OGDEN — It’s no secret that Ogden residents want to participate in the American dream of owning a home.

“What we’ve heard from the community — they want a safe place to live, they want a place that they can afford, they want to own,” Ogden City Planning Manager Barton Brierley said. “We know how important ownership housing is when you can invest and have that be your biggest asset. You just become part of the community.”

There are many other realities to overcome to make that dream come true for many, but officials in Ogden are seeking out strategies to do just that.

Brierley said that will take some out-of-the-box thinking.

“We’ve had fewer and fewer ownership housing opportunities because Ogden’s not a community where we can go find a 200-acre farm field to build houses,” he said. “We’ve been really focusing on new opportunities for affordable housing. It’s a little different than it has been in the past. It’s not going to be the 10,000-square-foot lot on a cul-de-sac; it might be an infill project. Zoning might look for where there’s two houses; can we get three? It’s a lot of townhomes, small-lot residential where people can own that.”

He said there has been some success in this arena since the beginning of 2024.

“Two-thirds of the housing projects we’ve had coming in are ownership housing projects,” he said.

Community Development Director Jeremy Smith said home ownership is around 60% in Ogden versus 80%-90% in some surrounding communities, but that Ogden is promoting several initiatives to help encourage home ownership.

“Keeping neighborhoods healthy — you need that healthy balance of home ownership compared with rental,” he said. “A lot of our programs are geared up to encourage home ownership. The state has come out and said, ‘We need more smaller homes on smaller lots.’ And they’re trying to get communities across the state to do that.”

He said that smaller homes on smaller lots is actually not an unprecedented move in Ogden City.

“Ogden did that 100 years ago,” he said. “If you look at our housing stock, we have small homes on small lots throughout most of the city.”

However, Smith notes that older homes present their own issues — and opportunities.

“Our efforts are largely trying to protect that asset that already exists,” he said. “These are homes that have one of the lowest median sales prices in the state, especially  in a major city. The problem is, if they’re not taken care of and they’re not preserved, they eventually have to be demolished and replaced. Any time you replace a home like that, it immediately becomes unaffordable.”

One effort he noted to help encourage renovation is the Ogden City Homes program – previously known as Home Sweet Ogden.

“We go in and purchase homes, renovate them and then we sell them,” he said. “That’s done through some federal grant programs. That program has been happening for a long time — probably 30 years. We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of homes with that program. Those are sold to low- to moderate-income homeowners and they are only sold to homeowners.”

Smith also made note of the Own in Ogden program which offers down payment assistance and the Home Exterior Loan Program.

“That’s also geared towards low- to moderate-income homeowners,” he said. “We also do a Home Exterior Loan Program that helps existing homeowners renovate their homes.”

He said these programs not only help with home ownership, they also help preserve the city’s character.

“Ogden has a great story, great history; we’re unique,” he said. “We want to preserve that character. A big part of the charm of that is just keeping that alive, that housing stock for the next generation and keeping it in a place where it’s attainable.”

Smith said these infill, small lot and restoration pushes come out of necessity.

“We have a limited amount of land left — I think we’re under 7% of the land that’s in the city is available for development,” he said. “There’s usually reasons it’s not developed. There’s usually something wrong with it.”

Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski said one thing is for sure with solving the city’s housing woes.

“We’re not just going to build our way out of this,” he said. “That is the pressure and the need in a lot of other cities; it’s different here.”