Incumbent Yvonne Barney, Nick López, Morgan Murdock and Corey Noyes are competing for two seats on the Heber City Council.
During the forum at the Wasatch County Senior Center, moderated by the Heber Leadership Academy and KPCW, candidates discussed how to move the needle on the city’s affordable housing challenges.
Barney said housing is an issue on which Heber City must collaborate with Wasatch County and other local governments. She said the emphasis must be on supporting the locals who are struggling most.
“I know that we need to make sure that we provide and have housing for our first responders and so forth,” she said. “But there are single mothers, there are those in our community who really, really need the support.”
She added leaders must also consider the quality of life for affordable housing residents, like access to green space.
“When we talk about housing, it’s not putting someone into an apartment,” she said. “We have had studies, and people say, ‘I want a home. I want a place for my children to run.’”
For López, housing solutions need to begin with state lawmakers. He said legislators should prioritize policy changes to support places like Heber.
“Real estate is run by supply and demand,” he said. “How we gain a hold of that has got to start higher up than, I think, even city council.”
In the meantime, he said Heber City leaders can do things like amend the code to facilitate smaller homes and creative ways to add a few units here and there, where space allows.
“There can be some things done in the code that enable homeowners, if they have the space, to put in an additional unit – either in their home or maybe on their property – to allow their family members or up-and-coming young families to move in,” he said.
Murdock agreed with Barney that collaboration is key. He pointed to the Wasatch County Housing Authority and the Mountainlands Community Housing Trust as important partners.
“We need a full-time housing director to service this county, to help enforce the deed restrictions and handle so many issues,” he said. “We can collaborate with developers in public-private partnerships.”
He said creative approaches can help people become homeowners by participating in the construction process.
“We can encourage the construction of more Self-Help Homes,” he said. “There’s a number of them here in our community, where they put in 35 hours a week.”
Noyes pushed back against the idea that ADUs, or accessory dwelling units, are the right way to address affordability in Heber City.
“Unless I’ve missed something, the American dream was never to own a one-bedroom ADU [accessory dwelling unit] in someone else’s backyard, and that’s what I think we need to be fixing,” he said.
Instead, he proposed learning from other resort communities, so part-time residents and tourists shoulder more of the cost of affordable housing.
“Steamboat, Colorado, set a very aggressive transient room tax on their short-term rentals,” he said. “South Lake Tahoe put a tax on part-year residents who weren’t there for more than half the year, and they used those tax funds to form community housing trusts.”
In addition to affordable housing, the candidates for Heber City Council also answered questions about topics including taxes, traffic, downtown revitalization and more.
The election is Nov. 4.
