Whatâs driving Utahâs housing crisis? Itâs not what you think, says economist.
Low wages are the real culprit, he says, even as lawmakers prepare to spend millions to construct more affordable homes.
(Francisco Kjolseth | Tribune file photo) A home for sale in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, April 27, 2021. With Utah poised to spend millions on affordable housing, a top analyst says stagnating incomes are more of a driver in the state s current crisis than a lack of housing. | Updated: 1:56 a.m.
Utahâs housing crisis may be more about shrinking paychecks than a shortage of homes.
As state lawmakers met Tuesday in advance of spending millions of pandemic-relief cash to encourage more affordable housing construction and other projects, a top analyst told them that a lack of supply isnât the Beehive Stateâs most pressing housing issue and urged them to look also at ways of boosting incomes for Utahâs working families.
KUER A housing specialist with the Utah Department of Workforce Services told Utah legislators Tuesday the solution to the state’s affordable housing problems wasn’t as simple as building more houses. He said stagnant wages were also part of the issue.
The solution to Utah’s affordable housing crisis isn’t to build more housing, which is the state’s current approach.
That’s what David Fields, a housing specialist with the Utah Department of Workforce Services, told state legislators during a presentation Tuesday.
“We can’t assume that if we just build and build, there ll be a trickle-down effect,” Fields said. “It s just not empirically tenable.”
Deseret News
HB45 proposes a radon task force to study solutions
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Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
One year ago, the Deseret News published the story of Dustin Wallis, a 39-year-old, nonsmoking father of two young children who had just been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer.
In “The Radioactive Killer,” a multipart series, we explained how the leading cause of lung cancer for nonsmokers is radon an invisible, odorless carcinogenic gas that’s produced as uranium breaks down in the soil.
As a result of the coverage, Rep. Keven Stratton, R-Orem, said he introduced HB45 to create a radon task force that would study the issue for the next 18 months.
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