Emily and Phillip Ross have lived in Heber City for three years. Already, they’re certain they want to spend the rest of their lives there. 

“Heber is just perfect. All the parks, the access to the lakes, the camping, hunting, golf, especially, and all the things we have going on in the city center area and city park is just phenomenal,” Phillip said. “We just love it.”

The couple lived in Provo but dreamed of moving to Heber City. They were able to move into an apartment but thought they would be “forever renters,” given the local home prices. 

The Rosses recently put themselves on a track to homeownership through Utah Housing Corporation’s Credits to Own, or CROWN, program. 

CROWN allows qualifying tenants to rent units owned by Utah Housing Corporation for 15 years. After that period, the tenants can buy the home for less than market rate. 

The Utah Housing Corporation on Tuesday celebrated the ribbon-cutting of six new four-bedroom, two-bathroom CROWN townhomes in Heber City. 

Emily and Phillip will pay a little under $1,800 per month. Most of the townhomes of a similar size they had looked at in Heber City were around $2,500 per month.

“You’re not home, poor. You’re able to still live and function because, when you have to pay those astronomical rents or mortgages, you’re eating ramen noodles every day,” Emily said. “Plus, it gives you 15 years to really focus on your credit and your budgeting.”

The tenants of these six townhomes will be able to purchase their home in 2041 for around $300,000, according to CROWN program manager Scott Harmon.

“(When) you think how prices keep going up, $300,000 would be affordable today, but it would be really affordable in 15 years,” he said.

CROWN is available to tenants making 55% of the area median income, which is about $75,000 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

Much of the funding for these townhomes came from Bank of Utah, which purchased federal low-income housing tax credits from Utah Housing Corporation for about $2.1 million to cover most of the construction costs, Harmon explained. The rest will be repaid by the tenant’s rent.

Utah Housing Corporation has run CROWN since 1993 and built over 500 homes in the program throughout the state. About 75% of tenants purchase their homes after 15 years, according to Harmon. 

As program manager, Harmon has heard plenty of success stories from tenants. For example, a woman was living in her car before renting and eventually bought her home through the CROWN program.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Harmon said. “This is an opportunity for the missing middle, for the people who can’t afford to purchase a home any other way.”

Utah Housing Corporation hopes to build another six CROWN townhomes in Heber City in a few years, Harmon said. The first CROWN homes in Wasatch County were the six Wheeler Park townhomes near the Heber Valley Airport. Those hit the 15-year mark about two years ago, and all six tenants bought their homes for around $110,000, according to Emily, who was the property manager.

She’s also the property manager for three other affordable housing communities in Heber City: Elmbridge Apartments and the Prestige I and II senior apartments.

“What we need here in Heber is more affordable housing, especially for senior citizens, in my opinion, because my wait lists are quite long. Two years long,” she said. 

That’s why Mountainlands Community Housing Trust donated the six lots for the CROWN townhomes to Utah Housing Corporation. They’re part of the 49-lot Parkview Place subdivision that Mountainlands Community Housing Trust established in 2017. There are now 18 lots left.

Executive Director Jason Glidden said Mountainlands Community Housing Trust’s vision for the subdivision was a variety of affordable housing types to meet Heber City residents’ diverse needs.

Other lots have been donated to Self-Help Homes, which allows residents to build their own homes for a lower purchase price, and to the Wasatch County School District to continue its student-run homebuilding program, which houses school district employees.

“Having housing for the local workforce is such an important piece of the community. It helps to build the community, sustain the community, not only just by having folks here long-term and full-time, but also economically,” Glidden said. “I think that the more and more we can continue to provide these opportunities, the better off we’re going to be.”

The post New rent-to-own homes unveiled in Heber City appeared first on Park Record.

Russ Watts has sought a development agreement with Heber City for his affordable housing community for three years. Now, it will finally be drafted after overcoming a parking problem he said could have destroyed the project’s viability.

Watts, who lives in Midway, came up with the idea in 2022 after realizing just how many of his employees at Watts Enterprises commute to Wasatch County because they cannot afford to live there. 

The community will be called Celebration Housing, in part because securing housing for the county’s essential employees will be well worth celebrating.

“We respect and appreciate all the different entities that provide services for our community,” Watts said. “So, I think our No. 1 celebration will be (that) we now can say that we can accommodate housing for anyone who wants to live in the valley, work here and enjoy the social community here.”

Celebration Housing will include 148 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments on 8.75 acres next to Wasatch High School. Watts hopes to add more units in the future, but the details have not been worked out, and Heber City has only approved the first phase.

The 148 apartments will be affordable to tenants making 40 to 80% of the area median income, which is between $54,000 and $109,000 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

Half of the units will be affordable to residents earning 80% AMI; 59 units will be affordable to those at 65% AMI; and 15 units will be affordable to those at 40% AMI. 

Mountainlands Community Housing Trust will deed-restrict the units to ensure they remain affordable in perpetuity. 

Celebration Housing will not include any market rate units, as was originally planned, because of loan requirements by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The first 148 apartments will cost $43 million. Watts Enterprises expects a return on investment of around 6%.

In addition to Watts’ company, the project has several financial contributors, including the Hicken family, who donated 4.25 acres for the first phase; the Wasatch County Housing Authority, which is investing $750,000; and Heber City, which agreed in December to defer Celebration Housing’s $3.2 million in impact fees for up to 12 years. 

Impact fees are one-time fees on new development. Watts will pay back these impact fees at 4% interest. The details of the deferment will be finalized in his development agreement with Heber City.

The development agreement can now be drafted because the City Council has agreed to apply a less stringent parking code to the development. 

