The anti-density Yalecrest neighborhood has as many historic districts as the rest of Salt Lake City combined.
Small Lake City
By Bryant Heath
If you are a tenant renting an apartment or a prospective home buyer, you don't have to be reminded that housing costs in Salt Lake City have been out of control the last few years.
The internet is littered with think-pieces espousing the various reasons for why that is the case and odds are, if you are a property owner, there is someone, somewhere who thinks you are the problem.
That's why finding a solution to this affordability crisis is so difficult. There isn't a singular bogeyman that can be slain by a golden-bullet solution, but rather a series of smaller issues that need to be addressed, collectively, to have any real impact.
Prime examples of recent small-scale solutions are the city lifting restrictions on accessory dwelling units (ADUs) and legalizing 4-plexes in residential zones.
Although not as dramatic as a downtown tower adding 400-plus units in one go, these changes to add gentle density in existing neighborhoods do make a difference. Every tenant in a newly-created ADU in Highland Park is one less person competing for existing housing stock, after all.
But for every action, there is an opposite reaction. And for folks living in predominantly wealthy eastside enclaves, the pushback has been—to put it nicely—creative.
The current weapon of choice is hijacking the historical preservation process to popularize "historic district overlays." These overlays demotivate anyone who may be interested in converting their property into a 4-plex or in adding an ADU, by implementing a series of additional, burdensome requirements for renovations and new constructions.
The most extreme example of this strategy being employed can be found in Yalecrest, where it is borderline self-parody: there are as many historical districts designated in this tiny neighborhood (8) than there are in the rest of the city combined.
Furthermore, these districts are housed within another regulatory area called the "Yalecrest Compatible Infill Overlay"—cue the Xzibit meme: "Yo dawg, I heard you like historic districts ..."
What's astonishing, though, is the justification these neighborhoods are now using for restricting housing supply this way, boldly arguing that historic preservation helps with housing affordability—something that academic literature has consistently and emphatically debunked.
If only we could build houses out of red-tape, we'd have plenty of places to live in neighborhoods like Yalecrest—barring approval from the historic landmark commission, of course.
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