State releases plan to produce housing to move hundreds of people out of homelessness

Yesterday a two part plan to produce 497 units of deeply affordable housing which would mostly be devoted to either moving people out of homelessness or preventing very low income people from becoming homeless, was presented at a meeting of the Utah Homelessness Council.  The first part of the plan involved using $47,7 million appropriated by the Legislature to fund the production of fifteen diferent projects that will collectively include 546 total housing units.  363 of those units will be priced at a rate that is affordable for extremely low income households.  

HUD defines "extremely low income" as earning 30 percent of the area median income.  This standard changes based on household size.  30 percent of area median income for a single person family in the Salt Lake City metro area would be $21,500 per year.   A single person household with that income would be deemed to only be able to afford an apartment that cost $537.50 per month or less.  According to Zillow, the average rent in Salt Lake City  is currently $1,600 and so the market clearly is not producing units that extremely low income households can afford. 

Of those 363 units geared to extremely low income households, 311 will specifically be dedicated to moving people out of homelessness.  The Homelessness Council voted to approve 14 of the 15 projects after the Mayor of the  Ogden asked for a one month delay on a project that would be located in that city

The second part of the plan to produce units to reduce homelessness approved by the Homelessness Council yesterday was a proposal to grant $1.3 million in ongoing operational assistance to six new projects to help  them obtain financing to get built.  These projects would include 134 units of housing that would be affordable to extremely low income households.   If you look at the details of the projects it is clear that many of them are clearly intended to move people out of homelessness.

We will be hearing more about these exciting new projects during a panel discussion at our Poverty Summit on August 26 about  housing for chronically homeless people and disability rights that will include the Coordinator of Utah's Office of Homeless Services, Wayne Niederhauser.