At a joint meeting Tuesday morning, councilmembers from Park City and Summit County heard a presentation from Daniel Nackerman, the executive director of Salt Lake City’s housing authority.
He came to explain how his agency works to combat the valley’s housing crisis and whether the Wasatch Back might want to consider trying something similar.
Housing authorities are organizations that can provide housing assistance or even actual housing, i.e. the state liquor stores of housing.
Nackerman said the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City touts housing developments like Pamela’s Place, Capitol Homes and 9th East Lofts as successes. Pamela’s and 9th East are entirely deed-restricted, and a third of Capitol Homes’ units are market rate.
The metaphor bouncing around Tuesday’s meeting was a “menu.” Housing authorities have a diverse menu of things they can do to make housing affordable, and affordable housing more plentiful.
It’s something that both Park City’s and Summit County’s elected leaders said they’d be interested in exploring.
Summit County Economic Development and Housing Director Jeff Jones said any potential housing authority could start small.
“Let's have a fairly limited menu to begin with, and let's start to build it out over the next year or so,” Jones said. “But without a starting point, we'll just keep having these types of meetings.”
Nackerman seemed to agree and emphasized action over analysis.
“I would say one thing you don't need to do—again, very tongue in cheek—is another study on the needs here,” Nackerman said.
To that end, city and county staff will produce a draft of what a housing authority, or housing authorities plural, would look like.
Jones and Jason Glidden, Park City’s affordable housing manager, were charged with reporting back in three months at the next joint meeting.
They’ll explore the potential housing authorities have in this region, whether that means creating one big authority or more than one parallel authorities.
An open question is which configuration is best to attract grant money. It’s important to answer because Nackerman said housing authorities are ready conduits for federal dollars.
Representatives from Wasatch County were not in the room, but the county was not excluded from the conversation.
Councilmembers asked Nackerman about how wide a radius housing authorities can have. He said some areas have created a joint housing authority because of similar geography or needs, or they’ve created parallel authorities that collaborate.
For now, it’s up to the task force to wade through the complexities.
