New 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 legislatures model legislation that would lower permitting and construction barriers to building ADUs, she noted, along with other model bills that would eliminate discretionary review and approvals and limit most third-party legal challenges to approved developments.
Tenant protections
Several new laws impose checks on tenant-landlord relationships.
New laws in Illinois and Minnesota, for example, prohibit landlords from retaliating against tenants who report code violations, seek repairs or engage in tenant organizing — the latter of which is robust in Minnesota.
Minnesota’s law also offers protections for tenants who report issues to the media, or who call for emergency assistance.
In Idaho, eviction actions filed on or after Jan. 1, 2025, are automatically shielded from public disclosure if the entire case was dismissed, is not pending appeal or if three years have passed since the filing date.
Idaho was one of at least three states, along with Maryland and Massachusetts, to enact laws last year that seal eviction records, according to a Stateline review. The laws have been hailed by housing advocates who say they will prevent a person’s eviction history from being used against them, though landlords argue eviction data is relevant to leasing decisions.
‘Housing isn’t just one issue’
With 26 state legislatures back in session as of Jan. 8, housing bills are slowly trickling in.
California, a bellwether when it comes to housing policy, has a few bills introduced that would ban the use of algorithmic devices to set rents, prevent local agencies from placing parking standards on ADUs, and create a new state authority to build and maintain social housing, a public community housing movement gaining momentum in some advocacy circles.
In Texas, two Republican lawmakers have filed bills that would override local ordinances restricting or prohibiting accessory dwelling units.
And in Maryland, Democrats say they plan to introduce legislation to speed development approvals for new housing, alongside tenant protection proposals such as a bill that would require landlords to have a legitimate cause for evicting a tenant.
Tim Rosenberger, a legal policy fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, predicts differing approaches to housing: Red states will focus on increasing supply, while blue states will prioritize rent control, he said.
“With rates high and inventory priced far above what most Americans can afford, expect red states to pursue commonsense efforts to increase supply while blue states look at ways to try to curb prices,” he said. “Legislators must reject increased regulation, rent and price controls. They should jump at opportunities to reduce regulation and bureaucracy and unleash building.”
In Oregon, lawmakers are considering legislation that would impose rent control on mobile home parks and require indoor cooling in apartments with at least 10 units. The National Apartment Association predicts other states might consider rent stabilization measures as well.
Housing will be a chief priority for some state lawmakers going into the next sessions.
One of Democratic state Sen. Stanley Chang’s goals when he heads back to Hawaii’s legislative floor on Jan. 15 is to change how quickly the state uses its rental housing revolving fund. Under the current system, Chang said, roughly $519 million the state holds in the fund might not be spent until 2038.
“Housing finance reform has been our top priority for years,” he said. “This program alone funds over half of all new housing construction in Hawaii — it’s the primary way we produce housing in the state. If we tweak this program, we could get 10 buildings for the price of one.”
Chang added, however, that the scale of the affordable housing problem is too complex to boil down to one or two issues or solutions.
“Housing isn’t just one issue: It’s the foundation of everything. Affordability, homelessness, economic mobility — they all hinge on whether we can provide enough housing. It’s time to stop treating this as a side project and recognize it as a central priority,” Chang told Stateline. “This is a solvable problem.”