Story in this week’s DesNews by Lee Sands, local government policy analyst with the Libertas Institute, about a property owner’s attempt in Provo to get approval to build a twin home on a lot in a single-family neighborhood.  While I think many of us have had similar experiences in our careers in land use planning and administration, it is getting these types of incidents out in the press and social media that helps to drive the top-down land use reforms that we have seen occurring in a number of states around the country.

I have been saying we’ve got a pretty good local-state collaboration process going on here, but more stories like this one can quickly change the tone.  Particularly when the closing lines of Lee’s anecdote says:

While the chatter about the merits of the individual twin home continued past the meeting, my thoughts turned to the larger scene. If this is what it takes to get a single twin home built, how are we ever going to get Utah’s housing shortage under control?

As I walked out of the council chambers, my reflections on Utah’s housing crisis continued. If we don’t want our home prices to be as high as California’s, what we need to do is stop debating a single twin home, but look at the real underlying problem on trial — our strict California-style zoning.

Local officials, we gotta be more proactive on these issues!  Just sayin’.