statue was kind of based in some of the more unsavory aspects of our nation's history, following you know, the end of racially based zoning in nineteen seventeen. It was right in there, and
so it is it desperately needs to be reformed. What HB twenty four does is it says, instead of twenty percent of land ownership, it raises that threshold to sixty percent. That's that's kind of like the most salient point of the bill. And it also says that this provision of law does not apply to like a blanket zoning. So this this portion of statute is ultimately what killed the code next in Austin. It was not intended to apply to a huge blanket rezoning like that, so it changes that as well.
Josh, what's kind of the argument that you're hearing from folks about, you know, why we don't want to get rid of this what they're calling like the tyrants veto.
So this was something that the Democrats on the House floor were kind of bringing up, right, which is that if you because this this statute isn't limited limited to housing, it applies to all kinds of development. Is so John Bryant, who you know, a Dallas Democrat, was you know, basically saying,
look like this isn't going to stop uh. You know if you if let's say, like a concrete match plant wants to get rezoned or wants to go up next with single family neighborhood, basically like you wouldn't be able to stop that under under this law. That's kind of like the most extreme example of that, right, and you know people have sort of countered, you know, I've heard criticisms of that basically being like, look like there's all kinds of things that would go into building up a
concrete batch plant that wouldn't just pop up overnight. Right, So, uh, you know, there's there's a lot of rhetoric like that sort of flying around. But as far as I know, and Emily you can, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
The the times.
That like these, that these valid petition requests have been used, and I'm sorry to get some walking about it, but the ways that these that these the state law has been used has mostly been on housing projects.
Right.
It's not on kind of like these large scale sort of industrial sort of things, other kinds of development. It's mostly been on housing. I know, there's like examples around, like there was a there was a Dallas hospital expansion that that got uh mixed because somebody used the law. But mostly, as far as I know it's been, it's been used for housing.
Yeah, I would agree with that. And you know, I think fundamentally the bill asks how much control should your neighbors have over your property? And I think raising that threshold to sixty percent of land ownership is a totally reasonable threshold. Again, if you know the concrete batch plant example, it's uh, it was, it's effective, but again that's not
that's not how these are used. And there are also there are several other safeguards in place to prevent something like that from from popping up.
Uh, and something else I want to chime in on on this bill. You hear a lot about you know, cities retaining you know, local control over you know, sort
of their housing policies. A lot of arguments against these these this round of bills have been look like, you know, cities should have the say so when it comes to saying how their land gets used, what kind of housing goes where, And you know, it'll be really interesting to see, like if this bill passes, you know, whether you know, cities basically take up the mantle that the that the legislature is kind of throwing down here.
I'm mixing metaphors.
Probably, but like, if you know this this bill is basically a local control bill to some extent, right, it unlocks cities abilities to you know, allow the kinds of housing that the ledge is trying to allow, and possibly go further right, And so it'll be sort of interesting to see if cities actually go through with how they use the law, if they take them up on that.
All right, Josh, So now you get to pick to tell us one big bill that has your attention that you think will make a big difference in this issue.
So HB twenty four, I'm very curious to see where it goes. But the other one, and I'm going to botch the bill number I did send it earlier in the chat. I've got a bill, Senate Bill eight forty has that so Cenate Bill eight forty, which is a bill by Brian Hughes, manial Republican, that would.
Basically that's right, that's right, so.
And so his bill would make it so you were.
So let's say that I own a strip mall that's seen you know better days. Right, I'm seeing retail vacancy. You know, my property taxes are going up, and I'm just like not bringing up in enough income as I want.
I could, under this bill, redevelop that.
That strip mall into a mixed use development that allows you know, apartments and shops, right, Or I could build housing, you know somewhere on that property.
Right.
And I find that bill really interesting because it does a couple of things.
One, it allows.
You know, basically homes to be built in commercial areas. It allows them in places that currently allow warehouse development, that allow office development. And you know basically says hey, if you want to turn that area into housing, go for it. And you know that I think is going to be a really interesting way to see like what the demand.
Is for for new housing.
Is the spait going to be unlocked? Are you going to see you know a lot of sort of conversions. Are you going to see them over time? And like cities will just look.
Different if that's the case.
Right, Like we have mixed use development now, but often it has to go through sort of like a rezoning process and everything under this you could just do it right. And it's also trying to tackle this notion of like vacant offices. Right, we have a lot of vacant office space in Texas and you know, this is kind of also trying to address that as well.
