In Wasatch County, where home prices are the second highest in the state, leaders are revisiting their approach to affordable housing projects.
For over 25 years, the county has had a housing authority that mostly offers down payment assistance to residents.
Councilmember Kendall Crittenden thinks it’s time to rethink the structure of the housing board.
“We need to have a professional director, somebody who knows affordable housing and can go out and can help us put together projects,” he said.
At a county council meeting Sept. 2, leaders discussed budgeting $200,000–$300,000 to hire two full-time housing experts.
Those positions will be considered in the 2027 budget.
Wasatch County is looking to its northern neighbor, Summit County, as a model. The latter created a housing authority in December 2024 and, a few months later, set the goal of approving 1,500 affordable housing units in 10 years.
Crittenden said the homes under construction in Wasatch County don’t match what the community can afford.
“We don’t have a housing crisis,” Crittenden said. “We have an affordability crisis. Our developers aren’t building affordable-size homes, and that’s the problem.”
County Manager Dustin Grabau said the council will need to decide how much collaboration a revamped housing authority might have with other local governments.
Heber City, Midway and Charleston have representatives on the current board.
“We’re sharing driving the bus between lots of different entities and lots of different ideas, and so we didn’t get anywhere because there were lots of different destinations in mind, right?” Grabau said. “Whereas, if there is a more cohesive vision of what we’d like to accomplish, I think it’s more feasible that we could do something.”
Interim county councilmember Mike Murphy took a different view, saying affordable housing is not a problem Summit and Wasatch counties can solve.
“I don’t know [that] it's something that we can really effectively grapple with at the county level, other than to say, ‘Yeah, we wish we had affordable housing,’” he said. “That's really about the most I think that we can effectuate. Other than that, it's like, well, you're commuting from Salt Lake and Utah County. Sorry.”
No decisions were made; the council will continue the conversation at a future meeting.
The council will also discuss development in the Jordanelle Basin in October. Councilmember Erik Rowland has said the completed Deer Valley East Village will require about 6,000 workers — and workforce housing to support them.
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