City code typically requires multi-family dwellings to have two parking spaces per unit, or 296 parking spaces in Celebration Housing’s case. The City Council on July 7 agreed to apply its downtown parking code, which instead determines the required number of parking spaces based on the number of bedrooms. That means Watts needs 266 parking spaces for the first phase of the project.

Finding room for parking without reducing the number of units has been one of the greatest challenges of the development, Watts said, especially when factoring in future phases.

City community development director Tony Kohler proposed reducing parking for Celebration Housing because the plan can always be tweaked in future phases if there’s a need.

He added that the development is close to potential employers like the high school, Heber Valley Hospital and Walmart, meaning some tenants may choose to walk, bike or use High Valley Transit instead of driving every day.

Watts hopes to partner with the Wasatch County School District to add the required parking for an eventual full buildout of Celebration Housing.

In a March school board meeting, he pitched the idea of installing nearly 180 parking spaces on school district property and splitting their use between the school district and the affordable housing community,

The school board declined to take the matter to a vote. Board members had concerns about mixing public money with private industry and raised questions about whether employees would settle for renting instead of owning.

Watts is still hopeful he can convince the school board to partner on parking in the future, potentially by adding owner-occupied housing in future phases.

The City Council will formally approve or deny the Celebration Housing development agreement after it is finalized within the next 90 days.

After that, Watts will secure loans with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. But first, the economy will have to go “back to normality,” as he put it. He said interest rates would be over 6% if he took out his loans today; he needs them to be closer to 5% for Celebration Housing to be fiscally feasible.

Watts hopes to begin construction on the first phase of Celebration Housing in the spring of 2028.

The post Heber City affordable housing community now on track for 2028 construction appeared first on Park Record.

Developer Vincent Criscione says he believes in both sustainability and affordable housing. His proposed project has both.

Criscione, the owner of Crisco Development LLC, wants to build a mix of affordable and market-rate housing units at 2400 W. Rasmussen Road. The development — which would have commercial space, including a daycare — would be sustainably built and operated and all electric under his plan.

In a presentation to the Summit County Housing Authority on June 15, Criscione described the 23-acre site as beautiful and pristine, with a Basin Recreation trailhead and trail along the creek and a view of the mountains.

“It’s such a great location for any housing to have that be your backdrop,” he said.

Criscione, who developed Lincoln Station Apartments at 670 Bitner Road in Park City, asked the board for feedback on his proposal. He is seeking a letter of support for the project before going to the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission with a rezoning request and then eventually to the Summit County Council.

Board members said they want more details about the project before making a decision on a recommendation.

The proposal calls for 108 affordable and market-rate apartments for rent on 6 acres on the east side of the property. The nine studios, 45 one-bedroom units and 54 two-bedroom units would be in three buildings. A clubhouse, a gym, 293 parking stalls and the 10,000-square-foot Mountain Sprouts Children’s Center would be on this part of the site.

The number of apartments that would be affordable has not been determined yet.

A 5-acre parcel on the west side of the project site would have 60 condominiums in five buildings and 124 parking stalls. The two-bedroom units would be available for sale for approximately $400,000 to buyers who make no more than 80% of Summit County’s average median income.  

The east side amenities would support the west side, which would be developed first.

The development site is on the north side of I-80 between Summit Self Storage and RV Resort above East Canyon Creek. Kimball Junction with all of its services — a grocery, gas station, post office, shopping restaurants and a transit center, among others — is 1 mile away. An I-80 overpass is a half mile away and Whole Foods and Walmart are a six-minute bike ride away.

Residents would be close to everything they need, which makes the location a good place for higher density affordable housing and reduces driving and greenhouse gases, Criscione said.

Criscione, who has lived in the Park City area for 30 years, is working with three affordable housing programs to help with the project, including one that provides assistance with down payments. He likely needs to begin construction of the development next spring because one of the programs sunsets in a few years, he said.

“I have to get things through in a very expeditious manner,” Criscione said.

There have been at least two previous plans to build a mixed-use project at the site but they did not come to fruition.

The post Developer proposes affordable and sustainable housing project in a ‘beautiful’ location appeared first on Park Record.

The Heber City Council is getting schooled on affordable housing in a series of informative presentations that began on May 19. 

The City Council’s professor is Jason Glidden, executive director of Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, who has put together a curriculum including lessons ranging from state legislation to federal funding tools. 

The nine lessons will be taught at City Council meetings about once per month through January 2027 by instructors from the governor’s office, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, the Utah Housing Corporation, development companies and more.

The City Council established an “Affordable Housing 101” as a top priority for 2026 during its annual retreat in January. The goal of the course is to give the City Council knowledge to facilitate more effective discussions around affordable housing. 

The city will also be completing a housing needs assessment — which might also include Midway and the county — taking stock of population growth, the number of workforce members who are commuting and how many families are cost burdened.

“Add(ing) those three together is really how your needs are going to be determined,” Glidden explained. 

That data will help determine how many affordable housing units the city needs at certain percentages of the area median income, or AMI. The AMI for a family of four in Wasatch County is $136,200. The federal government considers affordable housing to be affordable to a household making 80% AMI or less, Glidden explained.

In general, no more than 30% of a household’s income should be spent on housing, Glidden said.

The final project, so to speak, will be identifying the city’s goals around affordable housing and creating a strategic housing plan detailing ways to reach those goals.

For the City Council’s first lesson, Glidden provided background on Utah’s affordable housing shortage.

He said it all goes back to population growth.

Utah has grown from a population of nearly 2.8 million in 2010 to over 3.5 million in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development refers to Utah as the fastest-growing state in the nation “for the past two-plus decades.”

