Utah urged to build more single-family homes

More and more people are moving to Utah, just as many millennials are taking a new look at buying a home instead of renting

To provide enough affordable housing and keep the state’s economy on track in the COVID-19 era, cities and developers may need to do something drastic. They may have to go back in time.

At least in an era when home builders focused more on single-family homes with larger lots, an approach to growth that many city planners now see as “sprawl” and which quickly expanded the metropolitan area. by Wasatch Front.

Principal researchers at a Houston think tank brought that vision to Utah leaders this week, saying the state should put aside its “smart growth” strategies of higher density homes around urban centers. ‘business in favor of what they call “smart sprawl”.

They point to the growing exodus from places like San Francisco and New York City, with people fleeing tightly built apartments and condominiums for Utah’s more open spaces and lower cost of living.

“If we plan for future lockouts, which is not beyond pallor, what you will find is that you are much better off in a house with a yard than in a one bedroom apartment,” said Joel Kotkin, author and Presidential Fellow on Urban Futures at Chapman University in Southern California.

Kotkin and Wendell Cox, senior researcher at the nonprofit Urban Reform Institute, presented a future scenario in stark contrast to Utah’s current trajectory, which has led to an urban boom in recent years of building apartments and townhouses close to public transport.

Why Utah might reconsider urban sprawl

Utah has a sizzling housing market as a whole, with sales of existing single-family homes and apartments beating the first signs of a pandemic crisis. Nearly 31,822 homes changed hands in the five-county metropolitan area between January and September, up 4% from sales in those same months in 2019.

According to the Salt Lake Board of Realtors, “many out-of-state buyers,” low interest rates and a new thirst for suburban living are fueling the trend.

“Housing affordability is a big issue,” Cox said. “You’re at a point where you might just get a heavy migration from elsewhere in the country, but it could end pretty quickly if housing affordability continues to deteriorate.”

Cox and Kotkin are studying what they say are long-standing population shifts from large urban areas to mid-sized cities, suburbs and rural areas that are gaining momentum amid concerns about the coronavirus and unrest civilians.

There are also new signs, they said, that companies are moving for similar reasons.

Researchers say many are looking for alternatives to tight living quarters in large cities. These people are looking for places where homes are more dispersed and cheaper – especially price-conscious millennials who are now in their 30s and want to buy.

The movement has also accelerated during the pandemic-related transition to remote working.

In light of these trends, Cox and Kotkin urged policymakers in urban Utah counties not to equate “smart growth” with dense growth and instead look to single-family homes and car travel.

Kotkin and Cox say the growth and land use approach can often be too restrictive for residents, sometimes hampering their ability to be economically successful.

‘Smart sprawl’, they say, puts more emphasis on individual, family-oriented housing, grouping open spaces around residential villages while also calling for a greater role for the car in planning. of the territory, with an emphasis on shorter journeys compared to journeys by bus or tram.

“You basically solve the problem of urban sprawl,” said Kotkin, also executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. “You don’t make people miserable so you can have a planner model that really limits people’s choices. “

The results, say the researchers, promote greater income equality and strengthen family units. They also believe that the perceived benefits of public transit are overstated.

“Public transit really doesn’t work that well in most places,” Kotkin said in a presentation for the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. “Frankly, we had better build child care centers than spend a fortune on building these light rail systems.

Utah’s commitment to smart growth

Long-time planners, more familiar with Utah’s quirks, push back Kotkin and Cox, noting that the metro area’s scarcity of developable land reserves and severe air quality issues continue to drive density. housing and construction of houses, apartments and other types of residences an essential element. strategy.

“There is a misconception that regulation and government are the source of high density housing,” said Ted Knowlton, deputy director of Wasatch Front Regional Council, a planning agency. It’s more about market forces, he said.

“High density in Utah occurs when communities allow it,” Knowlton said. “They cut back on the high density regulations, then the developer wants to build it based on an assessment of the demand.”

It’s true that most Utahns – even young adults and first-time buyers – would prefer single-family homes if they could afford it, Knowlton said, but there is a decrease in the area between Ogden and Provo on which to build homes. .

“In fact, there isn’t really much room near the workplaces to make it happen,” he said – that is, without reusing land in urban areas and without encouraging high density housing near public transport. The notion of smart growth, Knowlton said, “is that you allow density, labor-intensive housing, apartments and townhouses where the market wants them most and where the benefits spill over. most”.

Specifically, said another senior planner, the city-suburb dichotomy is “falling apart” in Utah and choosing a single-family home no longer means you can no longer live in a busy neighborhood. and practicable.

“We are now seeing density and mixed uses in the suburbs,” said Ari Bruening, CEO of Envision Utah, who highlighted Daybreak, the masters-planned community in southern Jordan. Millennials, he said, “always want things nearby. They still want to be able to walk. “

The data suggests that more of Utah’s population growth is gravitating to less dense areas outside of its major population centers, Bruening noted, “But that’s not true because people don’t want to. not live in Salt Lake County. This is because Salt Lake County is getting full and expensive. “

The advent of cleaner automotive fuels is likely to improve air quality on the Wasatch front in the years to come, but its bowl-shaped geography remains prone to a build-up of smog in dangerous winter inversions for health. And that makes transit ridership and other tailpipe reduction measures more crucial here than in other urban areas, Bruening said.

Public polls, he said, have also repeatedly shown that the Utahns “want it to be convenient for driving, but also convenient for walking, cycling or taking a train.”

In recent months, Utah has seen the largest drops in its available housing inventory among the top 50 U.S. cities, driven in part by coastal residents moving to and city dwellers already settled in the suburbs, according to Zillow. .

At the same time, new apartments and other housing units are increasing by the thousands from Salt Lake City to Herriman and neighboring counties. With increasing demand, it is unlikely to stop anytime soon.

As well as disrupting other aspects of life, the coronavirus is leading to new discussions about the pros and cons of density, who moves here and what they want from where they live.

However, whether this will lead to a new approach to the single-family home remains an open question.