COLLEGE STATION, Texas (KRHD) — SB 1567 keeps in place city ordinances to limit the number of people based on health and safety standards, but it forbids them from regulating occupancy limits through immutable characteristics.
- Student housing affordability is a top priority for Texas A&M students, and a successful bill in the Texas Legislature targets that priority.
- The Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 1567, loosening ordinances in College Station and other similar cities on occupancy limits for housing. The bill is one that many believe will help our neighbors studying higher education.
- The bill now goes to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s desk for his signature, and as long as it is not vetoed by June 22, it would go into law on Sept. 1.
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“We always felt that occupancy limits should be based off of the structure of the home, the surrounding characteristics; not, are you second cousins or not?," Ben Crockett, former Chief of Policy for the Texas A&M Student Government Association, said.
SB 1567 is putting the focus on the land uses, not the land users.
“What it requires is that home rule municipalities regulate occupancy limits through demonstrated health and safety standards, such as fire code…and it forbids them from regulating occupancy limits through immutable characteristics," said Crockett.
Immutable characteristics include age, familial status, occupation, relationship status, or whether the occupants are related to each other.
“Brings back the opportunity for students to live in houses by kind of sharing rooms or opportunities to rent in greater number in those facilities," Carter Mallory, Student Body President at Texas A&M University, said.
The bill lifts the lid on the four people limit, something students tell 15 ABC will be a benefit to them.
15 ABC asked two Texas A&M students what their experience was when it came to trying to find housing.
“I testified for that bill and I mean it was just, it's something that I've seen looking for housing, looking for university housing," Ainsleigh Broadwell, Vice President of Municipal Affairs for the Texas A&M Student Government Association, said. "I recently looked for a house and realized that hey like, not many houses only have four bedrooms, and students just cannot afford to be in a five [or] six.”
“I ended up renting into a five bedroom house, but I couldn't have my name on the lease because there were 5 bedrooms," MyKaela johnston, Vice President of the Legislative Relations Commission for the Texas A&M Student Government Association, said. "I was paying rent, I was being a respectful tenant…that was like a very specific stressor over those like you know three or four months during the Summer — I was like, well, am I gonna get caught?”
With their experience, both Broadwell and Johnston helped in the legislative efforts, and those efforts are seen as a benefit for property owners too.
“This allows people to maintain their property rights, both owners and tenants to choose who they want to live with and again to be judged on their behavior, not on who they're residing with," Elianor Vasseli, a local investment property owner, said.
As for the City of College Station, city leaders are opposed to the bill.
“We believe that it's [an] inappropriate piece of legislation [that] certainly violates any effort to refer to local control — it's overreach," John Nichols, Mayor of College Station, said.
And city leaders are also concerned about what the bill could do.
"They will now be able to put six or eight people in a house and they expect that the rent would be cheaper, and I suspect it will be initially, but over the long haul I think those prices will be bid up because of the increasing value of the land by investors now seeing a greater income stream," Mayor Nichols said.