Utah has ‘moved mountains’ to build new homes, Cox says. But we need to ‘move faster.’

Eighteen months into an initiative to build thousands of starter homes, Utah has made progress, Gov. Spencer Cox said — but there’s a long way to go.

Since the governor announced plans ahead of the 2024 legislative session to add 35,000 starter houses, Cox said developers across the state have built and sold 5,100 starter homes.

“We know that’s not enough,” Cox said Thursday afternoon. “With Utah’s population growth, we need to do more and we need to move faster.”

With the “simple but urgent” goal of making housing more attainable, Cox met with local government officials and staff from nearly 50 Utah cities and partner organizations in a housing summit called “Built Here.”

The goal, he said, is to collaborate and share wins and best practices as the state pushes to make homes more affordable for young families and a workforce squeezed by the high cost of living.

“We talk about the bad actors a lot — where there are a few cities here and there that aren’t approving plans, that are taking years to get things done, that are very purposely driving up costs to make it so development can’t happen,” Cox said. “And yet, we have dozens and dozens and dozens of cities that are doing this the right way, and we want to learn from each other.”

‘Massive efforts underway’

Cox has made housing a priority, highlighting it in his State of the State Address in late January, when he strung together a dozen reasons why Utah’s future needs to be “built here.”

His push for thousands of starter homes comes as Utah faces a massive housing shortage, high interest rates and a lag in construction.

As of April, the median listing price for a home in Utah was $595,000, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s the seventh highest in the nation.

And it means young families can’t afford to buy homes. That includes Clearfield Mayor Mark Shepherd’s daughter, who’s married to a homebuilder.

And it includes Herriman Mayor Lorin Palmer, who said he has one adult child who recently bought a home and another who lives at home.

Both mayors, along with more than a dozen other municipal leaders from across the state, joined Cox at Thursday’s news conference at the Kearns Mansion.

“We recognize that we have a problem,” Shepherd said. But local officials also realize there already are “massive efforts underway” in cities to bring housing to people who need it, he said.

That includes Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zones, where cities can capture a portion of additional tax revenue in an area around a transit station to support the costs of development in the area.

Within seven of those zones along the Wasatch Front and Wasatch Back, he said, local government officials have “greatly” increased the number of units they can support from 16,000 to 42,000.

Station Area Plans for set areas around Utah Transit Authority stations — whether for Trax or Frontrunner — have also started to see success a few years after the Legislature passed HB462 in 2022 to create the requirement for those plans.

‘Another thing to get people into those homes’

But even if local government can set the stage for building, Palmer said, it’s “another thing to get people into those homes” at an affordable price point.

There are barriers to doing that, officials said.

For one, the cost of development is “skyrocketing,” Shepherd said — and it’s not just about land or the housing itself.

Another problem is infrastructure, Cox said, where there might be thousands of permitted lots but no money to build roads, water and sewer lines and other infrastructure to support homes.

The state is looking at how to get infrastructure money where it will have the most impact, he said.

There are also some subdivisions ready to go, even some with homes priced below $400,000, Cox said, but officials want to figure out how to move them along quicker through the process.

And then there’s NIMBYism — short for “not in my backyard.”

“We all want more housing, we just want it where we can’t see it,” Cox said.

Local officials will do the right thing and approve a housing project, he said, and then there’s a referendum and they risk losing their seat “because a small, very vocal group of neighbors in a neighborhood can be very angry about any type of new housing going in.”

Officials hope a new dashboard will inspire collaboration and action from all levels of government, he said, as cities share their wins and their progress.

“We’ve moved mountains, but there are mountains still blocking us,” Cox said.

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.