The Wasatch County School District’s homebuilding program has over 50 years of history. High schoolers in the Career and Technical Education program started building houses in the 1970s, and efforts have continued intermittently since.
CTE Director Weston Broadbent said the program now has added value as district staff face a housing crunch.
“We are pricing some of our educators from living in the Wasatch Back and and we want our educators to live in our communities as much as we can, so that's the core of why we're addressing [housing needs],” Broadbent said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” May 1.
A recently completed staff housing needs assessment found 26% of about 350 respondents spend more than 30% of their income on housing. That qualifies them as “cost burdened,” according to federal guidelines.
The number of cost-burdened employees increased from 20% in a 2023 survey. Meanwhile, over 30% of the district's 1,000 staff members are considering relocation in the next five years, which indicates housing could become a workforce issue for the district.
The Wasatch County School District may have an “in-house” solution: student-built homes sold at-cost to staff through the technical school’s homebuilding program. However, administrators couldn’t say what that cost could be yet.
The district estimates as many as 67 employees would likely be candidates for the district-supported housing.
Broadbent recognizes progress would be slow and more is needed to meet the future housing needs.
“We're building one home a year with that program, so it's not like we're solving the problem overnight,” he said. “But again, many hands make light work, and this would be one of those potential solutions that would make a difference over time.”
As a top priority, Broadbent added, the program provides students with hands-on experience.
To build homes, the district needs land, an increasingly rare commodity in the Heber Valley.
In November 2025, the district asked the Wasatch County Council to consider increasing the allowed density on a parcel it owns near Timpanogos Middle School.
Broadbent said it’s a promising location.
“We're considering the idea of doing educator subdivision for our homebuilding program,” Broadbent said. “We will probably shrink the house sizes a little bit more than what we've built in the past, so they’re more affordable with the interest rates of today that our teachers could afford. But we’d like to fit 30 or so lots in there. That's one of our potential sites.”
Conversations with the county council have been positive, Broadbent said, but no zoning changes or building plans have been finalized yet.