Logan City gave the green light to a huge apartment complex next to NIbley city parks upsetting the residents there.
LOGAN – Cache County Executive David Zook will present the findings of his Housing Crisis Task Force at noon on Thursday, June 23.
Zook’s presentation is slated for the Cache Summit at the Riverwoods Conference Center.
“Cache County is a special community,” said Cache County Council member Gordon Zilles, who served on the task force along with stakeholders representing a broad range of perspectives on the housing market.
“Planning for growth is an important investment in the future,” Zilles added.
Zook formed the housing task force in March to tackle serious obstacles to affordable housing in Cache County.
“Housing availability and affordability impacts many aspects of our economy and community,” Zook says. “One of our goals is to ensure that our kids and grandkids are able to stay here to support that economy and community.”
At the task force’s kick-off meeting on April 20, its members were assigned to develop a report outlining recommendations to improve the current housing crisis. They were also tasked with identifying aspects of the housing crunch that local governments and homebuilding professionals could directly influence.
The task force met on June 21 to deliver its recommendations to Zook.
“I look forward to sharing their findings and then working to implement them,” Zook explains. “We will need the community’s support to implement those recommendations.”
In the past decade, Cache County added approximately 20,500 residents, an increase of 18.5 percent, according to the 2020 Census.
Of those new residents, about 17,500 or 86 percent were natural growth – the children of current residents. Between now and 2060, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah projects that 85 percent of Cache County growth will be internal.
Cache County has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, a factor which exacerbates demand for housing.
The Milken Institute recently ranked the Logan, Utah-Idaho area as one of the best-performing small cities in the country. But they also ranked it as Number 178 for housing affordability.
Given those factors, Zook says that community leaders realize that economic planning and population growth must align better in the future.
“The Housing Task Force has made recommendations that will help us address these complex issues affecting housing in our county,” Zook promises.
The Riverwoods Conference Center is located at 615 Riverwoods Parkway in Logan.