Utah is faced with a growing housing shortage and Grantsville City officials are being asked to do their part to help lessen the problem.
During the Grantsville City Council’s Sept. 19 meeting at City Hall, Brynn Mortensen, public policy and special project coordinator with the Salt Lake Chamber, told the council that the state is 54,000 units short in rentals, existing homes and new home construction.
“What we found is about a year and a half ago we had businesses coming to us saying that their employees were having a hard time finding housing,” Mortensen said. “This isn’t just affordable housing, or apartments or new construction. It’s housing across all the markets.”
The chamber, working with the Ken C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, began a “deep dive” into the state’s housing shortage, she said. That deep dive included a look back a generation of 26 years ago, the current generation, and a generation forward.
“It’s really a landmark study, the first of its kind that practically addresses the housing issue before a crisis hits, like you see in Seattle and San Francisco,” Mortensen said. “What we found in the report is that for the first time in 40 years Utah has more households than available housing units. … This gap is at 54,000 units short here in Utah. We don’t have the supply to meet the demand.”
Mortensen said the study also determined that Utah is leading the nation in housing price index increase. A home that cost $125,000 in 1991 now costs $347,000. But applying the national growth rate, that same house costs $184,000.
“What we’re concerned about is we’re pricing people out of our market,” she said. “If we’re not now, we’re going to, on our teachers, our firefighters, our nurses, those people we want in our community.”
Mortensen said there are five factors that are driving up housing prices. They include: the current housing shortage, construction and labor costs, local zoning ordinances and nimbyism (not in my back yard), land costs and topography of Wasatch Front counties, and demographic and economic growth.
Mortensen said that Utah is suffering from not having enough construction workers to help with new home construction. She also said over last decade, Utah has led the nation in population growth, and 70 percent of that growth is coming from residents who already live here, not from people moving to Utah.
But while it has led the nation in population growth, Mortensen said Utah has also led the nation in job growth.
To help remedy the problem, the Housing Gap Coalition was formed, according to Mortensen, to work with every city and county across the state “to get ahead of this issue.”
To do so, the Housing Gap Coalition recommends changes to local policies that allow for a wide variety of housing types and prices, evaluating cost-prohibitive impact and permit fees, and supporting multi-use land development.
The coalition also advises citizens to talk to elected officials, work alongside people with opposing views to find reasonable solutions, and tell representatives about the need for diverse housing options for every stage of life.
Mortensen delivered a sample resolution to the city council that states Grantsville City acknowledges there is a housing shortage problem, pledges to ensure housing affordability for all Utah residents, and will implement growth strategies to promote and maintain housing affordability.
The sample resolution also commits Grantsville to adopt and implement measures that minimize impact and permit fees; review zoning that impacts housing affordability; allow housing near employment centers and public transportation; increase public awareness about housing affordability needs; coordinate local land use decisions; align housing, infrastructure and economic development efforts; and promote collaboration with other communities to solve Utah’s housing shortage.
Councilman Tom Tripp said that at a recent town hall meeting by the Tooele County Commission, it was stated that 76 percent of the county’s workforce commutes daily to the Wasatch Front for employment. He noted that number suggests the county has more rooftops than jobs, and greater work is needed to create more local jobs for residents.
The city council did not indicate whether or not it would adopt the resolution at a future council meeting. Mortensen said the coalition is available to hear Grantsville’s unique housing problems and to help create solutions.