HB24

HB24 changes how Texas cities handle zoning proposals, particularly proposals allowing more housing. It reduces the power of some neighboring-property protests to require a three-fourths council vote, sets special rules for broad zoning changes, adds notice requirements, and creates a short window for challenging certain adopted changes. It does not automatically approve a development or replace every zoning vote with a simple majority. It applies to proposals made on or after September 1, 2025. Final law; official history.

Broad changes receive different treatment. A “proposed comprehensive zoning change” means a city proposal that either: uniformly allows more residential development across every parcel in one or more zoning districts; adopts a new zoning code or map for the whole city; or creates an overlay allowing more residential development along a major road, highway or transit corridor. The whole-city code/map category does not itself contain the “more residential development” condition. These comprehensive changes are outside the new landowner-protest procedure. Public hearings and the specified notices still matter. Sections 1, 3 and 5.

For other zoning changes, the type of protest matters:

• A written protest signed by owners of at least 20% of the land area being rezoned requires approval by at least three-fourths of all council members. This route remains available even where the proposal allows more housing.
• Normally, a protest by owners of at least 20% of the immediately adjoining land area extending 200 feet also triggers a three-fourths vote.
• For a change allowing more residential development, the neighboring-land threshold becomes 60%, and a qualifying neighboring protest requires only a majority of all council members—but only if the change adds no commercial/industrial uses except uses limited to the residential development’s first floor and no more than 35% of the overall development.

These percentages measure land area, not the number of people or properties signing. Streets and alleys count in the area calculation, and multiple tracts affected by a change are considered together rather than separately. The law also repeals the provision authorizing a city ordinance to require a three-fourths vote just to override a zoning commission’s recommendation of denial. Sections 3, 4 and 7.

Hearings and public notice. Existing law required newspaper notice before the fifteenth day before the city governing body’s zoning hearing. HB24 adds publication on the city’s website if it has one. For comprehensive changes, the law identifies the ordinary hearing notice—or the alternative joint-hearing notice where applicable—and the special notice when an existing lawful use would become nonconforming as the only required notices. This should not be described as eliminating every owner’s notice or dispensing with a public hearing. Sections 2 and 5.

A separate new provision requires a 24-by-48-inch minimum notice sign for a home-rule city’s zoning-commission hearing on a classification change that does not cover the whole city. The sign goes on the affected property, or in a public right-of-way when the city initiates a multi-property change. It must be posted no later than ten days before the hearing and stay until the council makes its final determination. The commission may provide and pay for the sign or require the applicant to do so. This sign provision is additional to Section 211.007 notice; the comprehensive-change “only notices” provision must also be considered when a proposal falls into both descriptions. This briefing does not decide a particular city’s overlapping notice obligations. Section 6.

A 60-day challenge window. An adopted zoning change allowing more residential development is conclusively presumed valid and compliant with applicable statutes and ordinances unless an action to annul or invalidate it is filed before the sixtieth day after the change takes effect. The clock runs from the zoning change’s effective date, not simply from HB24’s signature date or a developer’s application. This provision does not promise that every possible claim about a development disappears after 60 days. Section 5, new 211.0065.