Utah's Race to Provide Affordable Housing

Salt Lake City, Utah. Image source: Tanner Crockett on Unsplash.

Utah has been fighting a losing battle against the delivery of affordable housing for more than a decade. The present battle dates back to the Great Recession, which hit its peak in Utah back in 2008. The Great Recession offered an opportunity to look at bad habits and to restructure common practices—in the way of policy, economics and market practices. 

At that time, home prices were peaking across the country. Utah, being a much more conservative market than many others, didn’t experience the steep run-up in home prices seen in other markets (Phoenix, Las Vegas, etc.). The silver lining in this is that Utah also didn’t experience the subsequent sharp drop-offs other markets had to weather. Utah wasn’t exempt from the hurt of the Great Recession, but it was fortunate to escape the catastrophic pain exacted in places where continuous real estate growth was part of many state and municipal economic development strategies.

The Great Recession is a warning for where we sit today. As home values have again artificially skyrocketed, the writing is on the wall. The reasons for the run-up in prices are different this time around, but the results are similar to what we faced in 2008. We lack the forethought in how to deliver solutions for providing affordable housing.

The 2019 Utah State Legislative Session saw the passage of Senate Bill 34. This bill required local governments who want to be eligible for certain government funds to report their strategies for housing residents of all income levels. This would be part of the long-range planning that occurs when cities update their General Plans.

As more cities start to account for their level of compliance in providing affordable housing, it will become apparent how unfriendly the environment is towards providing adequate housing for residents who are lower-middle-class and below. Many cities will start fixing the problem, while others will continue to ignore it, shifting the burden to neighboring municipalities. In this way, discriminatory economic segregation remains a legal instrument for disallowing the inclusion of people who fall into lower income classes.

For those communities who do want to address the affordable housing problem, here are five recommended strategies that can help deliver solutions.

1. Change the DNA

The development rules for providing affordable housing are completely wrong. They breed an “us vs. them” environment as it pertains to those who need affordable housing options. The biggest issue is that conventional zoning demands the hyper-segregation of uses; this includes a fine-grained separation of housing types, even though the use is the same. One result is the enclaving of affordable housing in large pods that concentrate the demographics associated with affordable housing. This concentration and segregation produces a “Nordstroms vs. Target vs. Wal-Mart” mentality.

Fixing this can only happen at the DNA level of community-based zoning. We need rules that contribute to an inclusive environment.  Housing types should be blended within the same neighborhood, rather than demanding a segregated environment based on income.

The palette of available housing types needs to be expanded past the three general housing types which conventional zoning typically allows: single-family detached, single-family attached (townhomes), and stacked flats (condos/apartments). There are a myriad of “missing middle” housing types which conventional zoning has regulated out of use and now require reintroduction through zoning reform.

Zoning reform to expand the palette of available housing types should enable the blending of different housing types within the same neighborhood. This would provide opportunities for entry-level homebuyers to move up within the same neighborhood and for older residents to age-in-place in their same neighborhoods. With proper physical form, differing housing types can exist at the same scale.

2. Legalize Accessory Units

By definition, an accessory unit is a self-contained housing unit that is an “accessory” to the main residence. Accessory units must have a separate ingress/egress from the main residence while sharing the same utility meters. Accessory units also must contain a bathroom, stove and sleeping area. Accessory units typically come in three types:

Accessory units directly impact housing affordability by allowing residents to become part of the solution. Implementing a citywide ordinance will disperse (rather than concentrate) those residents who require low- and moderate-income housing opportunities. It also doesn’t cost taxpayers millions of dollars, because it’s a market-based solution.

Accessory units are the most effective way of thickening up a neighborhood while simultaneously making the lightest impact on it. Property owners will be selective of the occupants because they are sharing space and utilities. Property owners can subsidize their own mortgages with the rent they collect. Accessory units allow for an inclusion of an important demographic in what might otherwise be a homogeneous neighborhood. As we’ll see, this provides opportunities for social mentoring. Property owners can also closely supervise needs of family members (i.e. a newly married child, a single parent relative, or an older parent) while simultaneously providing dignity and privacy.

3. Distribute Affordable Housing Rather than Concentrating It

As mentioned earlier, conventional zoning practices concentrate housing by density (dwelling units/acre). The prevailing result of this practice is homogenous neighborhoods, made so primarily through the economics of home values. Neighborhoods are isolated from one another within narrow bandwidths of home values, which also keep people separated by median household income. Thus is exposed the last form of legal segregation in this country—economic segregation, and the accompanying discrimination against the villain of many a City Council meeting: “Those people.”

There are multiple positive impacts of distributing affordable housing solutions throughout a neighborhood and community. To name a few, the effort allows for mentoring and other opportunities between those that “have” and those that “need”; it provides for the mutual sharing of resources between neighbors, both in time and materials; and it allows more of a city’s workforce (i.e. public safety, educators, government staff) to work and live in the communities they serve—rather than being forced to leave at the end of the workday.

4.Locate Affordable Housing Adjacent to Transit and Mixed-Use Environments

Often, those who rely on affordable housing options are faced with a “double whammy”—the combined impact of housing costs and transportation costs on their household budget. Cities looking to correct this can flip that “double whammy” on its head; they can take advantage of proximity by locating affordable housing adjacent to transit and mixed-use areas.  If transportation costs can be either eliminated or minimized—by offering daily needs shopping (through mixed-use development) and regional transportation options (through transit proximity) in a walkable environment—then the quality of affordable housing can increase, with the costs offset by the reduced need for costly automobile travel.

To accomplish this objective, a myriad of current impacts must be created, altered or eliminated based on existing DNA (see Strategy #1).  Mixed-use requires greater levels of development intensities, as do legitimate transit alternatives for those who are often highly reliant on transit. These changes are often feared by those who tend to favor lower densities and homogeneous neighborhoods. Opportunities for both can effectively be provided without having to upset the balance, and this is done through Strategy #5.

5. Expand Opportunities for Market-Based Choices

Most of the fear generated by the changes needed to produce healthy environments for affordable housing stem from the historically bad examples that exist all across the country. The delivery systems of the recent past are tied to DNA that would not allow for proper approaches to be taken. There are also examples of government overstepping their bounds and forcing solutions on communities that ultimately became human travesties (i.e. Cabrini Green and Pruitt Igoe). There are still ideas of discrimination that exist that generate artificial fears regarding *those people* being too closely connected to one’s community.

This is where it becomes critical to seek out any and all market-based solutions. Those market-based solutions must be available at both the developer and the consumer stage. There are a multitude of ways to provide market-based solutions, which allows for developers and consumers to opt-in based on their level of comfort. As successful strategies provide successful results, the willingness of many to opt-in will be strengthened. For the ones who fear their proximity to *those people,* there is (and will continue to be) a multitude of homogeneous options they can choose from.

What’s important to remember in all this is that the level of choice regarding where one can live differs greatly due to household income. We don’t all have access to the same resources and opportunities; the available choices shrink alongside the available financial resources. The more we can expand the opportunities of choice, the stronger and healthier our future communities can become.

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About the Author

Mike Hathorne is a community builder/planner and urbanist headquartered on Utah's Wasatch Front, and he is the principal at commun1ty.one. His experience includes areas such as commun1ty design, land use analysis, property acquisition, land entitlements, code writing, long-range land planning, land use policy, and community/architecture design review. He holds a Masters in Urban and Environmental Planning from Arizona State University, and he served from 2013-2017 on the Board of Directors for CNU Utah.

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