Utah Lawmaker Links Affordable Housing to State Funds

Phil Hall

Feb 04, 2019

Jessica Bostic is a Utah-based Senior Account Executive for Franklin American Mortgage Company and President of the Utah Association of Mortgage Professionals (UAMP)

A Utah legislator has put forth a bill that would require cities to zone for affordable housing if they want to receive state funding.

According to a KSL.com report, Sen. Jake Anderegg’s bill mandates that Utah cities pick at least two state-recommended strategies from a list of 25 options designed to increase moderate-income housing within Utah’s localities. The cities that fail to pick from the list would be considered ineligible from receiving any of the $700 million in annual state transportation investment funds.

Anderegg describes himself as a "conservative, borderline Libertarian Republican from Utah County," and he called his bill a "gentle nudge" to include affordable housing in their city plans.

"It's a big enough carrot that not doing it feels a little bit like a stick," he said, adding that the slow evaporation of affordable housing options in Utah needs to be addressed. "We can ignore the problem and say it 'doesn't exist' and 'fair markets are free markets.' We've already artificially inflated the market through our incentives for economic development. To say, 'Well that would be government interference' and over here we don't, that's disingenuous. It doesn't make sense."

The bill was unanimously approved in a committee vote and will go to the full Senate for consideration.

Link copied

Published

Feb 04, 2019

Analysis and Data

New-Home Sales Explode In August

Sales increase nearly 29% from July, but the estimate may be inflated by lag in contract cancellations.

New-home sales spiked nearly 29% in August, boosted by a brief dip in mortgage rates, but the increase may also be inflated by a lag in tracking sales contract cancellations. Sales of new single‐family houses in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000, a...

Analysis and Data

Nominal House Prices And Overvalued Markets Increased

First American report states that, a year ago, only four markets were considered overvalued.

Nominal house prices increased 16.7% year over year and the 30-year, fixed mortgage rate increased 2.5 percentage points compared with a year ago, according to the July 2022 First American Real House Price Index (RHPI), released today by First American Financial Corp. In ad...