One hopeful sign: there is much more interest in housing affordability now among the general public. A Salt Lake Chamber survey found housing was one of the issues that Utah households are most concerned about, along with education, air quality and transportation. Wood hopes that awareness, along with more education on the issue, will make people less resistant to the possible solutions.

“We bought a house in a friendlier market. We could never afford to buy our house now. We’d like to sell it and upgrade to a new home, but the market is too crazy right now and we could end up with no place to go after we sell. So, we’re staying put until the market becomes less competitive and considering renovations instead. It could be worse. We were lucky we bought our house when we did.” 

Housing advocates, experts and policymakers alike have long employed the 30-percent rule to determine not only housing affordability but as a guide for how much we should be spending on housing. In general, we should not spend more than about 30% of our income (before taxes) on housing costs. That should include rent or mortgage as well as necessary utilities and associated fees. Households that pay more than 30% of their income on housing are considered “cost-burdened.” Those who pay 50% or more are considered “severely cost-burdened.”  “If you’re in that position, you think of the pain every day,” says Wood. “You think of how you’re going to make ends meet when your housing is eating up so much of your income. There’s a lot of pain out there.”

To demonstrate just how unhealthy the current housing market is, Jim Wood, Director of Research and Science at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, provided an example at a Greater Avenues Neighborhood Council meeting this past spring. In the last five years, housing prices have gone up about 10% on average every year in the Avenues neighborhood, all of Salt Lake County and the entire State. “That’s a really unhealthy market,” says Wood. “If you did that for 7 or 8 years, you’ve doubled the price of a home. You can’t do that. It’s just not sustainable.”

he Bard said it best, something is rotten in the state of Utah. Our current housing market has seen better days, and it is the topic on every tongue. Talk of the crisis has become a way to break the ice. We’ve all been subject to a housing-related rant or enrapt by rental ruminations. Has it ever been this bad before? How can anyone afford a home or rent nowadays? And what’s causing it to be this way? The consensus seems to be that this housing crisis is the result of too much of a good thing. It is the pound of flesh owed in exchange for the state’s booming economy.