David Schwarte’s Texas-Sized Fight To Preserve Single-Family Neighborhoods
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The notion of small government and local control has animated Texas politics for generations, but those days increasingly seem long gone. And when it comes to single-family neighborhoods, each new legislative session brings a slew of bad bills, at least according to the Texas Neighborhood Coalition.
A veteran corporate attorney in the airline and tech industries, David Schwarte is an Arlington resident and the co-founder of the grassroots Texas Neighborhood Coalition, which fights against policies the group feels will have a negative impact on single-family neighborhoods.
“I had absolutely no vision of getting involved in neighborhood advocacy at all,” Schwarte told CandysDirt.com, explaining how he came to help form a volunteer organization representing thousands of homeowners across dozens of cities.
He said his activism, and really the origins of the whole group, stemmed from opposition to short-term rentals like AirBnBs back in 2017. The issue has no doubt been a contentious one in communities across Texas, where there’s no real statewide regulation outside of a taxing framework.
“It took us about 11 months with turning up hundreds of people at City Hall here in Arlington, all wearing red t-shirts, to demand that the city council confirm and strengthen its short-term rental ordinance, which eventually they did,” he said.
Schwarte credited his professional experience with giving him the tools to wage policy campaigns.
“A large part of that work required me to understand how it is that you mobilize your allies to advocate for the point of view that you think is correct,” he said, noting that a lot of his career, particularly in the airline industry, was geared toward “getting policies across the finish line that were good and blocking those that were harmful.”
Well, Schwarte and the Texas Neighborhood Coalition certainly have their work cut out for them. Sky-high home prices and rising rents have activists and officials arguing that the state is in the middle of a full-blown housing affordability crisis. At both the local and state level, there has been a push for Texas to develop itself out of the problem, with the idea being that an increase in housing stock (single-family and multifamily) would make pricing more affordable.
In practice, that has meant cities like Dallas embracing increased density in city planning. Meanwhile, at the state level, bills have targeted the ability of cities to regulate various aspects of development. While Schwarte and his organization are wary of the former, the latter stands to undermine homeowners’ ability to advocate for themselves on issues affecting their neighborhoods.
“If I want to try to influence my Arlington City Council, I’ve got a 10-minute drive, and I can go any week of the year practically,” Schwarte said. “If I want to try and influence Austin and stop [the legislators] from doing something crazy, I got a 200-mile drive, which I’ve done, and they only meet once every two years. Local control is kind of our touchstone. [City officials] are closer to the local terrain and also more accessible.”
The Texas Neighborhood Coalition has fought against legislation that would override city authority, permit higher-density housing like duplexes or ADUs (accessory dwelling units or so-called “granny flats”) in single-family zones, encourage smaller lots, or loosen occupancy definitions that limit unrelated tenants. At the same time, it has supported efforts by cities to regulate or ban short-term rentals in residential areas, arguing that such measures protect neighborhood character, safety, and long-term housing availability.
It’s been win some, lose some. SB 840, for example, was recently enacted. It strips big cities of the ability to regulate various aspects of multifamily development on land previously zoned for commercial use. Critics of the new law claim spill-over effects from dense projects that don’t have to secure local zoning approval could impact single-family neighborhoods without them having a say.
“You have to give towns the ability to make adjustments where needed,” he said, pointing out how Arlington, a city of 400,000 people, does not have public transportation of any kind, which makes the adequate parking of developments a serious issue.
“You’re not going to require parking more than one spot per unit? Everybody’s got to drive, and most places are going to have two people per unit. Where are these people going to park? They’re going to choke the streets with traffic,” he said.
Still, Schwarte acknowledged that it’s a tough housing market out there for prospective buyers and renters alike. But he challenged the notion that “up-zoning” would lead to lower prices, referring to studies that show the trend has been for developers to build high-cost units rather than affordable ones.
Rather than a shortage of housing stock, he said the real culprits of the affordability crisis are corporations buying up homes to rent and the significant misalignment between buyer and seller expectations these days. Gov. Greg Abbott has made some noise about the former, but what about the latter?
“I can’t think of any fix to that, but certainly wrecking single-family neighborhoods doesn’t help,” Schwarte said.
He expects more “anti-neighborhood bills” to come out of Austin next session in 2027, but the Texas Neighborhood Coalition will be there to fight them.
