Frisco officials have spent recent months buttonholing four different state lawmakers, pressing them to rewrite or scale back a 2025 law that strips the city of its power to block new apartment construction in commercial districts. The push comes even though Frisco already engineered its own workaround to the law months ago, creating a new heavy-industrial zoning category designed to shield commercial parcels from the mandate.
A Law Frisco Never Wanted
Senate Bill 840, passed during the 89th Texas Legislature, allows apartments and mixed-use residential projects to be built by right in zoning districts that already permit office, commercial, retail, or warehouse uses, according to The Dallas Morning News. The law applies to cities with more than 150,000 residents, and Frisco, now home to almost 250,000 people, falls squarely within its reach. Frisco officials met with state Sen. Brent Hagenbuch and state Reps. Jared Patterson, Richard Hayes, and Keresa Richardson to argue that state laws capping city property-tax revenue combined with mandates like SB 840 are hamstringing suburbs such as Frisco.
Laura Rummel, a Frisco official, said the city will always be seeking local control, and argued that Frisco already has plenty of multifamily housing and does not need more, per the same Dallas Morning News report. She said SB 840 removes Frisco's ability to control its own development, and city officials specifically asked whether Frisco could simply be exempted from the law altogether.
Frisco's Industrial Zoning Workaround
Frisco had already taken matters into its own hands before making its case to state lawmakers. The city amended its Unified Development Code to create a heavy-industrial zoning definition that mirrors SB 840's own statutory exemption language, which excuses land within 1,000 feet of heavy-industrial uses from the by-right apartment mandate, according to a legal analysis from Munsch Hardt Kopf and Harr. By making heavy-industrial permits theoretically available through a Specific Use Permit across commercial districts citywide, Frisco created a legal path for adjacent commercial parcels to claim the exemption and dodge by-right apartment development.
The maneuver has drawn attention from Austin. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a key author of the state's housing reform package, publicly criticized suburban workarounds like Frisco's in late 2025, characterizing them as local resistance to state law, as reported by The Texas Tribune. SB 840's statutory preemption applies strictly to 19 Texas municipalities with populations over 150,000 in counties over 300,000 residents, sweeping in suburbs including Plano, McKinney, Arlington, Grand Prairie, Garland, Irving, Fort Worth, and Dallas alongside Frisco.
Where Frisco's Lawmakers Stand
The four legislators Frisco lobbied split on the original 2025 vote. Patterson, a Republican who represents Frisco, voted against SB 840, while Hagenbuch, Hayes, and Richardson all voted for it, per the Dallas Morning News. Patterson told the paper he could work on potential tweaks to the law, but said abolishing SB 840 entirely was unlikely. Rummel said Frisco officials believe they may have changed a couple of legislators' minds during the meetings, though the extent of that shift remains unclear.
The timing lines up with the state's own review process. Texas House committees have been conducting interim monitoring hearings throughout 2026 to track SB 840's implementation and collect feedback from cities, according to earlier Hoodline reporting on the process. Those hearings are meant to inform possible statutory tweaks ahead of the 90th Texas Legislature, which convenes in Austin on January 12, 2027.
Frisco's Housing Numbers Tell a Different Story
Frisco's own land-use data complicates its case for scarcity. As of April 2025, the city had already built more than 13,000 multifamily units, with roughly 10,000 more under construction, per the Dallas Morning News. Only about 3.3 percent of Frisco land was dedicated to multifamily projects in 2024, compared with roughly 30 percent for single-family homes, 12 percent for commercial projects, and 26.4 percent set aside for parks and open space.
State lawmakers who back SB 840 point to a broader housing shortage as justification for overriding local zoning control. A Senate Research Center analysis from the 89th Legislature found Texas faced a structural shortage of 320,000 homes in 2022, a benchmark cited by supporters as the primary rationale for the law, according to LegiScan's legislative supplement. Statewide data compiled in mid-2026 indicated SB 840 had facilitated or unlocked more than 8,400 new residential units across participating municipalities in its first ten months of enforcement.
Frisco officials, meanwhile, argue that additional multifamily projects would add traffic and strain the city's water and public-safety resources without local input, a concern raised in the same Dallas Morning News account. The clash reflects a wider tension playing out across Collin County, where Frisco already tops the state in rent even as U.S. Census Bureau estimates put the county's median household income at $121,600, well above the Texas statewide median. Whether lawmakers agree to soften SB 840 before the next session convenes remains an open question, one Frisco officials say they will keep pressing on.
