More states are pushing cities to build affordable housing : NPR
Square temple at Salt Lake City, Utah, under renovation. Utah is part of an increasing number of states that press cities to build more affordable housing.
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Salt Lake City – It’s almost dinner time and the smell of Creole seasoning fills the kitchen of Grace Cunningham and the Jamal Cureau rental house.
“Some people from Utah call it Bratwurst, but where I come from in the south of southern Louisiana, we call it a fresh sausage,” says Pureau, going up the dish.
He moved to Utah from Baton Rouge, Louisiana four years ago and was shocked by the high cost of housing. He had promised not to pay more than $ 1,200 in rent, but “I did not find a place at less than $ 1,200,” he said. “So I am here $ 1,750 per month later.” And the couple is grateful for this good deal, renting a family friend.
They are engaged, plan a wedding next year and a family after that, and their ultimate goal is to be the owners. They were raised by a single mother who managed to buy a house, and they feel that they do all the good things to get there.
Jamal Cureau and Grace Cunningham in their rental house in Salt Lake City. Their objective is to become owners, but high state housing costs make this almost impossible.
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Cunningham, 26, works in a non -profit organization and Moonlights with two other jobs, and Pureau, 31, obtains a good salary in construction. However, they can barely save for the grocery store and even less a deposit. Cunningham says it is frustrating that buying a house on the market today is almost impossible.
“I am a young woman, born and raised in Utah, and I am safe from my hometown,” she said. “Honestly, it breaks my heart and it makes me angry.”
“We prevent young people from creating wealth”
The prices of Utah houses started to increase even before the pandemic, then increased in the middle of the crushing new arrivals from a distance. The state Median house prices is soaring $ 506,000, which makes it out of reach for 87% of tenants. This makes one of the the least affordable market accommodation in a country where a record share of people struggle With the high cost of rental and purchase.
“It is no longer a problem with the lower class. It is a problem of the middle class and the upper middle class,” explains Steve Waldrip, who advises the Governor of Utah on housing. “We prevent young people from creating wealth.”
Historically, home ownership has built the American middle class, he says. Federal policies that have denied that blacks for generations have led to disastrous economic consequences – and now he worries an entire generation of Americans may be excluded.
“The median age of house buyers for the first time in the United States last year was 38 – it’s a shocking statistic,” said Waldrip. “We have just killed 10 years of wealth creation there, and that will have impacts on generation in generation.”
And this 38 -year -old median age is a All high timesAgainst 31 the decade before.
A key problem that increases prices is a massive housing shortage. In large parts of many cities, restrictive zoning rules only allow unified houses. And while certain places have Updated their zoning To allow duplexes and apartments, trying to modify the rules is often controversial, long and expensive. Frustrated by that, a growing number of states – both red And blue – started Push local governments To build more places, people can afford and adopt laws that facilitate this.
Utah has started to demand that cities and counties offer affordable housing options in the 1990s, focused on people who earn 80% or less from local median income. But this rule was easily ignored. Thus, in recent years, the state has amplified both carrot and stick, adopting laws to encourage development and enforce its mandate. Cities and counties must now choose a handful of ways to create more dense and cheaper accommodation and report on their progress each year.
Some states go even further. Texas is the last to spend a More radical law This replaces local zoning to allow smaller houses on smaller lots. Utah has tried and failed, but Waldrip says that the state will not abandon.
Francis Xavier Lilly, director of town planning and deputy director of the city for Millcreek, is on the balcony of the sixth floor of the town hall.
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High costs are also a challenge for developers
In an industrial appearance area near a light rail station, Francis Xavier Lilly stops in an apartment building under construction. He is the director of town planning and deputy municipal director of Millcreek, a popular suburb of Salt Lake who develops his own city center. Lilly says that the city goes beyond Utah housing mandates.
The Howick building will have 150 units, half with three or four bedrooms for families. Subsidized rents vary from $ 900 to little less than $ 2,000, depending on the size of the apartment and the income of people. Lilly says that it will help some people who really find it difficult to pay the rent for market rates.
“They double or plan to leave the city where they are potentially, you know, a pay check far from homeless,” he said. “If we can meet this need at the bottom, I think it will be both a moral and budgetary success for our city.”
The city has teamed up with Community Development Corporation of Utah To build this place. CEO Todd Reeder says it is a big change to create large -scale accommodation from zero. For almost three decades, the non -profit organization has mainly helped low -income people to become owners by turning existing houses.
“We acquire houses at $ 200,000, repair them and sell them at $ 210,000,” he said.
But these cheap fixers no longer exist, so reeder says that he will have to be creative to find other ways to help people buy. He scouts for small plots of public lands on which to build tiny houses or chalet communities.
Millcreek has also reduced parking requirements, rationalized permits and loosened zoning to allow more density.
New construction in downtown Millcreek, Utah.
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At the Town Hall, on a sixth floor balcony, Lilly shows a new climbing and ice wall so that people can bring together and build a community. And he highlights several sites planned for a new residential construction.
“If you look here, you see in all these buildings many service jobs. And it is a tragedy for me that people are expected and are invited to work here, to serve this community, but cannot afford to live here,” he said. “I think it’s bad.”
He hopes that the city will be able to buy a development site and build housing that would be permanently affordable. Because otherwise, a large part of the new construction here will always be out of reach for many. The land is expensive, he says, and the developers must maximize the profits. Lilly remembers having launched new incentives to a developer, explaining that he could add more units if they sold less.
“He replied, like:” Why? Why could I sell eight units at $ 450,000 when I could sell six to almost a million? “” He said. “It’s hard, but it’s a good question, right?”
For some cities, Utah housing mandates “flout the will of the people”
There has also been a general decline in many places anxious to lose local control.
“State mandates that are declining do not really make the will of the will of the people,” explains Trent Staggs, mayor of Riverton, a fairly easy city about half an hour of Salt Lake.
Not long ago, Riverton was mainly an agricultural community. Now Staggs says that some voters have moved away from complaining about overcrowding. And he fears that “conscientious and conscientious planning” of several decades “of things such as roads, water and sewers is exploded.
“Where there are so many in progress housing and the density that has been forced by the State, and the infrastructure is not there, you have seen that the quality of life decreases,” he said.
Some mayors and members of the municipal council were elected to support too much density. Last year, when Waldrip, the governor’s housing advisor, spoke during a public hearing in favor of a new development in the city of Orem, it was a difficult crowd.
“I find it insulting when the governor sends a spokesperson to preach and talk to us,” said a resident in public comments. Others criticized the smallest size of the proposed houses, saying that they would not be integrated into the rest of the neighborhood.
“Everything will be backy houses in tiny little lots,” said a person.
Waldrip says he understands such fears but that something should give. For all that UTAH does to encourage more affordable housing, it is still not enough. The shortage of state housing continues to grow.
For the tenants of Salt Lake City Grace Cunningham and Jamal Pureau, the lack of options reminds them of leaving, perhaps for Louisiana or elsewhere cheaper than Utah.
“Because I want to have little children, I want to have a space to run, I want to have people,” said Cunningham. “And I would say it’s the American dream.”
This is how she grew up, she said. But she worries Utah is no longer a place where she could raise her own children in this way.
