Lincoln Fillmore has recently made the news with a bill proposal that thumbs its nose at local government in favor of giving state protection for home developers to sprawl as they please with little regard to local business development and public infrastructure.
Fillmore claims it’s to help Utah families by increasing our housing inventory to control home prices. However, I find it curious that about the same time the proposed bill hit the news, the John Price Foundation, named for the founder of the development company JP Realty, donated $50 million to the University of Utah, a state-owned institution.
And even if Fillmore is arguing in good faith, his logic makes no business sense. Developers aren’t going to build homes to the point prices fall. If homebuying slows due to inventory, developers would likewise slow construction to limit the supply rather than see prices fall. It’s how business works. Developers aren’t legally bound to provide us all with homes to buy and anyone who has run a lemonade stand knows that too much inventory is money down the drain.
It therefore leads me to doubt Lincoln Fillmore and anyone who supports this bill are really interested in serving Utah families, and are instead serving the special interests of home developers.
Besides, if the Great Salt Lake problem isn’t solved, housing inventory won’t even crack the top ten problems facing the Utah real estate market. That is a more appropriate issue for the state to tackle than policing city planning and zoning. It is also especially relevant to Fillmore’s district which, being only 30 miles due south of the lake, could see many of the deleterious effects of the lake disappearing.
Eric Hansen, South Jordan