“This was forced by a really healthy job market, obviously, a beautiful place to live, high quality of life, and so we saw a pretty large population growth going all the way back to the early 2000s and even before that,” Glidden said. 

The population growth and increased housing demand drove up housing prices and filled out much of the land left to build, Glidden explained, leading municipalities to become more restrictive around zoning and land use policy.

“Their zoning really restricted the ability to build affordable,” he said. “It promoted a lot of these larger lots and larger homes that were not necessarily affordable and prevented a lot of … density in areas that really needed it.”

Shellie Barrus, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Summit and Wasatch Counties, said in February that Heber City’s restrictive zoning requirements were a major reason the nonprofit had been unable to build a home in its latter area of service in the past decade. 

Heber City has, however, made strides around zoning and density, the most notable being the adoption of the downtown Central Heber Overlay Zone last September. The zone allows for the development of small lots of underutilized land and allows property owners to build additional residential units on their properties.

Glidden said community members’ concerns about the density of affordable housing developments stonewall many projects.

This could be seen in the City Council’s negotiations with Garbett Homes in late 2025 and early this year. The developer initially proposed a community of 40 townhomes with five units priced at 80% AMI, but the affordable townhomes were eventually removed from the plan as neighbors raised concerns around density and the City Council whittled down the number of units, necessitating the developer to raise the price of each individual unit to cover development costs. 

And those development costs, Glidden said, are an important factor in the equation. He said “everything across the board,” from costs of labor and materials to interest rates, has increased. 

That includes impact fees, one-time fees levied by the city on new developments. Heber City increased its impact fees in February. According to city engineer Russ Funk, a developer now pays over $19,000 in impact fees per residential unit built, while they previously paid under $14,000.

Land, too, has become more expensive as it has become scarcer in Heber City.

“We’ve done an amazing job in this area of protecting open space, which is extremely important and really helps to preserve a lot of the character of this area and provide great recreational opportunities for everybody,” Glidden said. “At the same time, that reduced the amount of buildable space that we actually had.”

The final piece of the puzzle of why Heber City and the Wasatch Back as a whole have a housing shortage is changing demographics.

According to data from Mountainlands Community Housing Trust, Wasatch Back households making $75,000 or less annually have decreased by 17% since 2010, while households making $200,000 or more annually have increased by a whopping 291%.

“Folks that are not making that amount of money get driven out of the area,” Glidden said. 

While total employment in the Wasatch Back has increased 46% since 2010, commuters account for 70% of that growth, Glidden said.

As the income of the average homebuyer in the Wasatch Back has increased, so has the AMI and the price of homes in the area. The market demand in the Wasatch Back is for luxury housing, not entry-level housing, Glidden said.

“I think the largest reason (Utah has an affordable housing shortage) is that we started to build too big, to be honest with you,” Glidden said. “We got away from building affordable units.”

City Councilor Mike Johnston agreed.

“We sure did. I mean, you look at what your grandparents lived in, and parents, and then me?” he said. “My kids have gone backwards. They live in basement apartments now.” 

The next “Affordable Housing 101” lesson will be about financial modeling, or how a developer makes an affordable housing project pencil. That lesson will be taught by Glidden as well as Ryan Davis, an affordable housing consultant with Wayfinder Strategies, and Tony Tyler from Wasatch Back development company Columbus Pacific. The lesson will likely be during the June 16 City Council meeting.

The post Heber City Council’s ‘Affordable Housing 101’ asks why Utah has a shortage appeared first on Park Record.

In its 25 years of operation, Kentucky-based developer Völker has built over 60 affordable housing communities across 12 states. One of its most recent developments, Blossom Commons in Westminster, Colorado, broke ground this month, offering 50 affordable apartment units to seniors.

Now, Völker is eyeing Heber City for a similar project. 

Managing Director of Development Lauren Schevets approached the Heber City Council on Tuesday with an initial pitch: a community of 25 one-bedroom and 25 two-bedroom apartments for individuals and couples 62 and older. The project would cost $22 million.

“Seniors are facing a gap. It’s too expensive to remain in or downsize within market-rate housing, and there’s limited dedicated senior independent living options locally,” Schevets said. “The combination of rapid growth, high housing costs and an aging population is creating a clear and increased need for attainable senior housing options in both Heber and Wasatch County.”

The apartments would be affordable to those earning between 20% and 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI), which is between $23,600 and $94,400 for an individual in Wasatch County. Schevets said rent would be approximately 30% of the individual or couple’s income and that residents would sign one-year leases.

The catch: Heber City’s support of the project. Negotiations about what a partnership could look like have not yet occurred, but it could entail the city assisting Völker in navigating zoning and land entitlements or pitching in financially.

Most immediately, Völker is requesting that Heber City send a non-binding letter of support of the project to the Utah Housing Corporation by the end of May. The following month, Völker will apply for the Utah Housing Corporation’s competitive 9% tax credit, a subsidy awarded annually to select low-income housing developments.

All five members of the City Council were supportive of Völker’s plans to develop an affordable housing community for seniors but agreed that the proposed location was “questionable,” as Councilor Sid Ostergaard put it.

Völker’s plan was to purchase a plot of land at the corner of Heber Parkway and U.S. 40. Schevets pointed out that the site is within walking distance of Heber Valley Hospital and within a mile of several grocery stores and the Wasatch County Senior Center.

But Councilor Mike Johnston pointed out that the hospital would be on the opposite side of U.S. 40 as the housing development, and that U.S. 40 is “impossible” to cross on foot at that intersection because there are no crosswalks or traffic lights.

