In the coming months, Salt Lake City is headed to a vote that could make a number of changes to its single family zoning code, which covers around a third of all city land and 77% of the city’s residentially zoned land. 

Neighborhoods are gearing up to fight the potential changes. 

The city has branded its residential zoning overhaul the Expanding Housing Options (EHO) initiative, which would make a number of changes to the city’s residential zones, including all R-1, R-2, SR-1 and SR-1A zones. 

As of now, the pitch would allow homes to be built on lots as small as 2,000 square feet per unit while capping the maximum gross floor area to 1,200 square feet per unit. The proposal would not eliminate single family zoning, nor would it bar the construction of new, larger single-family homes. It also does not remove historic overlay protections, which some neighborhoods rushed to create in the wake of other recent zoning reform efforts. 

Even the debate signals that after over five years of proactive changes to the rules governing development on private land across the city, Salt Lake City is poised to continue the push to allow for more infill development. It will face pushback along the way.

City planning staff explained during a briefing in February that the EHO initiative is a response to Salt Lake City’s rising cost of housing. The city’s median home price is around $615,000 — a mark that is out of reach for many, as the city’s median income sits at $74,925, according to city staff. An increasing number of families have also left the city, resulting in schools closing despite the city’s ongoing population growth. 

“Since 2000, Salt Lake City has gained over 36,000 total residents, but has lost nearly 10,000 children from its population,” said Ben Buckley, a principal planner for Salt Lake City, during the February briefing. “So we’re trying to encourage more housing to bring back families to the city.”

The city has made sweeping changes to its mixed-use zoning code and missing middle zones, leaving single-family zones as the next step in its zoning reform trend. By creating small lot dwellings as a by-right building option, the city is hoping to spur smaller, more affordable housing options around the city. 

Unlike ADUs, the ERO plan would enable residential lots to be subdivided and allow for individual ownership. The initiative also wouldn’t cap the number of units allowed on a property, so long as each unit has a minimum lot size of 2,000 square feet and complies with other design standards outlined in the proposal. 

The city’s Affordable Housing Initiatives program does not limit a dwelling’s square footage, but it caps those developments at 4 units in residential zones. It also requires a planning application and a restrictive covenant to ensure its affordability. 

While some Salt Lakers think the EHO reforms would be too sweeping for the city’s residential zones, others believe the changes don’t go far enough.

COMMUNITY THOUGHTS

Anthony Wright, chair of the East Bench Community Council, told Building Salt Lake he appreciates the city’s efforts to enable building more housing.

But he has his qualms with the EHO program’s current parameters. He said the 1,200-square-foot cap on a unit’s gross floor area is too restrictive, and it isn’t conducive to building family-sized housing, which is a staple of the initiative. 

“I think there are some really good examples of infill development that aren’t capped at 1,200 square feet that fit,” he said. “I think you should be able to build an 800 square foot house, or a 3,000 square foot house.” 

Wright, who works as an infill developer, said in a written comment to city planning staff that families with kids are looking for larger homes, and the gross floor area cap would limit the city’s stated goal of drawing families back to the city. 

“Many families, including my own, seek larger homes when planning for children,” he said in a written comment to planning staff, which he shared with BSL. “My friends with young children who currently live in 1,500 – 1,800 sq. ft. bungalows are actively trying to upsize, not downsize.”

Rachel Day took over as chair of the Yalecrest Neighborhood Council earlier this year. She told BSL that land in her neighborhood is already expensive, and she worried building more units wouldn’t make an impact on making housing more affordable. 

She pointed to a slate of new townhomes built near the neighborhood at the corner Downington Avenue and 1300 East, which would cost thousands per month to rent. 

“I don’t think that that’s really addressing affordability in the way that the planners are hoping the proposed changes might achieve,” Day said. 

The city’s proposed 1,200-square-foot gross floor area cap and 2,000-square-foot minimum home lots have been done in other cities and shown promising results. Those same parameters were approved in Durham, North Carolina in 2023, and the changes are credited with helping spur the development of new starter homes throughout the city. 

Durham was one of the handful of cities cited as bright spots in housing policy during a recent virtual event held by Wasatch Advocates for Livable Communities, a nonprofit that advocates for housing policy changes and pushes for building more housing. The group is a vocal supporter of the EHO initiative, as well as encouraging ADUs and the city’s AHI program. 

Turner Bitton, executive director for the group, said these types of changes in Durham and other cities allowed for gradual neighborhood growth, rather than large-scale, multifamily redevelopments. Other cities have been able to achieve similar gains, all while making changes to single-family residential zones. 

“When you look at places like Houston and Durham and Seattle and Portland, the reason that they’ve been able to mitigate the affordability issues is through missing middle housing,” Bitton told BSL. “That’s in particular why the single family zones are so important, it’s because they are the place where most of the missing middle can happen in the city, and it can happen rapidly.” 

Jim Jenkin, the land use committee chair for the Greater Avenues Community Council, says he has issues with more technical aspects of the proposal and how it can impact the look and feel of older neighborhoods. He worried the ordinance paints all residential zones with a broad brush instead of evaluating housing proposals on an individual basis. 

“This ignores the particular circumstances of each individual zone,” Jenkin told BSL. 

He pointed to varying setback rules as another sticking point for him. Small lot dwellings would have different setback requirements than other, older homes around them. Jenkin said he takes issue with allowing front yard setbacks that are equal to one of an abutting property, which is a proposed modification to residential code. 

