It’s no secret that Utah needs housing, and lots of it. There’s already a deficit squeezing prices and rents, and more housing is needed if the state hopes to keep up with the growth projections for the next 40 years.
Increasingly, growing cities are turning to innovative ways to encourage housing and commercial development — especially near existing transit hubs.
Utah calls them Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zones.
The idea is pretty simple: allow local governments to use a portion of local tax revenue to support the costs of development near transit stations. It’s a tool that has been available since the Legislature passed the Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zone Act in 2021.
“It's very much in its infancy, but we're happy with what we've got,” said South Jordan Director of Planning and Economic Development Brian Preece.
South Jordan has plans for around 4,500 housing units centered around its TRAX light rail station in the Daybreak neighborhood and the new Salt Lake Bees baseball stadium.
“They've got one residential apartment building going next to the stadium,” Preece said of the progress so far. “We're just getting started.”
The urgent need for housing isn’t just felt by people looking for homes. According to industry leaders, it's something cities across the state would be wise to seek creative solutions to.
“There's nothing that sort of wakes up a city more than understanding that they're not going to get a facility or a new big job creator because of the lack of affordable housing in their own municipality,” Ivory Homes CEO Clark Ivory told a crowd at the 2025 Ivory Prize Summit for housing innovation on Oct. 29. “I think it's going to be a competitive thing, actually a market force thing that's going to cause many, many more cities to finally get with it.”
To help give cities that competitive edge, HTRZs can provide an avenue to get housing projects off the ground.
Across I-15 from South Jordan in Sandy, that city’s transit-adjecent development was just approved in September. In that project, 1,480 housing units, a 217-room hotel, as well as office and commercial space will be built within a third of a mile of the nearest FrontRunner commuter train station.
The HTRZ model is something Sandy Economic Development Director Kasey Dunlavy thinks is especially attractive to local leaders looking to accomplish a multitude of goals in a tough financial market.
“Financing a lot of these projects, even multifamily, has been more difficult within the past year or two,” he said. “They see this as a tool in the toolbox to help accomplish and promote economic development. Particularly, it's a really good mechanism to help fund affordable housing opportunities.”
That next Sandy project, Dunlavy said, is expected to break ground next spring.
Both Dunlavy and Preece think it’s too early to tell what impact the upcoming 2034 Olympics could have on HTRZs and other efforts to build housing. However, Dunlavy said last year’s winter games announcement has been “spurring all sorts of economic development and transit opportunities.”
Even without the Olympic excitement, Utah is still staring down the barrel of a housing deficit that could be as high as 235,000 homes in the next three decades. While HTRZs can be an important tool, officials like Preece think they aren't a silver bullet for Utah’s housing woes.
“There's so many different great programs out there for affordable housing,” he said.“It's going to take many, many different approaches to even come close to solving this problem.”
For Preece, while the redevelopment zones are a plus, an overall healthy economy will do much more to build the housing the state needs.
