News · Tuesday, October 6, 2026 · Travis Jack Stevens, write-in candidate for U.S. Senate, Delaware · 28 days to November 3

This summer, Delaware passed the biggest change to how we plan and build homes in a generation. Most people never heard about it. Their towns are hearing about it now, and some of them are worried.

The two laws are Senate Bill 23, the “Housing for Every Delawarean Act,” and House Bill 450, the “ROAD-DE Act.” Governor Matt Meyer signed both on July 13. WHYY reported today that state officials are now walking counties and towns through what they have to change, and that the questions in the room were, in the words of Sussex County Administrator Todd Lawson, a sign of “great concern.”

Here is what the laws do, who pays, and what they can’t do alone.

Delaware has grown for 25 straight years, according to John Kane, the governor’s director of policy. Sussex County has grown by nearly 17 percent since 2020, according to Census figures cited by WHYY, and the Cape Gazette reports that 66 percent of the new homes built in Delaware in the past five years went up in Sussex.

The homes being built are not keeping up with the people who need them. The Delaware State Housing Authority’s 2023 needs assessment says the state needs about 2,400 new homes a year through 2030, and Sussex alone is more than half of that need. The same assessment found that half of Delaware renters pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing.

Under SB 23, every county, and every city or town with more than 2,000 people, has to write an affordable housing plan into its comprehensive plan, the long-range growth map every Delaware community is required to keep.

Those plans have to work toward two goals: having 20 percent of homes count as affordable, and offering more kinds of homes. Affordable here means a rental that a household at or below 80 percent of the area’s median income can afford, or a home a household at 120 percent can buy. Kane called the 20 percent figure “a stretch goal.” Communities are expected to make progress toward it, not hit it overnight.

Every plan must raise how many homes can be built per acre, allow more housing types without special permission, and take a hard look at lot-size and open-space rules. Then each community picks at least five more tools from a state list. The options include faster permits or lower fees for projects with affordable units, apartments allowed by right in at least one zone, room for supportive housing, and turning empty offices and storefronts into homes.

HB 450 is mostly about permits and traffic. A 2019 state study found that permitting in Delaware takes more than two years, slower than neighboring states.

The law changes how traffic studies are triggered. They now look at the busiest hour of the day instead of total daily trips, with a statewide minimum threshold of 500 peak-hour trips. It also tells DelDOT to create statewide transportation impact fees, paid by developers before they get a building permit, to help bring roads up to standard. A 2 percent surcharge on those fees goes to farmland preservation, coastal resiliency, sidewalks and bike paths, open space, water conservation, and brownfield cleanup. Projects financed by the State Housing Authority can get the fee waived or reduced. DelDOT has to set the fee by January 1, 2027.

HB 450 also sets a floor: in the state’s designated growth areas, local zoning has to allow at least four single-family homes per acre, more for other housing types, by June 1, 2027.

The provision drawing the most anger is about by-right projects, meaning developments that already meet every zoning rule on the books. Under SB 23, those projects now go through administrative review without a formal public hearing. Public meetings can still happen, but comments are limited to whether a project meets the community’s written, objective standards, and oral comments “will not be attached to the project itself,” according to the state’s guidance.

The state’s argument, from Kane, is that the public’s voice moves earlier: residents decide where and what gets built when their town writes its plan, instead of fighting parcel by parcel. Sussex County reads the law more strictly. Lawson said the county’s understanding is that if a project meets the objective standards, “you fast-forward right to approval.” Sussex has paused hearings on residential applications while it rewrites its process, Lewes is weighing a moratorium, and Georgetown officials have cited the laws in a push to repeal its cottage-housing ordinance.

Lawson also warned of a “tsunami” of development, and said new homes may outpace road work that takes years to fund and build. “The thing that everyone worries about is traffic and the roads,” he said.

I believe housing is a human right. I live paycheck to paycheck in a one-bedroom with a dog and two kittens. I know what it means when rent eats the month before the month is over. Delaware is right to say that every community has to make room for the nurse, the line cook, the teacher, and the retiree, and right to stop letting a permitting process slower than our neighbors’ decide whether working families get a home.

But two things have to be true at the same time.

First, building more has to mean building affordable. A 20 percent goal is only as real as the plans and the follow-through behind it. The state has promised an annual public report on each community’s progress by May 2028. That report should name names, and it should count homes people can actually afford, not just homes.

Second, growth has to come with the roads, schools, clinics, water, and sewer to carry it. In Sussex, people already wait in traffic and wait for appointments. An impact fee is a start. It is not a hospital, and it is not a school.

And if residents are going to lose the hearing at the end, then the planning at the beginning has to be real: open meetings held when working people can attend, plain-language maps, and a genuine chance to shape the plan before it is locked in. Democracy that only happens on weekday afternoons isn’t democracy for people who work.

Delaware cannot do this alone. Roads, water systems, and affordable homes cost more than impact fees and town budgets can carry. As your Senator, I will fight for federal housing and infrastructure dollars that come to Delaware with affordability strings attached, not as giveaways to whoever builds biggest. That is what universal housing looks like in practice: a home within reach for everyone, in a community that can still get you to work and to a doctor.

Counties and towns have until June 1, 2027, to adopt the new density rules. The real decisions are being made now. Show up. Ask your town what its plan says.

Register by Saturday, October 10 at iVote Delaware. On November 3, write in TRAVIS JACK STEVENS. People-funded. No Super PAC. travisjackstevens.com

1. WHYY (Sarina Grossi), Oct 6, 2026: Delaware recently implemented 2 land-use laws. Here’s what they mean for affordable housing
2. Delaware Office of State Planning Coordination, Sept 25, 2026 town hall presentation on SB 23 and HB 450 (signed July 13, 2026; 70 Del. Laws c. 343 and c. 344): state planning presentation
3. Cape Gazette: State, local governments work to comply with SB 23, HB 450
4. Spotlight Delaware, July 14, 2026: Delaware General Assembly roundup: Housing reforms
5. Delaware State Housing Authority, 2023 Housing Needs Assessment executive summary: DSHA needs assessment
6. Delaware General Assembly: SB 23 bill detail
7. Related: Near Milton, Nearly 1,400 Market-Rate Homes