Read on Twitter
Hard to believe that this time last year, legislators in CA, MD, NE, VA, and WA introduced single-family zoning preemption bills. Here are some of the land-use bills I’ll be following in 2021 
A few interesting preemption bills have been introduced in New Hampshire. HB 189 would require localities to permit at least three ADUs in single-family zones that are served by sewer and water.
I think rules permitting more than one ADU per house are great because many homeowners probably aren’t interested in building and renting out an ADUs, but those who want to be landlords would likely be interested in having more than one unit.
That said, this bill is not going after the low-hanging fruit in barriers to ADUs in NH. Right now the state only requires to permit internal ADUs either by-right, by conditional use permit or by special exception.
Preempting bans on detached ADUs, requiring ADUs to be permitted by-right, and preempting owner-occupancy requirements would likely go further toward making more ADUs feasible than requiring localities to permit 3 ADUs within the allowed footprint of single-family houses.
HB 341 would go further than HB 189, requiring localities to permit 4 units on single-family lots served by sewer and water. These units could be configured as fourplexes, cottage cluster, townhouses, duplexes, or a principal house and ADUs.
Finally, HB 132 is a lot size preemption bill! The only previous lot size preemption bill I’m aware of is Vermont’s S.237 from last year, a watered down version of which passed without lot size preemption.
It strikes me as not very ambitious, preempting lot sizes larger than ½ acre for land served by sewer and water. As always in New England, a lack of sewer and water is its own NIMBY policy that these bills don't touch. But any step toward reducing min lot sizes is a good one.
On to Oregon, where there’s another minimum lot size preemption bill, HB 2655. This one would prevent counties from requiring minimum lot sizes larger than one acre on unincorporated land outside of urban growth boundaries.
And SB 458 in Oregon is very exciting. This bill would take the state’s single-family zoning preemption further, requiring localities to permit lots to be subdivided into the number of lots as units would be permitted.
So instead of building duplexes or fourplexes that could be condo’d, homebuilders could instead choose to subdivide lots to build fee simple townhouses or detached houses.
This will likely make projects feasible that wouldn’t be if homebuilders were restricted to keeping existing lots intact with awkward condo arrangements.
In a way, this gets back to single-family development instead of plexes, but what’s important is that this bill would make more, denser, lower-cost housing feasible to build. Not surprised at all to see that this bill was requested by Habitat for Humanity.
I think this is my favorite state land use bill of 2021 so far cc @andersem
Next to Utah, where HB 82 would preempt local ADU bans. This isn’t a particularly strong ADU bill, but still a great step for a state where housing costs are starting to rise rapidly.
In Florida, HB 55 would preempt local design standards that aren’t related to historic preservation or the National Flood Insurance Program. Design standards are a key tool localities use to snob zone when land prices aren’t super expensive, and I’m a huge fan of preempting them.
Finally, one bill I don’t like is S.258 in South Carolina. This bill would give municipalities the authority to implement mandatory inclusionary zoning.
IZ is a poor tool for delivering subsidized units, and in my research on its effects in the Baltimore-Washington region, I find that it exacerbates housing affordability problems for the vast majority of residents who don’t receive IZ units https://www.mercatus.org/publications/urban-economics/inclusionary-zoning-and-housing-market-outcomes
Allowing municipalities to implement mandatory IZ allows policymakers to say that they’re doing something about housing affordability without passing real reforms that would make a real difference...
... like making lower-cost housing easier to build by meaningfully upzoning or increasing housing subsidies for low-income households.
