through a variety of housing initiatives, as well as "policy solutions" to help facilitate market solutions by knocking down certain barriers for developers.— but that was far short of the $128 million Cox proposed. This year, Republican legislative leaders say they're prioritizing housing initiatives. Legislators will spend the next month sorting out budget requests.
Those "major headwinds," he added, are "exacerbating, unfortunately, the existing affordable housing crisis," not just in Utah but across the country. "So if you look in that 2½ year time frame, we're up about 50% in construction costs, which just is not sustainable," Nielson said. "That's a huge challenge right now to affordable housing, is the cost."
Nielson said as interest rates have risen, builders aren't able to obtain financing for dollar amounts they otherwise would have been able to in the past. For example, he said his company could have been eligible for $36.4 million in debt, but today that number has dropped down to about $29 million.
For some reason I don't feel too bad for the 'affordable housing' builders who've been making money hand over fist by maximizing units on properties over the last few years.