Councilor Yvonne Barney also criticized the site’s proximity to a busy intersection.

“There’s a lot of safety issues. I’m elderly, so I think I can definitely speak to some of those concerns,” she said.

The City Council declined to write a letter of support for the development but agreed to meet with Schevets next week to discuss alternate sites for the project. Johnston said that he had already found five vacant plots in the surrounding area that may be more suitable.

Schevets acknowledged that identifying a new site and working through conceptual planning before June would be “a challenge,” but she said she was open to work with the City Council.

All members of the City Council hope to come to a consensus with Völker.

“We really need this kind of thing. You’re talking 20% of AMI for an older person. I know those people, and they’re desperate to have a place,” Johnston said. “We absolutely don’t have that, unless someone is kind and lets them stay in their basement apartment for a significantly reduced amount.”

The post Affordable housing development for seniors may come to Heber City appeared first on Park Record.

Hunter and Seneca Price put blood, sweat and tears into building their Heber City home in a very literal sense. 

The couple participated in the latest round of Self-Help Homes, a statewide affordable housing program that allows participants to save an average of $70,000 on their homes by applying for Section 502 loans through USDA Rural Development. The loans subsidize interest rates as low as 1% to assist low-income applicants in obtaining housing.

The catch? Participants in Self-Help Homes build their new houses themselves with the guidance of a construction supervisor. The program requires 35 hours of construction per family per week. All families in a group help build everyone’s homes collectively, with the occasional help of volunteers. 

The group of 10 families, including the Prices, celebrated the completion of their homes near Wasatch High School last Thursday. 

Between the Price couple, Hunter produced the bulk of the sweat. An electrician with a construction background, he clocked the majority of construction hours for his family.

He shared an equal amount of tears with Seneca. His were more so because of how “physically taxing” the experience was. Seneca’s were because of the separation. 

“For the last eight months, she’s been a single mom,” Hunter said.

The couple previously lived in Springville and chose to move to Heber City because they wanted to be surrounded by nature. Six days a week since August, Hunter would endure the 45-minute commute to Heber City to participate in construction.

“He gets up before the kids are awake. He comes home after they’re in bed. They see their dad on Sundays, and that was it for months,” Seneca said.

The sweat and tears are expected from any Self-Help Homes program participant. The blood is a whole other story.

“I sliced my leg open with a skill saw and had to get 17 stitches,” Hunter said. “I knew it wasn’t a life-threatening issue because I wasn’t, like, spraying blood or anything.”

He was kneeling on the ground, framing the back deck of his future home, when he accidentally cut himself. He immediately called another family in the program, who were working just down the street, and asked them to take him to urgent care. It was quite the experience to have with a future neighbor. The family even lent Hunter a pair of pants to replace the bloodstained ones.

Despite the blood, sweat and tears, Hunter and Seneca agreed that the program was worth it.

Jeremy Phelps, the lead construction supervisor on Self-Help Homes’ Heber City projects, said Hunter’s injury was definitely “one of the more gnarly ones” he’s seen during the program. 

In the case that a participant is injured on the job site, Self-Help Homes has an insurance policy in place that allows the nonprofit to cover 100% of costs if the participant does not have insurance. If the participant does have insurance, the nonprofit will pay for anything their provider will not cover.

Avoiding injury is one reason Self-Help Homes has contractors handle the plumbing, electrical, HVAC and drywall installation on homes. 

Usually, the contractors have no trouble staying ahead of the Self-Help Homes group in the construction process, but this group of families was so hardworking that they consistently caught up with the contractors.

“Ten homes in seven months is really, really good. Only a few groups have done that,” Phelps said, adding that he thought they could have finished in six months if the contractors had worked faster.

Self-Help Homes has built 143 homes in Heber City since 2010. Another 12 will begin construction in the next few months. When they’re built, the Wasatch Vista subdivision of 120 lots near Wasatch High School will be complete. 

After that, Self-Help Homes will shift its focus to 17 acres of land near Southfield Road, where it is currently installing infrastructure to develop 44 additional homes.

The participants in the latest group — which is the 80th since Self-Help Homes’ founding in 2000 — totaled 13,451 hours of construction altogether, or more than 560 days collectively. Between them, the 10 families are raising 25 children in Heber City. Six of the 10 families hail from the area and participated in the program to afford to continue living there.

DJ and McKeil Mahoney were raised in Heber City and can now raise their daughter, Cameron, there. 

The Mahoneys first applied to Self-Help homes five years ago.

Applying families must be at or below 80% of the area media income to qualify, which is $104,200 annually for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

DJ works in IT, and McKeil is a massage therapist. When the couple first applied for Self-Help Homes, the upper income limit for a family of three was around $84,000. DJ made around $72,000, so McKeil had to quit her job for her family to qualify.

To save money as they waited for the opportunity to build a home, the Mahoneys moved from Saratoga Springs into a basement apartment in McKeil’s parents’ home in Heber City around two years ago.

McKeil’s father is Heber City Councilor Sid Ostergaard. He said the fact that his daughter had to quit her job, move in with her parents and build a home from the ground up demonstrates the extreme affordable housing challenges in Heber City.

“That’s a big thing that everybody needs to understand. It’s hard to be qualified for something like this. And what they did is what has to happen. … They were fortunate enough to be able to stay with us,” Ostergaard said. “Not a lot of people have that option.” 

Ostergaard has six children in total. Three have moved out of the county.

“Who knows if they can move back? They can’t afford it,” he said.

Ostergaard is a board member of the Wasatch County Housing Authority. Facilitating affordable housing in Heber City was one of the reasons he ran for the city council.

