Affordability was the buzzword leading up to Utah’s 2026 legislative session. Now, lawmakers are taking their first big swings when it comes to affordable housing.
To get Utah’s housing shortage under control, lawmakers are entertaining everything from zoning reform to how projects are financed.
On the funding front, Senate President Stuart Adams asked the Economic and Community Development Appropriations Subcommittee on Feb. 4 for a $10 million expansion of the state’s first-time homebuyer program. Established in 2023, it helps first-time buyers come up with the money for a down payment.
“Everywhere I go, Utahns tell me the same thing: they want to stay in Utah, raise their families here and own a home; but it feels out of reach,” he wrote on social media after the meeting. “The prospect of home ownership in Utah should be more than a dream; we are working to make it a reality for more people to put down roots in the communities they love.”
The ultimate fate of Adams’ request for funds will be determined when the Legislature passes the state budget by the end of the regular session on March 6.
Despite lawmakers’ enthusiasm, local leaders aren’t wild about all of the changes.
HB184 would allow homes to be built on smaller lot sizes in zones where they aren’t already permitted. Republican House sponsor Ray Ward thinks that for Utah to make a dent in its housing crisis, “we need to consider some larger-scale things if we're ever going to address the problem.”
“To me, it's become clear that overall, the way that we do this permitting and zoning has slowly added to the cost,” he told colleagues during a Feb. 9 committee hearing. “I think it's added to the expense, it's added to the length of time it takes and worse than any of that is that that process often makes it just flat out impossible for a small home or a less expensive home to be built according to the zoning process that we've set up.”
Utah leaders like Gov. Spencer Cox have floated the possibility of statewide zoning changes in the past.
“I don't want to go the preemption route,” Cox told reporters at an October 2025 Ivory Innovations housing summit. “But I would be lying if I said it wasn't on the table.”
That strategy is something the Utah League of Cities and Towns, which represents 257 municipalities across the state, says it cannot support. The organization, along with several local elected leaders, opposed the bill.
“Zoning matters deeply because zoning is how we plan for infrastructure and how we plan for services, and to ignore that important process gets us to a problem where we find ourselves today,” said Bountiful Mayor Kate Bradshaw, who also serves as the league’s president.
Additionally, Executive Director Cameron Diehl said that lawmakers dictating local housing policy is unacceptable.
“We want partnership, not preemption,” he said. “It basically ignores the planning and zoning that a city has gone through and basically would be the state creating this preferred land use that then would allow for one particular property owner to go against what the zoning and the general plan and what the infrastructure plans and all those other pieces have put into place.”
Because of those concerns, the committee held Ward’s bill to continue working on it
Another bill that appears to have momentum is HB68, which would make it easier for cities and towns to borrow money from the state to build infrastructure projects like electrical lines, sewer and water to vacant areas where housing could be built. Lawmakers say that could help new homes get built faster and cheaper.
Sponsor Rep. Calvin Roberts has Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore as his co-sponsor. House Leadership is also enthusiastic about the idea.
“We really feel like this is a great step forward, honestly, in moving to unlocking to build more starter homes all across the state,” Speaker of the House Mike Schultz told reporters on Feb. 5. “That'll be a big one. That's one of our big pushes this year.”
For municipal advocates like Diehl, he said his organization will fully support any help with funding infrastructure.
“If we bring these state infrastructure dollars to the table, that brings down some of the cost of building, because the state's providing that money through a low-interest loan.”
The important part is ensuring that those cost savings are passed on to the homebuyer.
Currently, Roberts’ infrastructure funding bill has yet to have a committee hearing, but with leadership in both chambers onboard, it could move quickly.
