Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- A new online dashboard aims to increase transparency on Salt Lake City's affordable housing efforts.
- The dashboard shows how the city has allocated over $181 million in resources to the issue, with data dating back to 1979.
- Salt Lake City still faces a shortage of over 18,000 affordable housing units.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah's capital city remains one of the state's fastest-growing cities, but its mayor says it's been difficult to build as fast as people move in.
That's created a housing crunch, especially when it comes to affordable housing. During her State of the City address Tuesday night, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall acknowledged that despite having built or funded thousands of new affordable units since 2020, the city faces a shortage of over 18,000 affordable units.
"Our population has grown rapidly, but affordable housing has not kept pace," she said. "More than half of our residents are renters, and nearly half of them are cost-burdened."
A new website now strives to make the city's affordable housing efforts more transparent.
Salt Lake City launched what it calls the Affordable Housing Construction and Preservation Dashboard on Tuesday. The website breaks down the types of affordable housing funding and locations in the city dating back to 1979. The data, to be updated quarterly, offers a better picture of how the topic's importance has grown.
It could also clear up "misunderstandings" about what the city can do and has done about the issue by showing how much money has been spent on affordable housing and where it went, Salt Lake City Council Chairman Chris Wharton said.
"I think this will help residents ... (and) it will help us even internally within the city," he told KSL.com.
The growth of affordable housing funding
The median home listing price in Salt Lake City reached $550,000 in December, nearly double the cost in mid-2016, according to Zillow. While Realtor.com says the final sale price is closer to $520,000, both figures still far exceed the rate of inflation in that time.
Rents have also soared. RentData.org notes that a two-bedroom apartment in 2015 cost $901 per month, and a one-bedroom apartment cost $727, based on the "fair market" rate at the time. Apartments.com says that rates range from neighbor to neighborhood, but the average cost of both is now nearly double those rates.
Salt Lake City can't enact laws or ordinances that require affordable housing, but it has awarded a little over $181.2 million in loans, grants, fee waivers and land sales/discounts that have either benefitted existing affordable housing in the city or future construction since 1979. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of this has come as costs soared within the past decade.
About 80% of that funding has come since 2015. The first real spike came in 2018 when the city directed nearly $20 million to the issue. It has since allocated over $100 million in different resources. Mendenhall proposed that at least another $5 million be directed toward affordable housing this year.

Loans account for nearly 70% of all funding sources. These are funds that the city loans out to developers to "help create or rehabilitate housing," which are repaid with interest to the city, according to the city.
Grants — money given to projects — are the next biggest resource, accounting for $21.2 million. The rest are broken up by fee waivers, where the city chooses not to charge certain project fees if affordable housing is delivered, or land sales/discounts, which are when land is sold at a discount if affordable housing is included.
Wharton explains that the city uses these tactics because it's a more efficient way to generate more housing than if the city undertook projects by itself. For example, the city directed $2.1 million in various resources to help fund the recently completed 144 South apartments, which cost about $40 million to create 110 affordable units.

The city is exploring other ways to address costs beyond financial incentives, Wharton adds. It launched a program that seeks to help renters build equity toward future ownership. It's also amended codes over the past two years to allow for more accessory dwelling units. More zoning reforms are expected this year, which could make it easier to build in the city and potentially cut housing costs along the way.
"We've ... tried to remove certain barriers that can increase the cost of construction that get passed on to affordability," he said. "There are still some multi-use zones that we're trying to address, and then some consolidations. Those are all part of the ongoing effort to address affordability."
Where is Salt Lake City's affordable housing?
"Affordable" is defined by the percentage of area median income, as defined by the federal government. Combined, the spending has spurred the creation of nearly 8,000 housing units listed as 80% of the area median income or lower since 1979 — the vast majority of which have been added since 2015. Close to another 3,000 are expected to be added by 2030.

The dashboard breaks down some of the unit agreements and other details. It also shows many of these can be found in Central City and other neighborhoods surrounding the downtown core, but there's also a growing number of projects along the North Temple corridor on the west side. That's expected to continue over the next five years.
Housing types are also changing. One-bedroom apartments account for over half the units created by city funding, but there's been a recent shift to family-sized units, offering three bedrooms or more. Of the 777 affordable family-sized units planned to be in place by 2030, nearly 90% will have been constructed since 2020.
These can benefit all types of residents, but it's part of the city's efforts to retain families.
"Families are central to decision-making in our city," Mendenhall said. "If we don't intentionally build this city for families, they will be pushed out."
