There’s a ticking time bomb in Utah that, if left unchecked, threatens to demolish the state’s economic vitality.
It’s the affordable housing crisis, the depths and severity of which was illustrated in shocking detail in a report last week by James Wood, a housing economist at the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute.
It’s a problem that has compounded year after year, becoming so severe it is perhaps the most dire threat to Utah’s continued growth.
For example, since 2011, Wood wrote, the number of households has risen nearly 50 percent faster than the number of new housing units, with roughly 111,500 units for 162,300 households.