OGDEN — Nobody said solving housing issues was easy, or that it’s set to get any easier.
On Thursday, a collection of local and state officials held a forum and open house at the Weber County Center to talk about efforts to introduce more housing stock — and the infrastructure to support it — to the state while balancing sustainability and affordability.
The panel included:
• Steve Waldrip, senior advisor for housing strategy and innovation for Utah Gov. Spencer Cox;
• Amy Mabey, Pleasant View city administrator;
• Gage Froerer, Weber County commissioner;
• Karson Eliers, Utah League of Cities and Towns policy director;
• Andi Beadles, executive director of the Weber Housing Authority.
Public-private partnerships
Waldrip was asked about the importance of public-private partnerships in addressing housing throughout the state.
“The base statement that I make a lot is there is not enough public money to solve this problem,” he said. “We cannot tax our way out of this, we cannot subsidize our way out of this, in Utah alone this is a multibillion dollar problem and issue. There just isn’t a way to say, ‘If only we gave everybody $50,000,’ or, ‘If we only gave everybody $100,000.’ It doesn’t actually solve the problem. We have to have these private and public collaborations because private money is what drives our housing.”
He said an issue of available space is one of the main contributors to higher housing prices.
“In Utah, we always had the land — we could just go outward and go outward and go outward,” he said. “Now we’ve gotten to the edge of outward. Now we’re bulging north and we’re bulging south and the lack of land availability has created land prices that are increasing more rapidly than we’ve anticipated. Housing prices, as we know, have gone up dramatically, and the only solution to this is to create more supply.”
Waldrip said by the end of the year, the state will be facing a deficit of 50,000 housing units.
“We don’t build the houses,” he said. “The county doesn’t build the houses. The cities don’t build the houses. The houses are built by private companies that have to make a profit in order to pay their people and have a reason to show up to work. We can’t vilify private enterprise and say, ‘Well, they’re just making too much money.’ We have to say, ‘Do we have a reasonable structure that allows them to make a reasonable profit, pay their employees, pay their taxes, be good community citizens and then provide what we need in our communities?’”
Sustainable housing
Eliers was also asked about how policy makers can incentivize sustainable housing options.
“The easy answer is good planning,” he said.
He said that it’s especially important for communities to pursue an in-depth general plan.
“A lot of it first starts with the general plan level or the community visioning level — really figuring out what your core community values are,” he said. “I don’t just mean, ‘We like this type of building,’ or, ‘We want to keep some open space here.’ Really sit down with your community members and try to go a step deeper. Are your core objectives things like providing opportunities for more families to live here? Are your goals to preserve places where community gatherings happen?”
Emerging trends
When asked about emerging trends in housing, Mabey said Pleasant View City is already working on some of these trends.
“A lot of the low-hanging fruit has already been taken and a lot of the development we’ve seen is challenging,” she said. “We are moving to a place where there is a little bit of creativity coming into play. Pleasant View’s main focus — I know different cities have different needs, some have infill — we have a lot of raw land, so our mayor’s big focus has been the missing middle.”
She said the focus has been on what they can control.
“We can’t control costs,” she said. “We can’t control the market, but at the very least, we can control the size and the footprint of the units that come into play. That’s something that we are incredibly focused on at this time.”
Know your community
Beadles said creating diversity in housing types comes down to making sure leaders know exactly who they’re serving.
“Knowing your population, knowing the individuals in the community, and then also knowing what’s important to the community can help to cater to those different demographics and income levels,” she said.
She said it’s also important to explore zoning and land use reforms and affordable and alternate housing plans.
Upgrading infrastructure
When searching for effective strategies for upgrading infrastructure, Froerer said it helps to know the resources available from outside the community.
“The effective strategy is to use somebody else’s money,” he said. “We’ve been very successful in that in Weber County. There was a thing called ARPA funds that came about through federal funds. Obviously, some cities and some counties had different ideas of where to spend that money. We made the decision, with Weber County, to put that into infrastructure. A majority of that money — probably $25 to $30 million — went into water and sewer projects right here in the county.”
He noted that growth in the county and the region isn’t about to come to a halt just because some people may desire that.
“Some people that I’m very familiar with say, ‘Let’s just stop growth from happening,’” he said. “Tell me how that happens. Explain to me how we can actually do that, which I don’t think is possible. All we can do is control that through zoning and control that growth and put the best ordinances in place that allow it an attainable way.”
The forum was followed by an open house where officials had an opportunity to speak with representatives of local municipalities about their own housing projects.