SALT LAKE CITY – Mayors and local officials of more than 40 Utah cities met with Gov. Spencer Cox on May 29 in an effort to streamline progress toward the state goal of building 35,000 starter homes.
The “Built Here: Housing Summit” provided a forum for officials to share successes, address challenges and align efforts to meet the state’s critical housing needs.
“Our goal is simple but urgent,” Cox told the assembled municipal officials. “How do we come together to make housing more attainable for Utah families?”
In December of 2023, Cox announced an ambitious goal of building 35,000 new starter homes in Utah by 2028. When the 2024 Legislature balked at the proposed $150 million price tag for that program, Cox refocused his staff’s efforts on a slate of bills that focused less on subsidies and more on free market policies.
In the hope of paving the way for more affordable, single-family housing projects, those bills aimed to provide cities and developers with new tools to finance infrastructure and other needs.
After more than a year, however, only 5,100 starter homes have been built and sold. At that rate, Utah will fall far short of the governor’s goal of 35,000 affordable homes by 2028.
“We’ve made progress,” Cox acknowledged. “But we know that we need to move faster.”
At the housing summit, state officials cited the communities of Clearfield, Herriman and Spanish Fork for leading the way toward providing more affordable housing by pioneering transit-oriented developments, fast-tracking approval of building permits and generally demonstrating how to turn visionary goals into concrete results.
To facilitate similar efforts, Cox announced a new “Housing Dashboard” that will give all officials statewide access to strategic housing metrics. That platform will allow residents, planners and policymakers to track building progress, identify planning gaps and learn from others what’s working and what’s not working.
State officials believe that the “Housing Dashboard” will allow policymakers to focus on making data-backed, evidence-based decisions while shifting the statewide conversation from debating facts to debating solutions.
The Housing Dashboard can be accessed by going online to https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/fe24d94d3a584b26a226addbf45c16ee/
The “Built Here: Housing Summit” was convened one day after Cox signed an executive order creating a BUILD Coordinating Council at state level.
State officials explained that the new council will bring state agencies together to “streamline efforts, align long-range planning and capitalize on shared opportunities to meet growing demands for housing, transportation, water, energy, open space, recreation and air quality while preserving the exceptional quality of life that all Utahns value.”
The May 29 housing summit also highlighted innovative reforms being adopted in other states, such as eliminating parking mandates, legalizing accessory dwelling units and modernizing building codes, all of which Cox referred to as “thoughtful, bipartisan solutions.”
“Utah’s rising generation deserves the same shot at home ownership that many of us had,” the governor concluded.