The Heber City Council’s next effort to address the issue will be an “Affordable Housing 101” program organized by Jason Glidden, executive director of Mountainlands Community Housing Trust. 

A date has not yet been set for the program, which will allow Heber City officials and the public to tour affordable housing communities, like the public-private Park City development EngineHouse. It will also connect members of the city council with affordable housing developers, including Brad Bishop, executive director of Self-Help Homes, to better understand the challenges and needs of developers in Heber City.

“We’re bringing in developers to say, ‘This is what I actually need to get this done. If you really want this, this is what needs to happen,’” Ostergaard said. “Hopefully, it’ll educate us and open our eyes.”

In the meantime, Self-Help Homes will continue to facilitate homeownership in Heber City.

The organization’s lasting legacy in the valley was best represented on Thursday by a quilt woven by former participant Deonn Stott. She and her husband, Evan, participated in the program five years ago and live just a few blocks from the latest families to join their neighborhood.

Deonn finished the quilt in February. It depicts her and Evan in the style of “American Gothic,” holding carpentry equipment in front of their home. Miniature versions of the other nine homes that were built as part of their group dot the edges of the blanket.

Deonn finished the five-year quilting project ahead of the unveiling of the latest group of homes to honor her friend, McKeil. 

Deonn and McKeil gave the same reasoning for their participation in Self-Help Homes: There was no other option.

The post Self-Help Homes strives to fix up affordable housing challenges in Heber City appeared first on Park Record.

Russ Watts has owned and operated development company Watts Enterprises in Midway for 25 years. It wasn’t until he and several other contractors in the city performed an internal survey of their subcontractors and builders in 2022 that Watts realized just how many people were commuting in and out of the valley every day. Forty percent of respondents said they commuted because they couldn’t afford Wasatch County’s cost of living.

That survey inspired Watts’ Celebration Workforce Housing community, which aims to build a 142-unit apartment community in Heber City set aside for essential employees, including first responders, hospital staff, city and county employees and teachers.

Watts considers teachers “priority responders.” That’s why he’s prepared to reserve 50 units for Wasatch County School District employees. However, that comes with an ask: that the school district lease some of its property to Watts Development to build 178 parking stalls on. 

The Celebration Workforce Housing community would be located next to Wasatch High School. The project sprang from Watts’ conversations with Addison Hicken, whose family owns a large amount of land near the school.

Hicken had sold property in Heber City to Watts Enterprises before, land on which the developer built 116 condominium units in 2007. Twenty percent of those units were set aside for members of the local workforce and deed-restricted through the Wasatch County Housing Authority, which also covered down payments for the units’ buyers. Some of Hicken’s children bought units on the development, further cementing the relationship between the family and Watts.

As Watts and Hicken discussed affordability in the Heber Valley over a decade later, they came up with an idea for a workforce housing community. In 2022, Hicken donated 8.5 acres near the high school to Watts Enterprise to build just that.

The Celebration Workforce Housing project would build 142 one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments on about half of the donated land. Further phases would construct additional housing, the details of which Watts is still working out. Heber City has only approved construction of the first phase at this time.

Half of the units would be priced at market rate. Forty percent would be affordable to those making 65% of the area median income (AMI), which is $109,590 for a family of four in Wasatch County. Ten percent would be affordable to those making 40% AMI, which is $67,440 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

The community would be deed-restricted through Mountainlands Community Housing Trust.

The project has garnered financial support from the Wasatch Housing Authority, which is investing $750,000.

The Heber City Council has also invested in the project by voting to defer the project’s impact fees — one-time fees on new development — in December. While the agreement still needs to be finalized, Watts requested that about $3.1 million in impact fees be deferred up to 12 years, paid back at a 4% interest rate.

Watts told the Wasatch County School Board on Tuesday that the school district’s participation in a shared parking agreement is also essential for the housing development to work.

Watts has 366 parking stalls planned on his own site, but is looking to install 178 on school district property so he does not have to remove any apartments to accommodate more parking on his land. 

The total 544 parking stalls represents the parking needed for the complete buildout of the Celebration Workforce Housing Community, not just phase one of development.

The parking stalls would be shared by the school district, which would use them during the day, and the Celebration Workforce Housing Community, which would use them in the evening. 

Watts Enterprises would pay for and install the parking spaces, evenly splitting maintenance costs with the school district. Maintenance would include coating, striping and repair as necessary. 

The current school board members had mixed reactions to the proposal. 

School Board President Kim Dickerson wasn’t sure the school district needed additional parking stalls. District Business Administrator Jason Watt said they would most likely be used for events.

Board member Breanne Dedrickson was concerned that an agreement would use “public money to benefit private industry.” Dickerson agreed.

Dedrickson asked what would become of the project if the school board did not enter into the parking agreement.

“We won’t do the project. We’ll just tell the Hicken family, ‘Let’s walk away.’ … The Hickens would sell the property,” Watts said. “You’re a critical component. The city is critical. All the parties are critical. It just doesn’t pencil without (their support).”

The first 142 apartments will cost $43 million. Watts Enterprises anticipates a return on investment of about 6 to 7%.

Board member Brad Ehlert, who lives in a community developed by Watts Enterprises and said he loves it, wasn’t sure school district employees would jump on the opportunity. He said some family members had been offered a similar opportunity in Wasatch County but refused because they wanted to own rather than rent. They ended up moving away to fulfill their dream.

“Whether right or wrong, I think a lot of people believe part of the American Dream is owning a home,” Ehlert said.

