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Tom Dickman: We need to do more than talk about affordable housing

(Al Hartmann | Tribune file photo) A view of Salt Lake City 's changing skyline looking east in May 2018.

This is about the zoning change request by the property owner of four houses located on 200 South: 949 East, 955 East, 959 East, and 963 East.

For several years, Salt Lake City has been subject to increased population pressures. This trend continues. Salt Lake is a center of production and distribution. Many high-paid jobs, especially in the tech and financial sectors, attract highly educated and trained job candidates, often from states far away.

These jobs require advanced education and extensive training. They are not open to those on the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. The request for the zoning change of the properties specified above can only be understood and judged within these developed and developing economic trends.

The city, the county and the current candidates for Salt Lake City mayor are well aware of these trends. Much new housing is needed. Much new housing is being constructed. A major question however rises up within the economic trends: Will the new units be affordable?

Affordable housing is defined as costing for rent no more than a certain percentage of a tenant’s income. Many, even most, of the new housing units being built within the city are indeed “affordable” to the tech and financial job holders, who typically make between $60,000 and $120,000 a year. Those with incomes in this range are the ones snatching up the new apartments within the city.

What, though, of people on the middle and lower end of the scale? Quick answer: They are being driven out of the city.

Some are losing housing altogether and are swelling the numbers of homeless. Most are unable to pay the $1,500 to $2,000-plus monthly rents for the new housing. Even if they could, there would not be enough left over to pay for transportation, utilities, food, clothing, etc. The new housing is not affordable for them.

The city, including the current mayoral candidates, can talk all they want about the need for affordable housing. Such talk remains talk. There is new housing, yes, but it is affordable mainly to those on the top end of the food chain.

To make housing actually affordable to middle and lower income people, at least two policies need to be implemented:

  • A legal requirement that fixes a maximum ceiling on rent for middle income earners. Such a ceiling would need to be a fixed maximum percentage of income of middle and low income residents.

  • Rent control, requiring landlords to keep rent under this percentage maximum ceiling.

Some cities have instituted such policies. Salt Lake City is not one of them. If, however, the city does not adopt such strict legal requirements limiting rent-as-percentage-of-middle/lower-income residents, housing will remain out of reach of many long-time city residents. The new housing will be a chimera for our most deserving citizens, a simple vote-baiting dream of politicians who use “affordable” as a catchword.

These considerations directly affect the proposed zoning change on 200 South. Current tenants are paying rent in the $400 to $600/month range. This is affordable for them.

If the proposed new construction housing is approved, rent would rise to the prevailing rates in the area. Existing tenants would be driven out, simply by financial pressure. New tenants would come only from the high-end sector. This is reality. The present property owner’s proposal includes one unit out of sixteen defined as “affordable.”

There are other issues involved here, including provisions from the City Community Master Plan, city residential land use goals, residential land use policies, preservation goals of the East Central North Neighborhood, historic preservation policies and the Community Preservation Plan.

The proposed zoning change request, and planned high-density construction, directly violate the above five provisions, which are already in effect.

Specifics regarding such violations are contained in documents currently available to the Planning Commission, and detailed by other contributors to this planning process. More than 200 residents have signed the petition against the zoning change.

In a few words: the Planning Commission, and the city can go ahead and approve the zoning change request. To do so would simply confirm the city’s caving to the interests of money, property and wealth. Caving in this way would be a slap in the face to all middle and low income residents hoping to remain in the city.

Of course, if they are evicted, many of them can find space at one of the new homeless shelters. These new shelters are touted with as much enthusiasm as the politicians’ talk about affordable housing.

Tom Dickman is a resident of Salt Lake City.