So like that's one where I think if.
That goes through, you might really see like cities take a different form.
It'll be interesting. I did not know that much about that bill. It'll be interesting to see whether that changes the market for those types of buildings. Right, If you're a residential developer you want to build somewhere, is that going to be a more attractive purchase because you have less red tape to cut through. Kind of an interesting to watch, a thing to watch if that goes through. I mean, the other thing that I want to sort of bring up is this idea of two separate bills
SB fifteen sbix seventy three. Fifteen deals with minimum lot sizes, SB six seventy three deals with accessory dwelling units, both issues that have been talked a lot about on in individual cities in Texas, but an effort to maybe do somethings statewide there tell us a little bit about those measures.
Yeah, So the minimum lot size bill, it's a refile from last session. Last session it was significantly broader. The bill authors the session have taken like a really narrow tailored approach with the idea of being, you know, we should not force Texas families to buy more dirt than they need to put a house on. And so the bill in ten big cities in green fill development. So that's neighbor This is not like redevelopment of neighborhoods. This
is new neighborhoods. We'll say that the minimum lot size is going to be like fourteen hundred square feet. What this minimum lot size proliferates is those tall, skinny Houston town home that that's the kind of typology that works here. We'll see, how, you know, we'll see what pops out. That's kind of the whole the whole thing about this package of bills is we're just going to kind of see what the market produces. Six seventy three eighty US
is again a refile from last session. As you all remember, that was probably the most dramatic housing bill of last session, went down on the House floor by I think two votes. That is a Senator Hughes bill this session, no population bracket on that would allow homeowners to build you know, grainy flats casitas on their property by right. That that one's really great for kind of the you know, new
wave of multi generational living. Also, one of the stats I like to use is that half of parents of adult children are now supporting those adult children financially to the tune of like fourteen hundred dollars a month. So yeah, I am not getting that calling my parents, ye, but that's I told my mom that she's really mean. So the you know, the ADU works great for grandparents. It's a great idea for you know, the young fresh out of college kid trying to get on their feet fourteen
dollars a month, fourteen hundred dollars a month. I'm so hung up on that. We'll keep like, we'll come back to that one. I know, I know, yeah, I'm getting zero dollars.
Also explains a lot about help, and that's everyone's going to Europe every summer. I know, now I get it.
You Actually, if if I can diverge a little bit on this kind of on this idea of like the really intense financial support that people feel that they need to give their kids. You know, when when when my husband and I bought our house in twenty twenty one in May in Austin, you know, we talk about that is one of our like crowning achievements in life is
being able to do that by ourselves. And it's just that's a crazy thing something that has you know, for decades, all of our parents were probably able to purchase homes for a marker of adulthood. Yeah, and like a step. It's just like part of like yeah, and now it's like yeah, so out of reach for so many people. Yeah, and so you know, you're lucky if you can like do it without help. And I've got friends now that they're buying homes and they just have to have this
significant help for mom and dad. Can I mention a couple of other bills?
Sure?
Okay? SB seven eighty five is a bill that kind of reforms how municipalities look at manufactured housing. Like I said, we want to increase the diversity of housing. Manufactured homes work for many families, but some cities, you know, they like relegate them to a teeny tiny zone or they prohibit them altogether. This bill says you got to find somewhere to put them. My favorite bill, not the most important bill that still goes to HB twenty four, SB
twenty eight thirty five. I don't know if you've got that one on your list.
No, I do you do?
Okay, SP twenty eight thirty five, and it's companion HB fifty eight. Those create pathways for cities to build single stare building. I was hoping we could talk about, ok stairs, Okay, yes, yeah, do you have? Like should I kick it over to you?
Do you have?
I don't know. I mean, I like suddenly, and I think because it's been been debating, I'm like suddenly, it's like all over my Twitter feed and yeah, yes, okay, I'm single stair pilled.
Yes, okay, yeah, so this is and you you know, I'm sure that this is an Emily in Paris loving crowd up here. Yes. So uh I pointed both of us on that. Yeah, so it's this is how the rest of the world builds apartment buildings. If you've seen Emily in Paris, you know, she lives here and then there's a staircase, and then like the cute boy lives
up here, yes, the chef. Yes, okay, great, So you've seen a single stair building and we don't build them here because there's this entity called the International Code Council. They put out something called the International Building Code. The legislature didn't create it, nobody voted on it, but it is the building code of record for the state, and for a long time it's prohibited those single story buildings from getting built. So instead what you see are those massive,
gargantuan apartment complexes. That's what that's what's pop up all over you know, our city and others.
