December 2019 | Vol. 16 Iss. 12
FREE
HOLE IN THE HOUSING MARKET:
EMPTY-NESTERS’ QUEST FOR A HOME IN THE ‘MISSING MIDDLE’ By Zak Sonntag | z.sonntag@mycityjournals.com
HOLLADAY’S MISSING MIDDLE
Growth is great. At least, that’s the sense given by politicians and business leaders who tout (and take credit for) the state’s recent economic gains. Utah’s GDP is growing at the second fastest rate of all states in the nation, according to recent reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing a remarkable 4% growth increase in 2018. But growth is a double-edged blade. Economic increases correlate with population increases, so more jobs means more people, and more people means, well, yet more people, with Utah’s highest-in-the-nation per-capita birthrate. This is a large factor in the state’s current housing crisis, in which a rocketing demand has pushed mortgages and rents rapidly out of reach of middle-income families. This is evident especially in Holladay, where the median new-home sale price is third highest in the state. The solution to the crisis, we’re told, is to build more households. Yet even as we experience a “building boom” across the county and state, prices continue to rise, which has sent policy makers in urgent search for solutions to keep prices in check. Lately, the debate has focused on what city planners call the “missing middle:” smaller, single-family homes, whose size and price range lands between condos and apartments at one end and double-story family homes at the other. This middle range is a vital component to housing markets, planners argue, because it helps families at both ends of the generational spectrum — both young, starter families, along with older empty-nesters, each looking for smaller-sized homes in a reasonable price range.
Ron Hilton, rezone applicant, with application posters. (Zak Sonntag/City Journals)
The issue was thrown into relief recently in Holladay when spread their wings and left the nest, the last departing earlier the City Council weighed the merits of a rezone application that this year. The hallways stood quiet. The bedrooms lay vacant. The would allow a property zoned to accommodate two homes to swing hung still in the yard. instead accommodate five. EMPTY-NESTERS “We felt like we were rattling around in there. It was more Ron and Melissa Hilton raised six boys in Holladay. The space than we needed. We wanted to downsize and down-cost boys grew, graduated from high school and then, one by one, because we’ll be retiring and on a fixed income before long,” Continued page 24
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