Rocky, Council at odds over affordable housing

The Salt Lake City Council and the Salt Lake City Mayor's Office are at odds again, this time over the city's long-awaited housing policy.

With the deadline for written public comments ending today, housing advocates are joining the mayor's office in criticizing how the policy addresses affordable housing in Salt Lake City.

The council's plan is controversial: It seeks to encourage more affordable housing on the city's more affluent east side and less in poorer areas like the west side and downtown. Council members say the plan is needed so that affordable housing isn't always located in poor neighborhoods.

"We continue to put low-income, subsidized housing in the same areas over and over again," Councilwoman Nancy Saxton said. "We're not getting any on the east side."

Mayor Rocky Anderson's administration delivered an updated housing policy to the City Council this past September, and a small group of council members then took the policy and revised it. In February, the council released a draft of the revised policy and invited written comments, which are being accepted through today.

The council's revised plan would only allow low-interest city loans to go to affordable apartment projects in the city's most affluent neighborhoods. The policy forbids city loans for helping affordable apartment projects in census tracts where more than 26 percent of residents live below the federal poverty level. In census tracts with poverty levels between 15 and 26 percent, Housing Trust Fund loans would only go to affordable apartment projects that also set aside at least half the available units as market-rate apartments.

Similar restrictions are placed on affordable, owner-occupied projects.

The policy would prohibit city funds from supporting most affordable housing projects in and around downtown and the Gateway mixed-use zone — two places that may be good candidates for affordable housing projects, according to housing advocates.

Councilman Eric Jergensen said the policy is more about encouraging retail downtown rather than a statement against affordable housing. Many retailers, Jergensen said, look at census tract data when deciding where to locate. In Salt Lake City, census tracts around downtown have a relatively high poverty level, discouraging retailers from locating there.

"There are certain service providers that won't come into those areas because of the demographics," Jergensen said. "Where the income level of the neighborhood is demographically so low, sometimes these companies and businesses will not come into the area."