Weber County leaders mull countywide focus in tackling housing shortage
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- The photo taken Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022, shows townhomes taking shape in Ogden off the west side of Washington Boulevard, north of the Ogden River. Lotus Company is the developer.
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- The photo taken Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022, shows townhomes taking shape in Ogden off the west side of Washington Boulevard, north of the Ogden River. Lotus Company is the developer.
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- The photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2022, shows townhomes taking shape in Ogden off the west side of Washington Boulevard, north of the Ogden River. Lotus Company is the developer.
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- The photo taken Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2022, shows townhomes taking shape in Ogden off the west side of Washington Boulevard, north of the Ogden River. Lotus Company is the developer.
SOUTH OGDEN — New apartment buildings and townhomes are quickly taking shape in South Ogden amid continuing demand for housing, particularly affordable housing.
Construction is particularly noteworthy along 40th Street, underscoring the housing shortage all up and down the Wasatch Front.
“We’re doing our share,” said South Ogden Mayor Russell Porter, alluding to the development in his locale. “Our hope is every community would do what they can.”
In fact, the city of Ogden provides 65% of the affordable housing in Weber County, according to a housing study by the Wasatch Front Regional Council released last September. With an affordable housing crunch impacting much of the Wasatch Front, though, more is needed, whether in Ogden, South Ogden or elsewhere. And in a bid to coordinate efforts to tackle the issue locally, elected leaders from across Weber County are mulling creation of a task force within the framework of the Weber Area Council of Governments to zero in on the issue.
The aim is to craft a “housing master plan” that identifies possible areas most conducive to housing growth in Weber County, helps with economic growth and addresses quality-of-life issues like health and community connectivity. “This will put something on paper that will help to inform future growth in the cities,” said Richard Hyer, a member of both the Ogden City Council and the Weber Area Council of Governments, or WACOG.
Porter views the effort as a way of pooling resources, a means of allowing larger locales with more planning resources to aid smaller cities.
As it stands, addressing housing development is typically a scattershot affair — each city or locale handles the pertinent planning and zoning issues independently of its neighbors. By creating the countywide task force — possibly at WACOG’s meeting in January — the hope is for a more unified approach. WACOG is made up of elected leaders from across Weber County and helps with roads planning and other issues of countywide import.
Steve Waldrip, the outgoing Utah House member from the Eden area who would help spearhead the effort, likened the vision to the regional efforts that go into planning for roads and transportation.
“We just need to do that same thing with housing,” said Waldrip, a partner at the Rocky Mountain Homes Fund, a nonprofit group that promotes home ownership among working Utahns. “Get people thinking beyond the city boundaries.”
Tom Christopulos, who retired earlier this year as Ogden’s community and economic development director, will team with Waldrip in leading the initiative.
Most everybody recognizes the need for more housing, more affordable housing, in particular, Christopulos said, “they just don’t know how to get there.” A particular sticking point in many locales has been broadening allowances for higher-density housing like apartments and townhomes, which some worry will draw a more itinerate, less-stable population.
High-density, though, can still mean single-family homes, Christopulos said, just on smaller lot sizes.
Hyer said talk of creating the task force has been spurred in part by concern that state lawmakers may step in if they don’t sense enough action on the local level and impose rules on locales aimed at bolstering the supply of affordable housing. What’s more, House Bill 462, approved by the Utah Legislature earlier this year and sponsored by Waldrip, calls on communities to create plans and strategies to address the housing shortage impacting the state.
Cache County has developed the sort of task force that Weber County officials are weighing with an eye to addressing a housing shortage there. A report on the efforts noted that lack of housing can have broader repercussions, depressing business expansion and economic development since would-be workers may have a tough time finding a place to live.
“We received a long list of recommendations from task force members. Much of the focus is on influencing public opinion, some of it changing state and local codes and administrative practices,” reads the Cache County report.
More specifically, the plan encourages efforts to “foster a cultural shift to help citizens become more open to new neighbors.” It also said part of the effort has been to focus on zoning change that encourages a range of housing types that serve a broad range of people.
Porter said part of the effort in Weber County should focus on identifying where housing growth can occur. Vacant land in both South Ogden and Ogden, surrounded by other cities, is filling up.
While specifics of what the task force would do in Weber County would have to be pinpointed, the need for action seems to be clear, according to the Wasatch Front Regional Council study.
The study found that as of 2019, Weber County was short more than 1,300 housing units for low- and very low-income households. “This deficit is likely much larger in 2022,” it reads.
With the Weber County locales that provide much of the moderate-income housing nearly built out, the study also said that unless “still-developing communities start providing more affordable housing, the county deficit in affordable units will likely grow as the county’s population increases.”
On the positive side, there’s plenty of space for population growth in the county’s western expanses, the report said, but still, roadblocks need to be overcome. Current zoning in the area “limits resident density, potentially hindering housing affordability and leading to long commutes as outlying areas develop,” reads the study.