Housing affordability and local control

Utah is facing a real housing affordability crisis. Housing touches everything— family stability, mental health, workforce mobility, and whether the next generation can realistically build a life in the communities they grew up in.

I reject the false choice between growth and community. Good housing policy has to be locally informed, infrastructure-aware, and centered on people rather than speculation. Housing should be homes first and investment vehicles second.

I support expanding missing-middle housing, allowing accessory dwelling units, strengthening reasonable renter protections, and encouraging smart density where it makes sense— especially near transit, jobs, and services. These are practical tools that help communities grow without pricing out the very people who keep them running.

Here is the part nobody wants to say out loud: Utah already has a legal definition of affordable housing on the books, tied to area median income. The problem isn't that the definition doesn't exist. The problem is that nobody enforces it. Developers— some of whom are legislators themselves— take state and local incentives meant to produce that AMI-qualified housing, then build fifteen-hundred-square-foot townhomes they sell for six hundred thousand dollars and call "affordable" with a straight face. Layer even today's six-and-a-half-percent mortgage rate on top of that, and the math stops being a policy debate and starts being a joke. A young couple, a first responder, a teacher— the exact people this definition was written for— still cannot buy the home that was built in their name.

That is not affordable housing. That is a unit of inventory wearing the legal definition's name, with a public incentive check attached to it.

One of the first bills I will introduce closes that gap. If a developer wants the incentive, the unit has to actually clear thirty percent of income at the regional area median income where the project is being built— verified before the incentive is paid, not assumed because a developer filled in a box on a form. No verification, no incentive. This is not a new standard. It is the standard we already claim to have, with a spine put back into it. This is not anti-development. It is anti-scam. Builders who want to build real affordable housing should get real support to do it. Builders who want to slap a label on a luxury townhome and collect a public subsidy for it should not get a dime.

Local control matters. Communities deserve a real seat at the table when shaping how their neighborhoods evolve. But local control cannot become a synonym for exclusion, and statewide coordination cannot become a synonym for state domination. The role of the state should be to set fair guardrails, invest in infrastructure, and make sure the system works for everyone.

A diverse state needs flexible housing options that reflect diverse lives. One rigid housing model cannot serve infinite combinations of families, incomes, abilities, and stages of life. If Utah wants to remain a place where people can put down roots, raise families, and build stable lives, we have to start treating housing like essential infrastructure instead of a luxury commodity— and that starts with making the word "affordable" mean something again.