Summit County staff outline plan to create a local housing authority and data tools, council asks for budget and draft resolution

Jeff Jones, presenting a staff report to the Summit County Council on June 26, described a proposal to form a Summit County Housing Authority to bring new tools and capacity to local housing work. He explained that housing authorities are created under Utah Code and can be established either by a city-and-county motion or by petition from electors. Jones said the authority would be started “and sort of grow…organically” and would focus initially on building data tools, a utility allowance assessment, and grant development.

Jones emphasized the need for accurate local housing data and proposed an online dashboard showing deed-restricted unit counts, affordability bands by AMI, permit trends, and GIS mapping of sites. He flagged a discrepancy between counts from the Kim Gardner Policy Institute and local inventories and said the dashboard would support Summit County’s moderate-income housing reporting. He also described a proposed utility-allowance study to ensure maximum-rent calculations include typical utilities for differing unit types and metering arrangements.

On policy tools, Jones identified potential programs the authority could pursue: employee-assisted housing for county workers, a predesigned ADU plan library to speed permitting, targeted financial incentives to offset fees for lower-income projects, and an aggressive grant-writing effort. He told the council the county budget already includes a $500,000 allocation for housing efforts and that the housing authority would not require a full new staff complement immediately; initial costs would cover data subscriptions, studies and startup expenses.

Council members pressed for additional detail on costs and operations. Several members praised the approach as a way to be more proactive with private-public partnerships and to position the county to access future voucher or subsidy programs. Some expressed concern about using the existing $500,000 allocation; others said they wanted a clearer, smaller startup budget. The chair asked whether staff could bring back a potential adoption resolution and a proposed budget for the council’s next meeting; members agreed that doing so would be the appropriate next step.

Next steps: staff were directed to prepare and return with a draft adoption resolution and a detailed budget showing what subset of the $500,000 would be used for initial activities, plus a clearer timeline for studies and dashboard procurement.