Here’s the good news: It is easier to find a rental today than in 2021, when Summit County declared a workforce housing crisis.
Here’s the not-so-good news from county commissioner Tamara Pogue:
“I wouldn’t call them ‘normal’ because nothing with housing is ever normal,” Pogue tells Krystal 93. “I always tell folks the first article about Summit County’s housing struggles was in 1936, so this is going to be a perennial problem for us, and one thing that remains consistent is there’s always more work to be done.”
Housing is back on the county’s priority list next year, even as Pogue and her colleagues are staring down a $7 million deficit. Pogue believes they can’t afford to ignore it despite another round of rising costs.
“What we are seeing in a lot of our pro formas for potential housing projects is a steepening in price largely due to tariffs,” Pogue says. “There is still some money available to support what I call the ‘vertical infrastructure,’ the actual units, but not a lot to support all the things that you have to have to make that building viable.”
This has been the biggest hurdle for Summit’s “white whale” of housing, Lake Hill on Dam Road.
“I didn’t have any realization of how difficult it is to find water and sewer for a lot of these projects,” Pogue admits. “That has certainly been a lesson learned for me, and similarly, just the lack of funding for horizontal infrastructure for a lot of these projects, like water, sewer and road.”
Since 2021, the county has made some progress on new construction, like 15 tiny homes at Nellie’s Neighborhood at Bill’s Ranch in Frisco, which double as a living library for the county’s pre-approved accessory dwelling units. These ADU plans are free to homeowners who wants to build in a backyard, or over a garage – although very few people are biting right now because of the same economic woes scuttling the county’s housing plans.
Some county housing programs, like Housing Helps, give the county big bang for the buck. That is where the county pays homeowners to put a deed-restriction on their properties, protecting homes in traditionally “local” neighborhoods for years to come. A similar leasing program, Lease to Locals, was scrapped for lack of interest and money.