The U.S. Census Bureau estimates only 37% of people currently employed in Summit County also live here.
It’s a place with almost 53,000 jobs but 43,000 people. And a third of those aren’t of working age. The county’s Housing and Economic Development Director Jeff Jones presented the data to county councilmembers at a retreat earlier this month.
The council used the opportunity to talk about how many workers can and should call Summit County home.
Looming in the background, according to Councilmember Roger Armstrong, is a state legislature that’s tried to encourage housing development without taking Summit County’s unique tourist economy and meteoric housing prices into account.
“That's what worries me the most, is: how do we be effective so that we stay out of the crosshairs, accomplish what we want, but we don't do something that just changes the very nature and character of what I think most people who live here want this place [to be],” he said at the retreat Oct. 3.
“It's … quite the tightrope to walk,” County Manager Shayne Scott said.
The council isn’t yet sure exactly what it wants to accomplish. Each of the five councilmembers has a different opinion.
In the end, they may pick a number like Park City did in 2016. The city decided it wanted to build 800 affordable housing units before 2026.
Jones said that was to maintain the ratio of Park City workers living in city limits, around 12%. The city’s goal ratio is 15%.
Scott notes the county polled its own employees about that—eight in 10 said they’d want to live here.
Councilmember Canice Harte wondered if there’s a chicken-and-egg issue with predicting why or whether people, particularly young people, want to live in Summit County.
“I think it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more we become a retirement community, the less a younger person is going to want to live here,” he said. “We back ourselves into an old community that a young person doesn’t want to live in just because it’s not cool.”
After finally talking it out, Council Vice Chair Tonja Hanson seemed hopeful.
“I think it's a great conversation,” she said at the meeting. “It feels like we're getting somewhere on an agreement.”
It’s almost certainly not the last conversation about what the county’s affordable housing goal is: besides potential developments at Cline Dahle and Kimball Junction, the council will soon be negotiating with Larry H. Miller Real Estate and Ivory Homes.
They’ve filed an application to slowly transform Hoytsville into what’s been dubbed the “Cedar Crest Village.”
