The Fight to Win You Over to Add “Housing”
Executive Order 14394 came before 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Both were “teed up” by media hype to get your reaction
Mark Twain is the man who mouthed a quote known around the world “There are lies, damed lies and statistics.”
Turns out, if you want people to agree with a policy, it’s better to make your case well in advance to get their buy-in. That way, they think they came up with the idea themselves and are mighty glad you stepped in with your policy to solve things once and for all.
If only it were that simple.
You ever hear of something like present the problem, get the reaction and then solve it? Sometimes the whole thing is just a crazy set up from the beginning to get the masses to agree to all kinds of things that maybe, just maybe, they’d balk at if it hadn’t been so manipulated. Yuck, that’s no fun but I’m smelling something that is telling me that it’s quite possible, our never ending struggles for this that and the other, including housing, is due to a crafted set up.
You decide. I’ve written about the “Up for Growth” report, the smoking gun used to light the fire in the 89th Legislation Session. Remember Texas Comptroller’s report sayin… “we’re short 300,000 housing units?” And what role does National Association of Realtors (NAR) play in all this?
Let’s jump to Exhibit A. “The Typical First-Time Homebuyer Today…”
Source: First American Title
Those green arrows show the 32ish age vs. the 40. NAR is right there in the mix - it showed a jump way up to get to 38 then 40. Look at ALL the other sources, you see what I see? That’s right, Nothing even close.
NAR, National Association of Realtors, I think you have some “explaining” to do. That bit about nearly 40 ain’t true. But you have to ask, why would this be something NAR would want to convey or at least show as a problem? I turned to their policy and grant making to learn more and think you’ll find this of interest, assuming you like your single family neighborhood.
Why NOT say “ADU”, “Unit"s” or “Rezoning”?
This is a link to an article on how to talk about Housing when you want to pitch Density (link).
Let’s ask ourselves, why would this be needed? The actual coaching and micro-management over local lifestyle choices as expressed in their zoning.
I found it researching their Diversity Toolkit (link) which led me to how NAR spends its money, realtor dues mostly.
Turns out a LOT goes to funding policy. Per Compass (link), it is “the largest single-organization political spend in America in 2024 per OpenSecrets. Up from $52.1M in 2023. Public-policy spending alone jumped from $17M to $48M.”
That was right around the time all the activity was underway in Washington DC to upzone single family locations among other things…interesting. It got me to asking just what is the total per year being spent by NAR on policy influencing and got this back from Google AI search sourcing Housing Wire (link):
The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) does not publicly report a single, fixed cumulative budget for all its grant programs combined. Instead, funding pools are managed dynamically through member dues assessments and political action committees across individual grant categories
So it seems the set up is to create a funding trail to tell a story and tell it over and over and over.
Next thing you know, it creates new policy which is what we’re jumping into because in March 2026, an Executive Order (EO) was put into place and then just last month, July 2026 we got the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Which has the floor so to speak? And, by the way, both contradicts the expert Patrick Condon I’ve written about that “adding supply does not work” and points to Vancouver as a 40-year experiment.
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act
Does the EO from way back in May even matter now that in July, this bill got passed? It really doesn’t from what I’ve read/researched and some of the material is truly the same. But where it differs, it really differs.
I’ll be writing a “head ups” review in my upcoming piece for Building Savvy. For now, I want you to know that It touches on the heart of the American dream: single family living. This folks is now a real national story, not just Texas. It is unfolding before our very eyes.
As to how the bill was voted by Texan representatives, I can tell you that the following representatives in Texas voted “no”:
Roy Chip
Michael Cloud
Brandon Gill
Morgan Luttrell
Keith Self
The total number in the 400+ membership that voted “no” was just 32. Texas had 5 of them. Why is there so much support for making a federal case out of zoning? I gotta tell you that it has to do with money and control. You know, our country relies upon its “population” to swing districts for voting, not zoning. But if you add more “housing” in certain locations, it begs the question: which districts for voting get more votes?
Let’s see…
These are beautiful horses…let’s make a special place in our hearts for the beauty around us.
