This high-end city is sleeping in a bed of its own making.
The town takes pride in its exclusive style of living combined with a rural atmosphere. But nowadays, it's coming at a price that can't be measured in terms of money.Alpine residents are complaining that they're losing their past and their future: the elderly residents who no longer want to maintain their large homes and the kids grown up and looking for a place of their own. Neither group can seem to find suitable accommodations in their hometown.
Scott Sweeney, a member of the Alpine Planning Commission, and his wife, Ann, are raising seven kids, many of whom would like to stay in town when on their own but won't be able to afford it.
"We are locking our children out," Sweeney said.
Sweeney, who has lived in Alpine for 15 years, said the town is too homogenous, consisting of families raising children, and doesn't have the needed interaction among all ages and kinds of people.
"We don't have a full village in Alpine right now," Sweeney said. "We need the younger kids to associate with older couples."
He said even though he doesn't believe Alpine residents have deliberately tried to be high-end, he's frustrated by their unwillingness to recognize the need for change. He said he has given up trying to get the other members of the Planning Commission to consider changing the city's ordinance forbidding apartments, especially given the latest opportunity.
A state law passed two years ago requires every city to have a plan for affordable housing in place by the end of 1998.
So the Planning Commission recently reported that basement or mother-in-law type apartments qualify as affordable housing and that the city should continue to allow those apartments to meet future demand.
That and nothing else, said a disappointed Sweeney, who, along with City Council member Pheobe Blackham, chastised the commission for its decision to use basement apartments to satisfy the state law.
"We're following the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law," Blackham said.
Elderly people and grown children of Alpine residents have no place in a city that expects them to live in a basement, she said.
"And they would have to live there for 20 years before they could afford to buy a house," Blackham said of the grown children.
Sweeney suspects that when the state regulation is tightened in two years to exclude mother-in-law type apartments, Alpine will be in violation of the law.
Affordable housing is defined by state law as reserved for those people whose income is less than 80 percent of the median gross income of the area. In Utah County, that moderate level of income for a family of four is $32,100.
"I don't know if somebody earning $32,000 can even afford a lot in Alpine right now," Blackham said.
She's probably right. The median house price in Alpine is $265,000, according to the Utah Valley Economic Development Association.
Nevertheless, the council did sign off on the Planning Commission's plan but with the promise to look at encouraging town home or condominium construction in the future.
Highland is tackling the same problem, said Mayor Jess Adam-son, who said he knows of three families who moved out of Highland because they couldn't maintain their lots. He hopes to be able to make room for affordable housing in the city's soon-to-be-built Town Center.
The Highland Planning Commission is considering a proposal to allow higher density than the city's standard, which is now one home per acre. The ordinance would provide incentives for developers who want to build higher density to surround it with open space.