I’m writing today to those in local government (I guess I usually do, as I spent my entire career in that realm and know it best).  Here’s what I want to say – you gotta do something!  On your own! Show that you’re paying attention to a pretty serious issue in our society at this time.

The issue I’m talking about, of course (what else do I talk about lately?) is the housing affordability crisis.  And I know, I know, I say it often myself, this issue is complex and not just the product of local land use regulation.  But the fact is, local land use is one of the factors, one which we can do something about.  Not only that, the public, and more importantly, other political leaders at the level above local government, think that too.

In the relentless push at the state level to attempt to address this issue, both here and in states all around the country, local leaders often respond with the mantra of “leave local land use to local government, we are closest to the people.”  But what if the people (i.e., those who show up to meetings and make comments) are not fully representative of the entire community (there’s plenty of data out there about this, as I have shown in past posts)?  Plenty more could be said about this, but let me just cut to the chase – if you local leaders want to maintain control of local land use, then you’ve got to show you’re addressing what has been demonstrated to be a real issue – a rapidly shrinking number of folks in our communities that can actually afford to buy a home.

I was led to write about this as I saw a couple of news stories this morning about this very issue.  The first was a story in the DesNews about a newly emerging political strategy termed the Abundance Agenda.  This is well articulated in a recently released book with this title by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.  Basically, the premise is our society and political systems are failing to produce tangible results, often because of overregulation and mis-regulation.  One of the main examples they cite is lack of affordable housing due to local land use regulation.  This from the book blurb:

To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.

In the DesNews interview with book co-author Thompson, he cites Gov. Spencer Cox as a prime example of someone seeking to implement the Abundance agenda:

“There are Republicans, like Cox, who see very clearly that the path toward prosperity, not just material prosperity, but human well-being, requires an obsession with the basic building blocks of material wealth, and that starts with housing,” Thompson said.

Did you catch that?  He’s using housing as the example of Gov. Cox embracing the Abundance agenda.  Gov. Cox, as we’ve noted, has made housing affordability one of, if not the top, priorities of his second (and last) term.  What might that mean for local governments, moving forward?  Here’s a clip from a second story in today’s DesNews about the state’s housing situation:

Utah leaders have been trying to address housing affordability, with the governor remaining committed to seeing 35,000 starter homes built in the state within the next five years to help keep young families from leaving.

But some questioned just how much the 2025 Legislature helped would-be homebuyers. A number of bills aimed at improving affordability stalled, including efforts to increase housing density in urban municipalities.

“That’s really the dilemma that we’re facing. We do have a very strong fence of local control here in Utah. That lends itself to a lot of the ’nimby-ism’ we’re seeing across the state,” Waldrip said, referring to the anti-development acronym for “Not In My Back Yard.”

In yesterday’s blog post, I talked about how locals are being overwhelmed by all that’s coming down from the state level to deal with land use and housing.  And, given the comments by some state leaders, it’s not likely to slow down, despite the chorus from locals about leaving land use to the locals to deal with.  This from Gov. Cox:

There needs to be a shift in how Utahns view growth, from something that needs “to be avoided and is scary and terrible to, ‘We can do this right,‘” he said, repeating a message the governor delivered in his State of the State address in January.

So, locals, you want to maintain control of local land use policies?  You gotta do something.  Show you can deal with this problem on your own!  That ranges all the way from allowing more development of all kinds, whittling down overly-detailed regulation (do you hear this, legislators?) to making land use processes work better, more smoothly, and more quickly (time is money, after all).  Some communities around our state are taking actions on their own – see for example Salt Lake City (several different measures), Farmington (separate ownership of ADUs), Lehi (cost-based regulation), and others.  But many (too many) are not doing anything.

Want to avoid more top-down mandates?  Get moving on your own!