Nebraska's Missing Middle housing bill lost its override by nine votes
Nebraska's Missing Middle housing bill lost its override by nine votes
2026-09-12 · Nebraska · Legislation · Did not pass
The only Nebraska housing bill of 2026 to reach the Governor's desk did not survive it. LB 839 passed Final Reading 34-15-0 on April 10, 2026, was vetoed on April 16, and the override motion failed 19-28-2 on April 17, the last day of the session.1 The veto stands and the bill is not law.
The arithmetic
Nebraska's unicameral Legislature has 49 members, and overriding a governor's veto takes 30 votes. LB 839 had 34 on Final Reading. On the override motion it had 19.
Fifteen senators who voted for the bill did not vote to override the veto of it. That gap — not the veto itself — is the story of the bill's death, and it happened on the final day, with the sine die adjournment motion following hours later.
What the bill addressed
LB 839, introduced by Senator Rountree, amended the Municipal Density and Missing Middle Housing Act — the 2020 law under which Nebraska cities file periodic affordable-housing reports with the Legislature's Urban Affairs Committee. The bill dealt with reporting requirements under that Act and with accessibility requirements.
What a reporting bill means for an association
Because of what those reports say. The Missing Middle Housing Act's filing requirement is the reason Nebraska cities put their own assessment of covenants into the legislative record — and at least one city has been blunt about it.
The City of Lincoln used its 2025 filing under the Act to tell the Legislature, in plain terms, that private covenants defeat its zoning reform — that recent developments carry association covenants limiting density, floor area and height, and that upzoning would therefore reach mainly the older parts of the city where covenants do not exist.2 Omaha's filing under the same Act says nothing about covenants at all.
That is the mechanism LB 839 would have adjusted: the reporting requirement is how a city's own assessment of private land-use controls reaches the legislators who write housing law.
What is still in force
The Municipal Density and Missing Middle Housing Act itself, unamended. The veto killed the changes, not the Act. Nebraska cities subject to it continue to file, and the filings remain biennial — 2021, 2023 and 2025 are the posted cycles, with the next due in 2027. There was no 2026 filing.
Municipal authority, untouched. No part of LB 839 preempted a covenant, and no part of the veto changed what a Nebraska city may do with its zoning code. Omaha's ADUs-by-right amendment and Lincoln's March 2026 ADU text amendment were municipal acts and are unaffected.
Covenants, untouched. Nebraska still has no statute limiting what a recorded declaration may say about density, dwelling count, minimum floor area or building height. The Lincoln report describes that as a fact of the landscape, not as a problem the Legislature solved.
What the vote count tells a board
Nebraska's housing-supply coalition is real but shallow. A bill can carry 34 votes on passage and collapse to 19 on an override. Boards reading forecasts about state preemption of covenants should weight that: the 2026 session produced no enacted housing-supply preemption at all, and the one bill that passed did not survive contact with the Governor.
The pressure is municipal, not statutory. The changes that actually reached Nebraska neighbourhoods in 2026 were city text amendments. That is where a board's attention and its comment letters belong.
What to watch next
Watch the 2027 city filings, due in the next biennial cycle, and watch the override arithmetic rather than the passage vote. A Nebraska housing bill that clears Final Reading has cleared the easier of the two tests, and in 2026 the second one took fifteen of its supporters away.
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