However, Weston Broadbent, the district’s Career and Technical Education director, believed school district employees would jump on the opportunity. 

“I could go to any teacher right now that’s renting and say, ‘I have a place next to the high school for 1,500 bucks,’ and they would be all in,’” Broadbent said.

Broadbent, who worked as a real estate agent for two decades, is Watts’ neighbor and was Watts’ first contact in the school district about the project.

Watts will finalize a proposed agreement with school district employees before returning to the school board for a vote.

Watt expects the Celebration Workforce Housing community to break ground in 18 to 24 months.

The post Developer says Wasatch County workforce housing community can’t be built without school district support appeared first on Park Record.

Children scurried about in a newly constructed home, some play-fighting, some complaining to their mother and others pacing, off in their own little worlds.

In the middle of the chaos was Paulina Rodriguez, mother of the eight kids, who constructed her new 1,400-square-foot home in Heber City mostly by herself.

Paulina was a participant in the Self-Help Homes program, in which qualifying families get into affordable, single-family homes through “sweat equity.” Essentially, they build their homes themselves with help from a construction supervisor, volunteers and fellow participants, who are divided into crews to help build each other’s homes.

After applying in 2022, Paulina began construction with the rest of her group in May 2025. On March 5, the 10 families celebrated moving into their homes just east of Wasatch High School with a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Self-Help Homes has built over 650 homes in Utah since 2000 and has had a presence in Heber City since 2010. Since then, the program has built 143 homes, with plans for another 12 to begin construction in the next few months. Self-Help Homes is also installing infrastructure on about 17 acres of land near the Wasatch County Events Complex to develop into another 44 homes. 

The nonprofit estimates that families save an average of $70,000 on their Self-Help Homes. 

Participants apply for Section 502 loans, a rural housing program for single-family homes administered by USDA Rural Development. Section 502 loans assist low-income applicants in obtaining housing, subsidizing interest rates as low as 1%.

The program requires 35 hours of construction by the family per week, which was a tricky requirement for Paulina to meet. She works full-time at an appliance repair company, and her husband, Jessie, is legally blind and was unable to assist in construction.

“The best I could do was just watch the kids while she does everything,” Jessie said. “She’s the backbone of the operation. I’m really happy. I’m really blessed to have her.”

At least one individual listed on the mortgage is required to commit 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday for construction work, but Paulina always stayed until 4 p.m.

Construction was complicated by the fact that Paulina was pregnant with her eighth child for much of the 10-month process. 

“I always joke that the creator up there didn’t think I was challenged enough,” Paulina said. 

But, she noted, it worked out because the more intensive work, like framing, had been completed by the time she was seven months pregnant, allowing her to focus on less physically strenuous tasks, like caulking, in the months leading up to her due date. 

When she gave birth, members of her group donated time and labor to ensure her home’s construction would stay on schedule. 

Families must make below 80% of the area median income and fall within a certain annual salary range to qualify. For example, a family of four in Wasatch County would qualify if its annual income was between $72,500 and $104,200.

Certain families, like Rodriguez’s, are prioritized. A priority family in Wasatch County would have five or more members and make between $72,500 and $87,100 annually.

Some families in this group applied for the program as far back as 2018.

Connor and Rachel Flynn applied in 2020. The couple have two kids, so they were not classified as a priority family. 

When they were eventually approved to participate in the program, they came up with a game plan: Connor would dedicate himself to work while Rachel would make homebuilding her full-time job. 

Connor works for American Eagle Ready Mix’s power division and is currently working on an electric grid improvement project in Colorado, which keeps him from home for months at a time. 

Connor would come home, gung-ho and ready to rumble, while the rest of his group, including his wife, were exhausted from the work they’d been doing week after week.

“Most other guys I work with, they rotate out. They get to spend a week at home. Me, on the other hand? ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m going to beat myself up in the sun. I’m going to go and die just a little bit more,’” Connor joked. 

He continued, “But you can’t look at it as pain or agony or suffering or anything like that. … There is nothing better than knowing that you have put forth the very essence of who you are. It’s your mind, your body and your spirit that you’re putting into this to not just help you. You’re building everyone’s homes, as well as their futures. There’s nothing more gratifying than that in my eyes.”

Rachel started the construction process with only basic building knowledge, but by the end of it, she’d shingled each of the 10 homes’ roofs in the summer heat. Now, if the couple ever wanted to renovate their basement or build another house, they’d know exactly what they were doing.

Kaitlin Larson was the same way. Her husband, Quaid, is a general contractor and was the only member of the 10-family group who had a construction background.

“I know how to read a tape measure,” Kaitlin joked. “But everything else was new.”

Her favorite part of the program was building homes alongside her future neighbors.

“Instead of moving into a neighborhood where you have to go meet the neighbors, we all know each other really well because we spent more time with each other than anyone else this year,” she said.

Fellow participant and Timpanogos Middle School teacher Nicolle McCullough joked that the most challenging part of the program was “feeling like a student again.”

“Being the one that was doing the learning and making the mistakes and having to sit in that discomfort of doing something wrong was the challenge. But it was also rewarding because you keep going. You try again. You don’t give up on it,” she said. 

Jeremy Phelps, the lead construction supervisor on Self-Help Homes’ Heber City projects, said his favorite part of leading groups is teaching them new skills.

“I feel like my job, in a way, it’s like a shop teacher on steroids,” he said. 

And no, there haven’t been any wild construction accidents, Phelps joked. Usually, participants are timid, asking plenty of questions before diving in headfirst.

“I’ll usually have someone in the group who’s afraid to even climb up a ladder … and then by the end, they’re up on the roof, and they’re harnessed in, doing shingles,” he said.