“I understand that block face average is a complex and contentious thing, but making it so it’s just one abutting property is making it meaningless,” Jenkin said. “If you happen to be next to a non-conforming structure that was built outside of code, or a townhouse complex that was built when those weren’t regulated, then you’re perpetuating what is essentially a non-conforming setback.”

The Avenues is the city’s oldest platted neighborhood, as a number of buildings in the area were built before any sort of city zoning code, a commonplace throughout the city. This means the neighborhood has a variety of building types intermixed, often with nonconforming structures that couldn’t be built with current zoning standards. 

COUNCIL MEMBERS’ THOUGHTS

Salt Lake City Council members were first briefed on the EHO initiative back in February, and Council Member Chris Wharton was hesitant toward the effort. 

He expressed the need to give additional notice to the community about the changes, and he echoed those concerns in a phone call with BSL on Wednesday. 

Wharton represents the Avenues, Capitol Hill and Marmalade neighborhoods — areas of the city which are largely made up of the residential zones subject to the potential changes. 

Wharton told BSL he wonders if EHO is necessary, given the council’s updates to missing middle zones like RMF-30 and the city’s AHI and ADU programs. Though EHO would enable the new units to be subdivided for individual ownership — which is not possible with ADUs — he’s still not convinced. 

“Even though I ultimately voted no on the RMF changes, I still feel that we got to a much better place than where we were at the beginning of that process,” Wharton told BSL. “I support the other changes that we made, and I just think we need to give some time for those to percolate and see where to make adjustments there before we add another large change.”

He added that smaller lot dwelling units could be beneficial in some areas of his district. But Wharton said he’d be more comfortable with evaluating these types of projects on a case by case basis, rather than approving a citywide initiative that would enable this type of housing by right. 

Wharton said he supports the provisions relating to flag lots, but he still wants more time to consider the proposal before going to a vote. He also wants to explore adding owner-occupancy requirements, as he said the city is always looking for ways to help out first-time homebuyers. 

Council Member Sarah Young represents the Sugar House neighborhood, which also contains a large amount of residential zones. She told BSL that the ownership aspect came up during community outreach events with residents, as she said her constituents expressed the need to create more home ownership opportunities. 

Young said she’s still parsing through the EHO proposal to see which aspects she supports and which ones would need work. 

“We find that some policies are a better fit for Salt Lake City than others, but comprehensively, I’m just grateful for the fact that they keep bringing us solutions so that we can vet them with our community members to figure out more solutions for affordability in Salt Lake,” Young said. 

The hesitancy from council members is especially noteworthy, considering the city’s largely pro-development stance in recent years. Wharton, Young and Councilman Dan Dugan’s districts, which are the city’s wealthiest and generally most expensive, are largely seen as the least likely to support changes to residential zones.

The west side districts, Ballpark, Liberty Wells and East Liberty, along with Downtown and Central City, have generally been more supportive of changes in residential zones that promote infill. That appears to be playing out this time around, as well.

Council members on the west side have embraced the premise of smaller lot sizes and additional single family homes. 

During the February briefing, Council Member Victoria Petro — who represents the Fairpark and Rose Park neighborhoods — said she fully supported the proposed changes, even questioning whether the city should be capping lot coverage at 50%. She said she would rather have the smaller lots maximize their square footage. 

Council Member Alejandro Puy represents the Glendale and Poplar Grove neighborhoods. He previously told BSL that he wants to pass the EHO proposal, adding it’s one of his goals while serving as council chair. He said earlier this month that conversions were still ongoing, but he added, “while we might be scared of what that means to our neighborhoods, they are positive, and we know that we can do them carefully.”

“I do understand concerns, I do understand that sometimes we have to make smaller steps forward, but we have to make a step forward,” Puy said earlier this month. “I’m not going to put it on the council agenda, until I know we are ready for it.”

City staff told BSL this week it’s possible the EHO proposal could be heard by the Salt Lake City Planning Commission in either May or June. The city council could hear the proposal by late July or early August. The council first must go through the city’s budget season, which is slated to begin in the coming weeks. 

SALT LAKERS WANT MORE OPTIONS

Bitton’s group, Wasatch Advocates for Livable Communities, is among the proponents of the EHO initiative. A Glendale resident and former chair of the Glendale Neighborhood Council, Bitton told BSL that in order to truly address the housing affordability crisis, the city has to make changes to these zones.

If the EHO initiative isn’t approved, Bitton said the question becomes what alternative solution could the city utilize to make housing more affordable. 

“We’re a built out city, we don’t have vast tracts of land that we can build on,” Bitton told BSL. “If we can’t do this, then what solutions are on the table?”

He cited a recent poll commissioned by his group, which found that 76% of respondents said Salt Lake City doesn’t have enough housing options to meet the needs of residents. In the same poll, 72% of respondents said the city government hasn’t done enough to create more housing, despite the numerous zoning code overhauls undertaken by the city in recent years. 

Bitton said Salt Lake City is running the risk of becoming like the Bay Area — where the only residents are either the super wealthy, or the lucky few who came in before housing prices became unattainable. He said data from other American cities — like Durham, Portland and Houston — shows it’s possible to bring families back to Salt Lake City and reverse the trend of increasing home prices. 

For skeptics of the proposal, Bitton said, “this is the most gentle possible way of addressing the housing affordability crisis and creating the homes that we need for our city to have a healthy economy and a healthy financial future.”

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