There’s no easy solution to providing affordable housing, according to Snyderville Planning Commisisoners Canice Harte and Thomas Cooke.
But they say all the stakeholders around the Basin are focused on the issue.
As we’ve reported, local governments were required to submit a Moderate Income Housing Plan to the state by December 1st. A plan prepared by Summit County’s Economic Development Department, was recommended last month by the Snyderville Commisison, and approved by the County Council.
Canice Harte said the county needs affordable housing, for sale and for rent, at a range of prices. But they have to figure out how it looks and how it will be incorporated into new developments.
He said that as different developers come before them, they hear different ideas about ‘integration” of that housing.
“Intregration is not a settled—the definition of that is not settled. On a personal level, for me, I don’t like the idea of putting groups of people, isolated, to where you can point and say, “Oh, that’s the affordable housing building.” I like to see us—when I think about these buildings that are going up. They’re going to be here 30, 50 years. They’ll be here well after I’m gone. And I want to make sure that we’re building a community that we want to live in, and that people don’t feel segregated and they feel blended in, and have a great life.”
His colleague, Thomas Cooke, said that for projects like Silver Creek Village, he thinks the goal should be a variety of types of housing, for different types of needs.
“We need all types of affordable housing. But we’re a little closer to understanding what our most urgent needs are. And right now, I think that’s rental product. That’s probably where we have the biggest shortage. So as we look at Silver Creek Village the challenge is that integration part hasn’t really been defined. And as a group, I think planning commissioners don’t want to see big tall clustered rental, as Canice said, you can point to it and say, that’s the affordable housing. We wanted to see more of a blended approach.”
Harte said the challenge for developers is figuring out how to finance affordable housing, and how to get a profit out of it.
“I mean, that’s usually what makes it or breaks it. I think most people would be happy to build it if they could do it and make money at it. So they usually go for some form of tax credit. And the financing becomes the key driver to them as to what they do. We’ll often see a project that maybe comes through as apartments, then they switch it over to condos, cause they say they can’t get financing. And we’re out of the loop. We don’t know what’s driving some of these decisions. Sometimes they’ll come before us, and one developer may say, “We just couldn’t get that tax credit, that financing, and now we have to switch to condos, if it was going to be apartments, where another developer comes through and seems to have no problem doing it.”
Snyderville Planning Commisisoners Canice Harte and Thomas Cooke.
