One of the important parts of this general plan that we, the residents provide feedback on is Senate Bill 34 and moderate income housing. This can be confusing for many, so I'm here to help you understand it so we can offer the best comment back to our city officials.
Senate Bill 34: What is it?
The pressure to add more moderate income housing is being stressed all over the country, and Utah is no different. Other states have mandated cities and towns to have a certain percentage of HDH to address moderate income housing. But those efforts back fired. Cities and towns did not like the state telling them what they had to do, and evenmore so, HDH does not equal Moderate Income Housing. The value of property is determined by the market and the developer who builds, not by the city.
Utah, seeing that these types of strict rules wasn't working well in other states, decided to find another approach. As things go in the legislature, it took a lot of time and arguing on both sides before Senate Bill 34 was born. This bill gives cities 23 different options to help facilitate the opportunity to address moderate income housing concerns while still giving the cities the ability to dictate their own choices within their city limits. Of the 23 options, we only have to choose 3.
State funds are always the way to put the pressure on. If cities and towns fail to chose 3 different options, a certain type of transportation funds is with held from the city until they comply with the mandates.
23 Options
The options listed in S.B. 34 are letters A to W. If you directly read the bill, they can be difficult to understand. We as the city have quite a lot of flexibility in how we choose to implement these, and some of them could be very low impact.
For example:
•Option B is working on infrastructure to our city to help accommodate growth. The updates to the sewer system on the east end would apply, as well as the updates to the reservoir on the west end.
•Option E would allow for accessory dwellings like mother in law apartments or allowing basements to be rented out.
•Option U is applying for certain types of grants, some which we have already applied for.
So there's 3 that really won't have a great deal of impact on the city of South Weber but keeps us in compliance. I feel these are three options we could comfortably choose.
Other options could have a great deal of impact on our city.
For example:
•Option D and M would lower fees from the developer to the city to help in turn the developer to possibly create moderate income developments.
•Option H eliminates or reduces parking requirements in hopes of creating "walkable communities" where people will drive less.
•Option F would be to create more "mixed use zoning" where commercial and high-density housing are combined in a zone.
These are options that could potentially impact our city a lot in, I believe, a negative way.
Do we use the funds they are threatening to withhold?
There have been some questions as to if we actually even use these specific transportation funds. To be honest, I am not sure and it is a valid question. While we absolutely have the choice to forgo any of these options and likewise forgo the funding from the state, I am not sure that is wise. And my reasoning for that is this: Utah didn't want SB 34 to be too restrictive. However, many felt that SB 34 would be grossly taken advantage of by cities and towns and wanted to be far more strict to ensure moderate income housing demands. While they are offering us options now, if too many of us choose not to take any of those options, there is the possibility the state will see SB 34 as a failure and next time around the mandates could be far less flexible. Because we can make 3 options that keep us in compliance with the state and really don't impact our city very much, I think it would be wise to comply at this time and save this battle for hill worth dying on as they say.
For those of you who are taking the general plan survey (which I hope is everyone!) I hope this helps. If you have already completed this section of the survey and turned it in, and would like to either go back and answer it or change your answers, simply just fill out another survey. This will help the council better know how their residents feel about these important mandates so they can make the best choice for our beautiful city.
As always, if you have any questions, please let me know. I am here to help!
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