Phelps is a former participant of the program himself. He learned about it during an apprenticeship with Heber City craftsman Don Hyde, who constructed cabinets for Self-Help Homes. 

When Phelps realized he may no longer have to commute to and from Alpine every day, as he had done for the past two years, he was ecstatic. He moved into the home he built in Heber City in 2013 and applied to work as a construction supervisor with Self-Help Homes five years later. 

When Phelps participated in the program, the minimum annual income to qualify was $25,000. Making $25,056 a year, he barely made the cut. The fact that the minimum income requirement has nearly tripled since then is “crazy” to Phelps, who attributes it to factors like inflation, the housing market and increased land prices and cost of living in Heber City.

Phelps was 24 when he moved into his home, but he believes owning a home in Heber City at that age has become near-impossible unless one has “very wealthy” parents.

“You might be able to get into an apartment or a condo, but homes? You’re just outpriced,” he said. “I see a lot of people who work in town, or people that are from here and want to stay here. This program is really the only option.”

But new federal loan limits are stonewalling Self-Help Homes, explained Executive Director Brad Bishop. 

The Section 502 loan limit was previously 80% of the Federal Housing Administration mortgage limit for a single-family home in a given area, but on Feb. 10, USDA Rural Development changed that loan limit to 60%.

That leaves Wasatch County largely unaffected, as the Section 502 loan limit is now $698,200, still more than the price of a Self-Help Home, which tends to be between $420,000 and $430,000. But in Utah and Washington counties, where Self-Help Homes also operates, the Section 502 loan limits have become $360,800 and $364,300, respectively.

“I think the desire was in the right place. ‘Hey, we’d like to save money by lowering the loan limits.’ But that just eliminates higher-cost states,” Bishop said. “We had families actually approved for loans. We were waiting to close on them, and then this rule came out last month. All it did was eliminate 40 families from being eligible to build their homes after waiting three, four or five years and finally getting into a group eligible for the loan.”

Because the loan limit was changed through an update to a USDA Rural Development handbook, it did not have to go through Congress. But Bishop is hopeful that the change can be reversed by getting the attention of Utah’s congressional representatives.

“Our senators have come out to visit. They recognize the need, (and) I think everybody recognizes the need for home ownership and the need for units,” he said, adding that Self-Help Homes builds about 150 homes annually in Utah, but with the new loan limits, he expects the number of homes the nonprofit can build a year to be pushed down to 20 or 40.

For now, Bishop urges anyone who cares about the program to call their congressional representatives to let them know the challenges Self-Help Homes is facing. And though the program has a long waitlist, interested applicants can learn more at selfhelphomes.org.

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A community of affordable homes drew equal parts enthusiasm and skepticism from the Heber City Council on Tuesday as Provo-based developer FlexReady Homes presented a revised plan for its community of 42 units between Southfield Road and the Heber Valley Railroad. 

FlexReady Homes allows the owner to purchase a 1,200-square-foot, two-story, single-family home. The homes are constructed with the ability to be easily expanded upon with add-ons built by FlexReady Homes, like a garage or accessory dwelling unit, if the owner wishes to purchase them.

The base units are targeted to be affordable to those making 80% of the area median income, which is $109,120 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

“Every homeowner around, and all of us (who) have had homes, have enjoyed the financial stability that comes from home ownership. So, our goal is to get people into homes, not rentals, homes that they can actually build out, invest in and enjoy,” said FlexReady Homes managing partner Curt Magleby.

Magleby and developer Brent Bluth, who works as the director of development with Self-Help Homes, but does not represent the nonprofit in his partnership with Magleby, first pitched the concept to the City Council in December. They wanted to gauge interest in the project before applying for a zone change through the Heber City Planning Commission, which requires final approval by the City Council. 

The zone change would accommodate the density of the project. With 42 units on the 4.11-acre property, the density is 10.22 units per acre. The current zoning of the property would likely permit up to six dwellings on the property, according to agenda materials.

In exchange for increasing the allowed density, the City Council’s request in December was to include some units that would be affordable to those making 60% AMI, which is $81,840 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

Of the 42 units, 22 are base units, and the remainder are condominium flats affordable to those making 60% AMI. These flats are smaller than the single-family homes and would be sold to two tenants, one on the 780-square-foot top floor and another on the 960-square-foot bottom floor. Each has two bedrooms and one bathroom. The units do not have two-car garages like the base units do and are unable to be expanded with add-ons.

“We went through a lot of head-banging to get to that point,” Bluth said.

FlexReady Homes also plans to acquire the adjacent Heber Valley Assisted Living from the current property owner, George Bennett, and convert it into seven of its 20 condominium units. That agreement has not yet been finalized, but Bluth and Magleby said they were expecting it within two weeks. 

If the agreement with Bennett falls through, 16 of the 20 condominium units reserved for those making 60% AMI would be eliminated.

Brad Hiatt, who lives south of the site plan, raised concerns that the community of FlexReady Homes would negatively affect the character of his neighborhood and increase traffic. He compared the high-density development to a trailer park in the middle of single-family homes. 

Magleby pushed back against those concerns.

“There are some around each neighborhood that are concerned about others moving closer to them, but those are the lucky few that were able to purchase a home for cheap, when the land was cheap,” he said.

Hiatt, however, explained that he had once been pushed out of Heber City by high prices and had only moved back once he could afford to. He said that as the father of three children, he understood the need for affordable housing, but did not think FlexReady Homes’ target price of around $450,000 for a 1,200-square-foot base unit would be something his children would buy if they could.

