SALT LAKE CITY — After affordable housing efforts got what some considered a slap in the face last year when lawmakers stripped away every dollar of funding, housing advocates are crediting lawmakers this year for prioritizing Utah’s housing crunch.
However, the $10 million in one-time money lawmakers set aside is still only a fraction of the $35 million housing advocates wanted — and may be too little, too late, especially as the global coronavirus pandemic throws the U.S. economy into upheaval.
“Our world is changing,” said Pamela Atkinson, a prominent homelessness advocate who is also a member of Utah’s task force tackling COVID-19. “We don’t know what we’re going to find out when we wake up in the morning.”
Just like it did to the state budget, which lawmakers already considered sparse due to the failure of tax reform, the coronavirus pandemic may very well further roil Utah’s already complex housing issues and crush low-wage residents’ ability to pay mortgages and rent, Atkinson said.
“I’m worried for the people who are near homelessness already and how they’re going to manage,” Atkinson said.
So while she’s “exceedingly grateful” the Legislature budgeted $10 million, she’s still bracing for a challenge over the next year — not only to seek continued investment in addressing the housing crisis, but also to face a likely even more difficult financial reality.
“It may be even harder next year,” Atkinson said. “But it’s not from a lack of understanding. Listening to (legislative leaders), they would have liked to have done more, but the reality is we didn’t have anymore money out there, and it may be less in the future depending on how that pens out this year.”
Statewide, Utah is estimated to have a roughly 55,000-unit housing shortage of all kinds, from single-family homes to apartments, according to estimates from the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. The $10 million, according to bill sponsor Sen. Jake Anderegg, R-Lehi, will be divvied up for low-interest gap financing loans for developers, estimated to help build possibly 1,400 new units, and preservation of existing affordable units.
Atkinson said housing advocates and the private sector need to work together to figure out how to use that $10 million in the best way to benefit the most people.
“We’ve got a lot more work to do between now and next session,” Atkinson, though she credited legislative leaders this year for gaining “more understanding of the need for more types of affordable housing, the need for more money, and the people who are hurt the most because of the lack of affordable housing.”
The struggle to convince lawmakers to invest in affordable housing has been years-long, however, it came as the state did devote over $20 million to help build three new homeless resource centers.
As those new centers have come online, attention has somewhat shifted to other gaps in the system. Ever since the centers opened, they have lingered at- or near-capacity, putting more pressure on what advocates say has been a “bottleneck” preventing the centers from moving people quickly out of homelessness. That “bottleneck” has been housing.
“At the end of the day, if we don’t have housing, we’re going to have a bottleneck, and we’re going to get stuck and we are going to appear that we are not successful,” said Rob Wesemann, executive director of NAMI Utah and co-chairman of the Salt Lake Valley Coalition to End Homelessness.
So Wesemann said it was “disappointing” the Legislature only funded $10 million one time, especially considering none of that will be for rental assistance, which he argued would have helped make the most “immediate difference” for struggling Utahns.
Tara Rollins, executive director of the Utah Housing Coalition, echoed that sentiment.
“It went really well in many ways,” Rollins said of the session. “But at the same time, you know, $10 million is not going to address the issue.”
Not including rental assistance was a big shortcoming, Rollins said. Nonetheless, the $10 million is “going to be spent very well,” Rollins said, and she’s hoping that next year legislators will invest more.
Rollins and Atkinson both said housing advocates will likely put more focus on working with developers, homebuilders, landlords, and perhaps even more large companies to seek solutions, whether it be ways to limit evictions and foreclosures, but also urging companies to consider housing for their own workforces.
They were both encouraged by a move by a coalition of Utah business giants to create the new Utah Housing Preservation Fund, aimed at helping preserve Utah’s existing affordable housing so they aren’t bought and remodeled to be leased again at sky high prices. They’re aiming to grow that fund to an ambitious $100 million.
Gov. Gary Herbert, in a Thursday news conference, said all stakeholders need to “sit around a table” to find creative solutions.
“We’re going to try, post-legislative session, to get together with developers, Realtors, builders” and cities to pinpoint the biggest issues, whether it be zoning issues or whatever else, Hebert said, to find out how to respond to the “market demand” of affordable housing.
House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, kept the door open for continued investment in future years, but again made no promises.
“We’ll evaluate next year and see how we’re doing,” he said. “I think it’s really wise to build into this program like this instead of a huge chunk all at once. It’s a huge problem in our state, so we’re going to keep working on it.”