Utah Gov. Spencer Cox’s Senior Advisor for Housing Strategy, Steve Waldrip, paid a visit to Summit County this week.
He toured affordable housing projects with elected county leaders and staff prior to the Wednesday, Aug. 13, council meeting.
County Manager Shayne Scott said Waldrip, often called the state’s “housing czar,” holds sway with state legislators.
“From a housing perspective, he's probably as powerful as it gets in the state of Utah,” Scott said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Aug. 12. “And [policy] recommendations coming from the governor's office will come through Mr. Waldrop and his staff.”
County leaders said they tried to impress upon Waldrip local priorities, including local control. It’s a perennial topic back in the conversation after Scott approved a new and controversial development agreement with Dakota Pacific Real Estate mandated by a 2025 state law. He told KPCW residents did not appeal that decision.
In past legislative sessions, Summit County councilmembers have felt they’re unfairly cast as anti-housing by state leaders.
“It's the local control that takes into account the uniqueness of every city, county, local area — that we are different than Delta, Utah. We're different than Logan, Utah, and we're different from the Wasatch Front,” Scott said.
Waldrip spoke to Park City Noon Rotarians June 10 and said the days of cheap living are over everywhere in Utah, and wages aren’t keeping pace as more and more people move to the state.
“We have a limited supply. We have more demand than we have places for people to live, to the tune of about between 30,000 and 40,000 [households],” Waldrip said in June.
Scott said Councilmember Roger Armstrong invited Waldrip to visit Summit County after the speech. Local leaders hope to turn him into an ally and advocate for local control.
“The governor's plan has been primarily the strategy of supply and demand, and so I think it was important for us to show that that really doesn't work here in Summit County,” Councilmember Megan McKenna said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Aug. 14. “And that we really need to have deed-restricted units in order to maintain that affordability.”
One proactive policy county leaders discussed Aug. 13 was “inclusionary zoning.” That’s where developers, when they build housing, are required to make a certain percentage of it affordable.
Park City and Snyderville Basin require 20% of new housing projects to be affordable, but state lawmakers made those measures illegal in 2022. The westside policies are grandfathered into the law, but now they can’t be changed.
There is no inclusionary zoning rule for eastern Summit County. McKenna said the county would like to create one and found Waldrip receptive.
“In the Snyderville Basin, we have about 1,800 [affordable housing] units right now that are primarily due to that inclusionary zoning,” she said.
Waldrip told local officials more information about future housing policy in Utah is coming this fall.
The Summit County Council has meanwhile set a goal to build 1,500 affordable housing units, not including the more than 300 included in the Dakota Pacific project at Kimball Junction, over the next decade.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW. For a full list, click here.
