Blog

Significant Statistics | Rents in Salt Lake area expensive from a national perspective, but not among Mountain State peers

Written by: Christopher Collard

Utah Foundation’s 2020 Utah Priorities Project found that housing affordability is a top issue to Utah voters. Previous Utah Foundation research indicated that housing affordability was of much greater concern among renters than homeowners.  While the increasing cost of owning a home is potentially offset by record low interest rates, there is no such offset for renters. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development uses a national survey to calculate the Fair Market Rent, … Continued

Significant Statistics | Priorities survey reveals divergent housing affordability concerns by age, political viewpoint, ethnicity

Written by: Christopher Collard

Utah Foundation had asked about housing prices in its 2008, 2010 and 2012 Utah Priorities Project surveys but housing had never been one of the top 10 issues. However, housing affordability was the second most important issue to Utah voters in early 2020. With the emergence of the coronavirus, concerns about housing affordability dropped to 7th – with just under one-third of Utahns ranking it in the top 5. (See Figure 1.) Interestingly, housing affordability … Continued

Utah Thrives Podcast | Connecting Teleworking and Air Quality in Utah

Written by: Peter Reichard

In April 2020, Utah Foundation released a report, Work Away from Work: The Challenges and Promise of Teleworking, on remote work. It provided an overview of the potential benefits and pitfalls of the massive experiment in teleworking prompted by the pandemic. In January 2021, Utah Foundation released a followup report, The Way Home: The Shift to Telework and its Air Quality Ramifications. The report focuses on how remote work relates to future growth, traffic and air … Continued

Op-Ed: Can the telework revolution improve traffic and air quality in Utah?

Written by: Peter Reichard

Every couple of decades, the trajectory of modern history pivots on game-changing innovations: the rise of trains, planes and automobiles; the invention of the light bulb; the birth of television; the emergence of the PC; the dawn of the internet. We are due for another pivot, and it may have arrived in the form of a remote revolution. With the lockdowns of 2020, the worldwide embrace of telehealth, e-commerce, telemeetings, online education and telework suddenly … Continued

Op ed: Development tax breaks need oversight

Written by: Peter Reichard

It looked like a stroke of genius. Back in the 1950s, California officials, looking to fund economic development projects under tight budget constraints, created a mechanism known as tax increment financing, or TIF. The idea was to pledge new (or incremental) tax revenue generated from a project to make the project itself possible. It would be a clean win for the public, because the only money to be spent would be money that would not … Continued

Utah Thrives Podcast | Homeless in Salt Lake

Written by: Peter Reichard

In November, Utah Foundation held a Breakfast Briefing on the topic of homelessness, sponsored by the University of Utah’s College of Social and Behavioral Science. Our panel of experts featured: Tricia Davis, of the Utah Homelessness Programs Office Utah Representative Eric Hutchings Dr. Jeff Rose, of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism at the University of Utah Dr. Jesús N. Valero, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Utah The … Continued

Policy Savant Panel — UtahPolicy.com: Is now the time to bond for infrastructure?

Written by: Peter Reichard

Interest rates are at historic lows, Utah’s AAA bond rating is still going strong, and we have significant bonding capacity, even within the state’s tight statutory and constitutional constraints. Under normal circumstances, these factors alone would make this an advantageous time to consider a bonding program for infrastructure. But with Utah and its local governments exploring options for economic stimulus, a strong case can be made for focusing efforts on infrastructure. Investments in infrastructure protect … Continued

Op-ed: Follow the facts, not the drama, and focus on Utah

Written by: Peter Reichard

Back when I attended journalism school in the early 1990s, we were frequently exhorted to “find the drama” in whatever we were covering. Drama sold papers, and if you wanted your precious byline on the exalted front page, you needed to write stories that elevated conflict and emotion. Even in my youthful ambition, I felt vaguely uneasy with this approach, seeing at times that journalists were exploiting their subjects, their audience or both. Cloaking the … Continued

Policy Savant Panel — UtahPolicy.com: Education Spending

Written by: Peter Reichard

Last year, Utah Foundation published a report called Making the Grade? K-12 Outcomes and Spending in Utah, which wrestled with this question. The report found that, while Utah spends far less per pupil than peer states with student profiles similar to Utah’s, it performs respectably in terms of outcomes. And while higher-spending states tend to outperform the rest of the states, Utah outperforms higher-spending states collectively on several measures. In short, higher spending has only … Continued