They call them the Texas donut.
The Texas donut. Yeah, and they they have to be that big because it costs a lot more to build a second stairway and the corridor in the middle to connect all of the apartments. It raises the cost of building by like nine to thirteen percent. So the single stair buildings are you know, they're twenty four unit complexes. They're oriented for families because you've got light on multiple sides in the buildings. This is how we do lifelong neighborhoods.
They fit on property that would otherwise not be viable for multi family development. And you know, I think like if you could have a single story, a single stair building, like you know, in your neighborhood, and that's where you get your start, and then your kids get a little older and you move down the block to the single family home, and then kids move out, mom and dad get older and they can move right back in, but stay in that community. So I'm I'm really pumped about that bill.
So I feel like single stair buildings, like in Emily in pairs, facilitate love. Because if I live in an apartment building and if I see a neighbor anyone is in the other stairwell, I go to the other stairwell because I I don't want to talk to someone right now.
We have not considered the romance implication.
Absolutely, some really rough things happened in that Emily in Paris relationship.
Maybe I have avoided.
Maybe double stairs allows you to remain in your same apartment building after having a bad breakup in that same building because you can use the other stairs an argument against single stairs.
So yeah, that's true. That's true. Yes, And I thank you for that, for a truly balanced approach. But you know, these are just all approaches to like finding places where we can ease the pressure. You know, nobody is trying to take away the ability to build the big single family homes on the big lots. Nobody's trying to take away the ability to build the big apartment complexes also
on the big lots. But there is a lot of space in the middle where we can kind of you know again, just like see what the market creates, see what demand is there.
Okay, well, I have some late breaking news. I looked up the HB twenty two hundred human composting Billy. Yes, I would like to apologize to the people who dump the bodies in the woods. Actually does not have anything to do with that. I will read to you. It is to allow for natural organic reduction process in which the human body is placed into a controlled vessel mixed with other natural materials, and over an approximately forty five
day process, is converted into a soil like material. Families can choose to keep the soil of their level ones or donate it for land conservation. This bill, I'm reading from the analysis right here of the bill. The bill author has informed the committee that while this option may not be for everyone, Texans deserve to have the choice. So there it is. Hernandez, Representative Hernandez.
Okay, So to be clear, we still do not know what the legality is of just throwing a body in the woods.
I think actually that is legal. I think there was a bill about that a few sessions ago.
Okay, so already legal throw a body in the woods. This is if you want to turn the body formally into soil versus just throw the body walk away.
I'm sorry to report that this bill was voted down now on the twelfth.
So we can't put our body into a controlled setting and turn it into soil that we can use for natural conservation.
You will have to grow your tomatoes with non decomposing exactly.
I do want to be clear, absolutely there are bodies decomposing in all of our soil. But you just can't be the body of a loved one.
You can't grotimatos with Grandma.
Yes, I'm sure this is an issue that's very important to someone, but off the top it does sound a little bit crazy.
I don't know.
I thought Texas was the land of freedom.
Yeah, it's the land of It's not the land of Grandma.
We know, all right, Well, we I think have broken a new record for most diversions in the podcasts. So thank you to Josh, Thank you to Emily, both Brisillia and in Paris. Yes, thank you to our producers Robin Chris, and thank you to our sponsors Unlock MLS, Austin Reealtors, and the Texas Tribune Membership program. And I have one more thing to announce, which is that the Trip Cast at the end of the legislative session will be having
a live recording at the Austin Central Library. The twenty twenty five legislative session has been one of the most consequential for Texas schools and libraries and recent memory. If you love the Trip Cast, join us on Wednesday, June eleventh at the Downtown Austin Central Library or online when we're joined by Education reporter Jaden Edison and other special guests to discuss what happened and look ahead toward the
impact on Texas schools and libraries. We'll also take questions on the human compost seating.
We will get very up to speed on it by then. Please come meet us in person, come to the trip cast, be part of the mania, and yeah, we look forward to seeing you there.
Yeah, it's at seven pm. Texastribune dot org slash events to get more information. Thanks everyone,