Now, Cisneros, who served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1993-97, is the executive chairman and co-founder of CityView. Its focus is housing for middle-class America.

"The backbone of this country is the middle class," he said Wednesday at the grand opening of a moderate-income housing development in Centerville. He added that homeownership has been a classical marker of wealth and a symbol of "making it."

The condominiums, townhomes, and single-family houses at Pineae Gardens just north of the Market Place district in the Davis County community are needed, Cisneros said, to help middle-income people live near where they work and shop.

Unlike government programs that sponsor low-income, "affordable" housing, CityView privately invests in builders that create "work force" housing. That means homes that firefighters, police officers, nurses and schoolteachers can afford, Cisneros said.

"A lot of cities want to keep out working people," he said, noting how cities often zone neighborhoods to be low density - limiting the number of units on a large lot - to encourage large and expensive homes.

Cisneros praised Centerville for reworking its zoning on the former tree nursery to allow for the 227 planned homes. That density creates affordability, he said; smaller homes in smaller places lower the prices.

And CityView supports work force housing by requiring builders to sell their homes at 80 percent to 150 percent of an area's median price. Statewide, that price is $235,000. The Pineae Gardens condos start at $160,000, townhomes around $200,000 and single-family homes in the $300,000 range.

Those prices are what's helping sell homes in a slow housing market, said Tess Peterson of Gold Medallion Homes, the Pineae builder.

While other companies were building $500,000 and $700,000 homes, she said Gold Medallion stuck with attainable housing.

"At some point you realize that bubble is going to burst - and it did," Peterson said.

So far, Pineae has 16 families living in the finished condos, which she said are attractive to empty-nesters and young families.

One of those families is Patrick and Libby Newman who last month moved in with 2-year-old Zoe. They were renting in Bountiful but all they found in their price range were homes farther north in Layton or Roy.

"We really wanted to stay here; it's where we grew up," Patrick said, adding that Libby's mother lives a few blocks away.

Speaking at the grand opening, Patrick noted that the energy-efficient design and appliances Gold Medallion installed were a bonus because he wants to live in a "conscious and sustainable manner," plus - "I'm incredibly cheap, and my wife will attest to that."

mariav@sltrib.com