2026 Session: Good for red meat; bad for housing affordability

We are just shy of the halfway point in the 2026 Florida legislative session. I’ve been up to Tallahassee twice already during the first four weeks of the regular session and once during committee weeks. I was planning to use my Substack to keep everyone updated on important bills moving.

Unfortunately, important bills are not moving. It’s an odd year up there. If a bill references DEI, renaming something for political favor, or goes after immigrants, they’re flying through.

However, if they propose to make our housing more affordable or remove antiquated and costly regulations (historically a conservative view), they’ve been crushed by these red meat priority bills…at least on the House side.

HB1143 (Rep Nix) The Starter Home Act allows for smaller lot sizes, less parking and as-of-right lot splits to remove regulations and allow for more affordable infill residential. Manatee County is already working on many of these initiatives locally.

The Starter Home Act has a lot of community support and mirrors a number of my thoughts in a recent Substack.

STATUS:  No first committee hearing. (SB948 has been heard once.)

HB1183 (Rep Cross) encourages more housing near transit to better use existing infrastructure and alleviate traffic issues. It puts housing where it should be without the hated sprawl.

STATUS:  No first committee hearing. (SB1342 has been heard once.)

HB313 (Rep Nix) would allow ADU’s as-of-right with restrictions for lease terms. Good for Florida and Manatee County’s rules are already more lenient than this bill.

STATUS:  No hearings since regular session began. (SB48 has made it through all its committee stops and is heading to the Senate floor this week.

All of these bills, while technically preemptions, would create positive community development by making in-fill, sensible housing more economically feasible. They are providing the framework to create supply without overburdening existing infrastructure.

Oddly, all the above bills are stalled in the same House Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee. If you know anyone on this committee, reach out and push to get these calendared. It’s almost too late in session for first stops but it would allow the Senate versions to be in a better position if they get sent over to the House.

Intergovernmental meets this week on Thursday, Feb 12 (9:15am). The notice deadline is this Tuesday, Feb 10 (5 pm). All the members are in the link above.

Somewhat unrelated, but certainly no less important, is the potential and critical fix to SB180. That bill is coincidentally (?) also tied up in the same subcommittee.

HB217 (Rep Abbott) would allow for a potential vehicle to fix SB180 (with some extra steps I’ve mentioned below).

STATUS: No first committee hearing. (SB218; Gaetz has been heard twice)

The above fix to SB180 from last session is its own issue. No member of the House filed a companion bill to the very well-written SB840 by Senator DiCeglie, which is at its final stop in Rules on the Senate side.

While HB217 doesn’t resolve any of our problems with the burdensome language from last year, we do need it to be heard to allow for a potential strike-all amendment to use it to get the Senator’s language over to the House before the end of session.

If they do not fix this, we can assume the growth management take-over from last year was intentional and NOT a misinterpretation as implied at many townhalls held by members who voted in favor of SB180 last session.

Fortunately, there are a few bills moving (albeit slowly) to make some positive changes like lowering the AMI thresholds on “affordable” from 120% to 100% - which is a Manatee County policy priority (HB675; Driskell); a bill to ease the collection of unnecessary permit fees on minor work on primary residences (SB1234; DiCeglie); and some interesting bills on infill development on brownfield sites (SB1434; Calatayud) and compatibility (SB208; McClain - which is substantially better than its House counterpart HB399; Borrero - which unfortunately includes a study for the elimination of development boundaries).

There are also great bills encouraging documentary stamp waivers for first-time home buyers (SB752; DiCeglie) and better disclosure of future ad valorem taxes to buyers (SB856; DiCeglie).

{PS: If you follow me for animal welfare, please also note that there’s a great bill filed by Senator Gaetz (SB1004) that puts restrictions on the financing, medical history and medical cost recovery of retail sales of dogs and cats. I went to the last committee stop while in Tallahassee and spoke with the Senator. It has one more stop and no direct companion in the House (of course), but it sounds like it may be getting traction and a potential path in both chambers. This would be great news! Its next and final stop is Rules, if you want to reach out to any committee member to express support.

So all is not lost…if any of these make it over the finish line before the end of session. Whenever that may be.

I do want to thank the Senate for moving all of these bills so that they may be heard. I also want to specifically thank Senator DiCeglie for filing so many quality bills in 2026 and Representatives Nix, Cross and Abbott for filing the primary housing bills I mentioned above.

They are all well-intentioned housing bills that would actually make Florida a better, more affordable, place to live.

Unfortunately, those are not the types of bills getting traction this session.

Be sure to reach out to your delegation and ask them to help push these needed housing bills to their committee stops and their ultimate approval.

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If you want to learn more about these housing bills in much more detail from someone much smarter than me on the subject, be sure to check out Kody Glazer’s Housing Action Lab Substack from the Florida Housing Coalition.

George Kruse is an at-large member of the Manatee County Commission and its District 7 commissioner. This article originally appeared on his Substack blog. Click here to subscribe.