State rep urges infrastructure partnerships with cities to unlock housing supply

Representative Calvin Roberts said the state should pair targeted infrastructure investment with local planning to move entitled housing from paper to construction and blunt Utah's housing affordability crisis. "We've got a housing affordability crisis in the state," Roberts said, adding that home prices have risen "on average 6% per year" since 1990 and that price growth has far outpaced median wage growth.

Roberts framed the problem as a three-player dynamic: local governments plan and place-make, the private market builds, and state government should provide backbone infrastructure. "A big part of [why entitled units aren't being built] is because of infrastructure, either subdivision-level infrastructure, regional infrastructure, or more of that big backbone…