Wednesday, April 20, 2022
Salty Growth
Posted By Babs De Lay on April 20, 2022, 4:00 AM
As many of us try to pray for, dance a ritual dance, send good vibes to, or generally hope that we get enough moisture to bring the Great Salt Lake up to levels enough to keep our air breathable this summer, the drought looms on. Predictions from Utah's Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute find that we'll add another 2.2 million people to the state's population by 2060, and that doesn't look good for our big salty puddle or upcoming salty neighbors.
Where's the housing coming from for all these new Utahns? I like to discuss the housing crisis with folks in just the capital city by having them take a mental flyover of our new airport in Salt Lake City.
The airport isn't complete—it's a little more than halfway to its final completion in the next two years. Next door to that is 32 buildings getting ready to open, known as the new Utah State Prison. West of that is a ginormous Amazon Fulfillment Center, and west of that distribution center is where the Utah Inland Port is sketched out to be built. When all this construction is complete, there will be tens of thousands of workers in those four facilities, many of whom will drive cars to and from work.
Most people want to live close to their work or have a reasonable commute to and from. If you work out by the airport you're going to want to live in Rose Park, Fairpark, Westpointe, Glendale, Poplar Grove, West Valley or Magna. Hell, Tooele is only 30 miles from the airport, but as of Easter weekend, there were only 39 properties for sale in Tooele, two in Erda and nine in Grantsville (in all price ranges) and a total of 740 properties for sale of all kinds, in all price ranges, in Salt Lake County.
Those numbers don't even start to make a dent in the demand for housing right now, let alone what we'll need in the future. The Gardner Institute predicts that between 30,000 and 40,000 people are going to move to Utah each year through 2030, with the state reaching a population of 5.5 million residents by 2060. All our new neighbors will need a place to live, to call home.
Although we don't get our drinking water from the Great Salt Lake, we rely on it for our snowpack (lake effect snow) and to actually help our snowpack melt slower. The brine shrimp industry brings in $70-100 million and mining/mineral extraction brings over $1 billion in annual revenue to our state. There are tens of millions of birds who use the lake for spring and fall migration.
We don't build homes near the shoreline because the water levels rise and fall unpredictably. And since we're not building any more land in this state we've got to plan to not just protect our natural environment from this growth, but to design housing that will accommodate the new masses.
About The Author
Babs De Lay
A full-time broker/owner of Urban Utah Homes and Estates, Babs De Lay serves on the Salt Lake City Historic Landmark Commission. A writer and golfer, you'll find them working as a staff guardian at the Temple at Burning Man each year.
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