According to City Lab, a Nebraska state legislative committee has been conducting hearings about a number of bills including the Missing Middle Housing Act, which is designed to lower housing costs by lifting local bans on duplex homes, triplexes, and townhouses. So far, the NIMBYs have been mostly quiet. “We’ve been reaching out to housing groups, renters groups, cities and municipalities,” says Senator Matt Hansen, who represents the state’s 26th District, in northeast Lincoln. “I’ve not had very much negative feedback.”
In a sense, the Nebraska legislature is looking to win the battle before the war begins. State lawmakers are now tackling zoning and density as well as parking minimums, mixed-use developments, and low-income housing units—divisive issues that often lead to organized resistance campaigns at the neighborhood, city and state levels. The same conflicts are present in Nebraska, but lawmakers hope that action now can stave off the entrenched politics that frame the crisis in rental affordability on the coasts.
Nebraska could very well become the second state in the nation, after Oregon, to pass some kind of statewide law on zoning. The stakes are no less critical for the Cornhusker State, lawmakers say: Single-family homes predominate in Nebraska’s largest cities, and local rules that prohibit the production of more housing are leading to rising costs. It doesn’t look like the affordability crunch in gentrifying Oakland or the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., perhaps—but those are fates that Nebraska lawmakers hope to avoid.
