The Salt Lake Housing Authority wants to sell off most of its public housing and swap it for vouchers that would allow the residents to still live in affordable housing.

Rosemary Kappes, executive director of the housing authority, told City Council members Thursday that her agency has been sliced to the bone by budget cuts. "I can't cut any more or I'm going to be laying off so many staff members," Kappes said. "We won't have paint to paint the units, and I don't want to turn our lovely units into slums."

The housing authority has had to pay rising utility, supplies and salary costs without a comparable increase in federal and state money. Kappes' solution is to sell the city's public housing to save money.

"I never thought that I would be the one advocating for doing away with public housing," said Kappes, who has a 25-year career in low-income housing. "It just feels really odd to me to be up against this wall."

Under her plan, the housing authority would convert all of its public housing — 633 units — to Section 8 housing, a federal rental assistance program. The agency would still own around 400 of those in a mix of elderly and family housing complexes, but it would sell the rest to nonprofit groups or private businesses. The impact on renters, who pay 30 percent of their income, would be minimal, Kappes said, because they would pay the same amount of money to a different owner.

In other business, the City Council also gave official approval for two TRAX stations downtown after a public hearing without any comment. UTA will pay most of the $32 million required for two stations and the extension, which will link the line that ends at the intersection of 400 West and South Temple with the intermodal hub at roughly 600 West and 250 West. Salt Lake City will pay $8.5 million.

The first of the two stations, 125 S. 400 West, is scheduled to be running by November 2007; the second, 525 W. 200 South, is to be built by 2010 or whenever TRAX rider numbers demand it.

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