City Councilor Mike Johnston said such a housing community would be essential to support employees who work in Heber City. 

“I know the NIMBY attitude, and I disagree with it,” he said. “It’s on a collector road, not driving through someone else’s neighborhood. Got a railroad behind it. There’s parks in this area. … There’s churches in this area you can walk to. It’s a great place for this kind of development.”

Although feedback from the City Council was generally positive, members weaved some skepticism into their own comments about the site plan.

City Councilor Yvonne Barney was concerned that the purchase of Heber Valley Assisted Living was not finalized. She said she was worried the price of the FlexReady units would increase if the agreement fell through because the developer would reduce the number of units and increase its costs. 

“If those units go down, will the cost of the project go up? Guarantee it will go up. You can count on it. That’s simple economics,” Bluth said. “And we have to look at it and say, ‘OK, will that still work?’ And that’s what we’ll look at before we even come to you.”

Barney had previously asked for an example of FlexReady Homes built in other communities as proof of concept. 

The company has 500 homes under contract and is negotiating with municipalities including Ephraim, Grantsville, Tooele, Eagle Mountain and Helper, Santaquin and Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Kauai, Hawaii. However, only a handful of those homes, located in Ephraim, are under construction.

City Councilor Aaron Cheatwood also wanted to ensure Heber City isn’t a “guinea pig.”

Heber City Community Development Director Tony Kohler suggested that stipulations could be written into a development agreement to “hold their feet to the fire” and ensure the start-up successfully followed through on the project.

Bluth offered to give city officials tours of the Ephraim homes once they were closer to completion.

Following the discussion, Magleby said he thought the project was moving in a positive direction. Once the purchase agreement of Heber Valley Assisted Living is worked out, FlexReady Homes will go forward in working with the city’s Planning Department to finalize a site plan and present it to the Planning Commission, then the City Council for final approval.

The post Affordable housing community to finalize site plan after Heber City Council feedback appeared first on Park Record.

With 47 people crowded into the Heber City Council chambers, 32 attending online and many more emails on top of that, City Councilor Aaron Cheatwood noted that Jan. 20’s council meeting was the highest level of civic engagement he’d seen since he took office in 2024.

Most attendees had come to oppose Bluestone Townhomes, a high-density housing development proposed by Wasatch County-based developer Garbett Homes on its 3.19-acre lot at 830 E. Center St. 

Garbett Homes representative Jacob Ballsteadt had been through several rounds of informal feedback with the City Council since November, originally proposing 40 three-story townhomes. The current zoning allows up to six. The number has since been whittled down to 26 two-story townhomes, or over eight townhomes per acre, but Garbett Homes needs the city to approve the zoning change first.

“We did not bring bullhorns or pitchforks. At least, we left those in the cars for now,” joked Heber City resident Ben Atwood, the first of nearly 20 public commenters. 

He was concerned that a “zoning island” created by Bluestone Townhomes would create downtown density in a residential neighborhood and result in ripple effects impacting surrounding homeowners. The foremost of these was parking.

Several public commenters insisted that the development’s 26, two-car garages (one per townhome), eight driveways and 12 guest parking spaces would not be enough to accommodate residents and guests, creating parking overflow onto Center Street.

City Councilor Yvonne Barney agreed. 

“I go to my daughter’s home, and it’s not just celebrating our grandchild’s birthday with one car. We have literally six cars in front,” she said.

First responders in the audience weighed in on the potential public safety issues created by the development’s single street access in and out of the property.

“Driving a fire truck professionally, there’s no way you’re going to get more than one truck down that street. You’re never going to get them to be able to turn around,” said former firefighter Nick López. 

Meanwhile, Gabe Gubler, a former Heber City public works employee, said he used to drive his public utilities truck home so he could be on-call. He didn’t think Bluestone Townhomes’ parking could accommodate a vehicle like that, which he found ironic because City Councilor Sid Ostergaard had praised the development for its potential to provide housing for first responders.

Each unit was priced around $500,000, with an owner-occupancy deed restriction intended to support entry-level homeownership.

But Heber City resident Thomas Johnson, an entry-level homeowner, thought that he could not afford a townhome at that price.

“Many of the co-workers that I work with and many of my friends have been finding housing elsewhere, anywhere that’s not Heber,” he said. “I do not believe in any way, shape or form that this housing will be good for any young adult or, really, anyone at all in Heber. It’s not affordable. It’s not livable. And it’s not very spacious at all.”

All City Council members agreed the price point did not fall in the bracket of affordable housing. Ballsteadt’s original 40 townhomes would have included five units priced between $470,000 and $485,000 in order to be affordable to those making 80% AMI, which is $109,120 for a family of four in Wasatch County. These 26 townhomes would not include any affordable units.

Several asked that Garbett Homes reduce the number of units, which Ballsteadt was agreeable to. Cheatwood suggested that the development might make sense as fewer, more expensive homes.

But Ostergaard pushed back. He argued that Bluestone Townhomes met Heber City’s need to provide a “missing middle.” He asked if not this project, then where would Heber City create housing for its police department, public works and parks employees?

“I know, Sid, it is very important that we find something. But this doesn’t fit that ‘finding something,’” Barney replied. “We do not fudge, if you will, just because we’re so desperate for something and try and stick and pound that square peg into that round hole.”

Although Garbett Homes will have to go back to the drawing board, several council members complimented Ballsteadt for his respectful dialogue and incorporation of feedback from the council over the past three months of negotiations.

“I feel respected and listened to,” Cheatwood said. “I don’t always feel that from a developer.”

The post Droves of Heber City neighbors oppose high-density townhome community appeared first on Park Record.