Frequently Asked Questions

  • Publicly Owned

    Social housing is publicly funded and controlled. The primary goal is housing people, not making money.

    Permanently Affordable

    Rent is not set by the market, it is set by the cost to build, maintain, and operate the building. It is also based on the incomes of people living in the building.

    Mix-income Communities

    Social housing is available to all. Buildings include a mix of incomes. From the lowest incomes to high incomes, everyone is welcome. Rents are designed to match the specific incomes of tenants.

    Resident Leadership

    Residents have decision-making power and have control over the conditions of their buildings and homes.

  • In Utah, cities can’t pass rent control or set eviction laws that are better for tenants. Because of this, renters in Utah have few protections from landlords or price hikes. Landlords have few limits on what they charge for rent and the types of fees they charge.

    Social housing puts control into the hands of the public: tenants and the City government. When the property is owned by the public, the public sets the rules. This means that deposits and application fees don’t need to be charged. It means that rent is set based on income. It also means that eviction policies can be better. Housing can also remain affordable forever.

    When the public owns the building, the building can be built to higher standards, be beautiful, and include things the community needs, such as childcare space. Social housing can also be accessible to all people, especially people most at risk of homelessness and displacement, people with disabilities, and people with children.

    This is all great news for people living in social housing, but the impacts are felt by others as well. When enough social housing is built, it can lower rents in other buildings. This is because it creates an affordable, attractive, quality option to market housing. As more and more social housing is created, more and more pressure is placed on the private market to 1) lower rent, 2) reduce fees and deposits, and 3) change eviction practices

    1. The first step is to create a public developer. The public developer would acquire properties for social housing or build new social housing.

    2. After establishing the public developer, we need to fund the developer.

    3. Once established and funded, the developer can begin acquiring and building housing.

    1. City Funding - The Public Developer gets funding each year from the City budget. This helps cover operating costs and puts money toward projects. The Public Developer can also apply for grants from other public or philanthropic sources.

    2. Bond Issuance - The Public Developer has bonding authority, meaning that they can issue municipal bonds in exchange for loans. These are very low-interest loans that would grow funding available for projects.

    3. Building & Buying – The bond funds are used to buy land and build housing or buy existing housing from the private market.

      Partnering with government agencies on land can help lower the cost of building new housing.

    4. Renters & Rent – Renters with a mix of incomes move into the new housing and pay rent that is affordable to them. Rents are used to maintain and operate the building as well as pay off loans.

    5. Bonding on Rent – The Public Developer can then issue more bonds based on future rents (revenue bonds). This money can be used to buy or build new buildings and bring in new residents.

    6. Loans Paid – Once the loans are paid off, the rent money will go directly into the buying and building more housing

  • State Law allows a local building authority (public developer) to be created by a local government (the City) by following the procedures in Title 16, Chapter 6a.

    In Salt Lake City, this means that the Mayor and City Council would need to create a public developer. They would also need to fund the public developer. The Mayor sets their priorities in January of each year, the budget is recommended by the Mayor and then the budget is adopted by the City Council by June 30 of each year.

    We are creating a charter that the Mayor could support and the Council could adopt to create a public developer. The charter would set how the public developer would work so that it meets its mission and is accountable to the public.

  • Tenants of SLC social housing will have housing that is:

    • Affordable

    • Stable

    • Sustainable

    • Long-term.

    They will also have:

    • A community of other tenants in their building

    • A voice in their community and in their housing

    As more social housing is built or acquired and converted, more people will be able to take advantage of all the benefits that this housing has to offer. Additionally, over time, as the share of social housing increases, it will put a stabilizing pressure on rent in other apartments as well.

  • The gold standard for social housing is in Vienna, Austria.

    But social housing is not just a European idea. Places like Montgomery County, Maryland and Seattle, Washington both have social housing programs. And states like Rhode Island and California are looking into statewide social housing programs.

    With all of our efforts, Salt Lake City could be a national leader in creating social housing.

  • While we are focusing our efforts on SLC right now, our model is something that is replicable in other communities.

    As more social housing is built or acquired and the share increases, SLC social housing can put stabilizing pressure on rent even in communities outside of SLC.

  • By renting in social housing, you will most likely be saving money when compared with what you currently spend on rent. This will allow you to save more income each month that you can put toward a downpayment someday (or toward retirement, or toward college, or toward travel!).

    The public developer is not limited to building rentals, either. Because the developer only has to make sure it is covering costs, not making profit, it can create ownership opportunities that are more affordable than what is currently on the market. This would likely be through community land trust or shared-equity cooperative models that ensure that for-sale properties are affordable forever.

  • Housing construction follows economic cycles. When the market is hot, there is plenty of work to go around, but when the market cools, as it is right now, construction slows and there are fewer jobs available. When things get really bad, like during the Great Recession, there were next to no jobs in the home construction industry. That meant that people needed to find new jobs, and some people never went back to their trade.

    Social housing doesn’t solve this cyclical problem. At least not yet. But it can certainly help. That is because the funding for projects is not as dependent upon market dynamics. During economic downturns, when land prices may drop, a public developer can actually buy more and build more, even if private developers aren’t building. The more social housing that is built, the more a public developer can hire people in the trades. So while it doesn’t make the problem of economic downturns go away, it can help keep more people working in good jobs during difficult times.