So there was this patrician named Crassus back in Ancient Rome who took advantage of a unique housing crisis. Because the city had no official fire brigade, when a building caught ablaze, he would show up with his men and demand a hefty price to fight the fire. If the property-owner paid up, his men would put it out.
If not, he’d just let it burn to the ground.
I’ve thought about this anecdote recently, and not just because – like many men – I think about Ancient Rome all the time. Because in Utah we have our own housing crisis, not because of for-profit firefighters but because of a massive housing shortage.
It’s widespread knowledge that housing has become unaffordable for many in Utah, but the situation is actually even worse than most people realize. As recently as 2016, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) found that Utah had the 6th best Housing Price Index (HPI) in the nation. But just a few years later we’ve dropped to 51st – the worst in the nation.
And much like firefighters in Ancient Rome, to it seems the people who should be helping are actually hurting: real estate developer politicians.
The criticism that Utah is run by real estate developers is not a new one – prompting the Deseret News earlier this year to ask bluntly if the state is “too developer friendly.” Sure, we need developers. But maybe we don’t need developers who overwhelm local land use to massively enrich themselves.
At least that was the point that KUTV made in July when they determined that 26 members of Utah’s legislature – or about one-quarter of them – are professionally involved in the real estate industry – whether it’s “development, investment, consulting or management.” Only five of those list real estate as their primary occupation, showing that the other 23 realize how unpopular the industry is, and virtually none of them even responded to KUTV’s inquiries.
Our part-time state legislature pays so very little it may as well be a volunteer position, which creates a perverse incentive for “public service” that’s more about personal enrichment. For Utahns, just the word developer has become enough to make them angry. It’s such a big issue that one local race was based entirely on rejecting developers:
As example: this session we saw one bill (SB 295) that would essentially, “create a new class of political entity that would not be governed by elected officials in the creation of those entities and would have property tax authority.” That is to say that the state could override the will of local leaders and their constituents to build whatever they liked. (It did not become law.)
The problem of high-priced overdevelopment can hurt people no matter where they may be on the property ladder. For some, it’s because a first-time home purchase has become impossible, for others it’s because their community’s can’t handle the high-density housing projects that have overwhelmed their limited infrastructure.
Even without this kind of strong-arming, developer-politicians can make sure if a city wants transportation dollars (like road maintenance and construction) they need to only build high density, which is more profitable. Withholding road money is the 21st Century municipal equivalent of refusing to put out a house fire.
Utah faces two enormous challenges. One, we’re such an undeniably well-run state in so many ways, there’s massive desire to live here. Two, while the state is very big, much of the land is super-remote, owned by the federal government, undevelopable, or all of the above.
Let’s hope we can find real solutions to our housing issues so everything doesn’t burn to the ground.
Jared Whitley is a longtime DC politico, having worked in the US Senate and White House. In 2018, the Utah Society of Professional Journalists named him best blogger for his contributions to Utah Policy.
