Building affordable housing takes ‘years of planning’ and layers of funding. Here’s why.on June 8, 2025 at 12:00 pm

MAK Gojar

6 months ago

Note to readers: As a community-funded paper, The Salt Lake Tribune has chronicled Utah’s housing crisis for years, but also looks to find solutions. In this series of stories, “Building Options,” we’ll look to outline the issue and why it matters, but also how state programs are showing signs of chipping away at the affordability crisis.

Here’s why it takes years of planning and more than a dozen types of funding to build an affordable housing community in Utah.

It took a village – and more than a dozen grants and loans – to build the SPARK Apartments, said Karly Brinla, senior vice president development manager for project developer Brinshore, of the affordable housing complex that opened last month.

Financing affordable housing developments in general is a complicated process, Brinla said.

“It takes years of planning,” she said. “It takes close collaboration with all of the financial lenders, public and private, but also with the whole team.”

For SPARK, that meant utilizing several different funding sources:

$50.6 million awarded through two different tranches of Private Activity Bonds. The bonds are tax-exempt and awarded by a state board. A $5.1 million taxable construction loan from Goldman Sachs, which also bought the private activity bonds and invested in four tax credits listed below to fund the project.Federal low-income housing tax credits, a dollar-for-dollar reduction of tax liability for owners and investors in low-income housing that’s available for 10 years. The credits are the “4% credits,” meaning a 30% reduction in tax liability. Two rounds of state low-income housing tax credits. 45L tax credits for home builders meeting federal energy efficiency standards.Investment Tax Credits for expenses invested in renewable energy properties. There’s a solar array connected to the project. A $27.9 million mortgage from Citi Corp. A $4 million seller note – where a seller agrees to receive part of the price in a series of debt payments – from Salt Lake City’s Community Reinvestment Agency, which took over ownership of the motel formerly on the site and sold it to Brinshore. A $10 million soft loan, or a loan with no interest or a below-market rate of interest, from the Community Reinvestment Act. $2 million from the Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund from a mix of the National Housing Trust Fund and HOME Investment Partnerships Program monies.$700,000 in HOME dollars from Salt Lake County. $1 million in HOME dollars from Salt Lake City. About $100,000 in rebates from Rocky Mountain Power75 project-based vouchers through the Housing Authority of Salt Lake City. These aren’t truly a funding source, Brinla said, but did increase the borrowing power for the mortgage.

Layering all those sources that serve different populations based on income builds depth, Brinla said, and makes for a better project by solving for everyone’s vision.

It means providing housing for single moms who work at Starbucks, she said, and families that can afford to live in the neighborhood now but would otherwise get pushed out as the area gentrifies.

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The SPARK apartment complex on North Temple, on Wednesday, May 7, 2025.

And it means providing top-notch amenities like dog-washing stations, rooftop decks, a fitness center and affordable daycare, which Brinla said is the “number one requested amenity across our portfolio.

“We’re creating communities,” she said. “We’re not just creating beds.”

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.

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