Nine out of 10 Texans say housing costs too much, poll finds

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An overwhelming majority of Texans say the state has a housing affordability crisis, according to a poll released Thursday — the latest sign of the growing pressure Texas’ high housing costs have put on homeowners and renters.

Ninety percent of Texans told pollsters with the University of Houston and Texas Southern University that housing affordability is a problem where they live. More than half of Texans polled said they face some amount of financial strain resulting from housing costs.

Most Democrats and Republicans agree housing costs are too high in their neck of the woods, according to the poll. That agreement held up regardless of education or income level, race, gender, where poll respondents live and whether they own or rent their home.

“To have nine out of 10 Texans agree on anything is really tough,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University and a senior research fellow at the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. “I think what that says is that at the very highest level, housing affordability is an issue that transcends partisan politics.”

A smaller majority of Texans think the government should do something to solve the crisis. Some 54% of Texans polled said they would favor government policies to boost the amount of affordable rental housing for lower- and middle-income Texans, while 26% say they oppose such measures. Another 20% were undecided.

The poll’s findings are the latest to point to the pressure Texans are facing because of the state’s high housing costs.

A recent report from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found that more Texas homeowners and renters than ever are struggling to keep a roof over their head. The state’s robust economic growth and a housing supply shortage have driven home prices and rents skyward, making homeownership increasingly unrealistic for more and more families. A Texas Lyceum poll released earlier this year found that nearly two-thirds of Texans said they spend too much on housing. That’s up from 44% of Texans four years ago.

Pollsters with the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston and the Barbara Jordan–Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University surveyed more than 2,200 Texas adults in English and Spanish.

While there’s broad consensus that housing affordability is a problem for Texans, some think it’s more of a problem than others. Latino and Black Texans, for example, are more likely than white Texans to see housing affordability as a major problem in their part of the state, the UH/TSU poll found.

Lower-income Texans, who face a dire shortage of affordable housing, were more likely than those higher up on the income ladder to say they see housing affordability as a major problem where they live — and more likely to support some kind of government intervention to make housing more affordable.

Some 72% of renters said housing costs have put them under some kind of financial strain, compared with 48% of homeowners, who tend to be better off financially than renters. A majority of both renters and homeowners, though, said they support policies to boost the affordable housing stock.

Acknowledgement of the state’s housing affordability woes crosses partisan lines with 88% of Democrats, 80% of Republicans and 72% of independents agreeing that housing costs are at least somewhat of a problem where they live.

There’s less agreement that the government should do something about it. More than two-thirds of Democrats said they would back government efforts to juice the state’s supply of housing affordable to lower- and middle-income families, compared with 46% of Republicans and independents.

There are signs that the Texas Legislature will tackle the affordability crisis when state lawmakers convene next year — and that Republicans and Democrats may already be finding a bipartisan consensus.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan, both Republicans, have each signaled they’re open to loosening city rules that dictate what kind of housing can be built and where. Those regulations — including how much land is required to build a single-family home and how many homes can be built on a particular lot — have increasingly drawn scrutiny from housing advocates, experts and developers. Such rules compound the nation’s housing affordability crisis, they argue, by limiting how many homes can be built, driving up home prices and rents.

Democrats, too, have also shown support for those ideas. The Texas Democratic Party adopted a platform this summer that includes language that supports rolling back at least some local zoning regulations in order to boost the state’s housing supply. The Austin City Council, typically a left-leaning body, recently relaxed zoning rules in order to allow more homes to be built.

Jones, the researcher with Rice and the University of Houston, said: “While there is a partisan gap there, it isn't a chasm.”

Disclosure: Rice University, Texas Lyceum, Texas Southern University - Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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