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.
The fund is a significant help in building affordable housing, developers and advocates said, but there isn’t enough money available.
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.
When Karly Brinla first started working on affordable housing projects in Utah, the Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund was “the reason we could build the Aster and SPARK.”
The apartment complexes in downtown Salt Lake City and along the city’s North Temple corridor received millions from the fund, and they provide housing for hundreds of families.
But now, instead of $2 million or $3 million, Brinla said, builders are more likely to receive a couple of hundred thousand dollars toward the cost of constructing affordable housing.
“There’s not enough funding, and it’s a shame,” said Brinla, senior vice president development manager for Brinshore. “It’s significantly impacting what I can build.”
The Olene Walker Housing Loan fund is Utah’s primary state-funded housing program and has helped build more than 27,000 units since the mid-1980s, according to the most recent annual report.
The lending program is a “highly successful funding tool” and an “integral piece” for developers who piece together funding for affordable housing projects through different sources, said Rebecca Banner, the deputy director for the Utah Department of Workforce Services.
But, according to an April 2023 report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, it hasn’t received an increase in appropriations since the start of the fund, when it received $2.4 million. That doesn’t include one-time funding or federal grants, which can inject millions more into the fund a single year at a time.
People who work to build and advocate for affordable housing said the lack of more revenue is the fund’s biggest limitation – which is what they told legislators during the two most recent Legislative sessions.
The fund is critical for filling gaps in financing along the Wasatch Front, said Marion Willey, executive director of the Utah Non-Profit Housing Corporation, and it changes lives in rural Utah – but it needs an ongoing revenue source.
“I think the funding is the biggest limitation,” he said.
Funding mostly multifamily projects
The Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund is named after Utah’s first and only female governor, who said before her death in 2015 that she wanted to be remembered as “kind and caring and somewhat intelligent.”
She was considered a champion of affordable housing, and Willey said Walker is an apt namesake for a fund that positively affects Utahns’ housing opportunities.
“She was always concerned about affordable housing and making a difference in people’s lives,” he said.
Scott Sommerdorf | Tribune file photo Former Utah governor Olene Walker addresses a luncheon in the capitol rotunda in January 2008 about the Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund. She was also accepting the 1st annual “Spitfire Award” presented by the Utah Housing Coalition.
The fund mostly receives applications to fill the gaps in the capital stack — or the layers of investing — for multifamily housing, Banner said, largely because they have more units and require more funding.
Staff within the department’s Housing and Community Development Division review the applications – typically around 20 to 25 a year – to make sure they meet requirements, she said, then presents them to the OWHLF board.
That board then decides how much funding each project will get.
The amount depends on many different factors, Banner said, because the fund pulls from multiple sources.
For example, in the most recent program year, there was money available from five sources:
Each funding stream has unique eligibility requirements, Banner said, including how much money potential tenants or owners will make, the types of units and some limits on the maximum subsidy.
“Generally, the lower the [income] served, the more financing someone is likely to get,” she said.
More than half of projects in Salt Lake County
The Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund has financed 27,305 units since the mid-1980s, including about 1,500 in the last decade or so.
In the past 10 fiscal years, the largest individual award has been $3 million for an affordable complex in Syracuse, based on data provided by the state. Other projects have received as much or more funding through phasing.
The fund financed 1,142 units with $123.7 million between July 2015 and January 2025, according to the state data. It also provided $567,000 for predevelopment work on projects.
Overall, around 130 projects received financing, with many getting it for more than one phase, and were expected to hold a total of 10,124 units serving people making well below the state’s median income.
More than half of the money went to projects in Salt Lake County — Utah’s most populous county. That figure jumps to almost ¾ of the funding when you add the Wasatch Front counties of Davis, Utah and Weber.
Large chunks of the funding have also gone to projects in Washington and Iron counties, accounting for around 10%.
The remaining 18% or so combined has gone to 14 counties, largely in rural Utah.
In every case, the fund was crucial to making sure projects are financially feasible or increasing the number of units, said Willey with the Utah Non-Profit Housing Corporation.
“Without Olene Walker in some of these housing units, they wouldn’t have been done, especially in the rural areas,” he said.
Getting $2 million means building 10 or 15 extra units, said Brinla with Brinshore Development.
“That’s a really big deal,” she said.
Advocates looking for more funding
But it’s hard to get that amount of funding now, Brinla said, because it’s underfunded.
The fund has come “year in, and year out” to the Legislature with “hat in hand” looking for more funding, said Kory Holdaway, a former state representative whose consulting firm works with five of the state’s Habitat for Humanity affiliates.
Holdaway helped Rep. Carol Moss present her second consecutive attempt to get her colleagues to divert profit from liquor sales as a constant revenue source for the housing loan fund.
That’s a long-term and growing revenue source, the Salt Lake City Democrat said, and it’s sorely needed.
“We’re seeing young people, in particular, and young people leaving the state because they can’t afford to buy a house,” Moss said when arguing for HB286 during the most recent session.
That weakens the economy and splits communities, she said, and the private market has been “hindering people from getting homes” instead of helping.
Moss’ Republican colleagues questioned the effectiveness of the fund and the state’s coordination on housing, which is something lawmakers are studying during the interim session.
“I think we just need to think holistically before we throw this amount of money at the problem,” said Rep. Doug Fiefia, R-Herriman, who successfully moved to hold the bill in committee.
Advocates are still pushing for more money for the fund.
“We need to figure out an ongoing revenue source for it,” said Willey, with the Utah Non-Profit Housing Corporation
The monies spent make “a big difference in individuals’ lives,” he said, including eight units built in the early 1990s for people with HIV or who had progressed to AIDS.
At the time, Willey said, they had nowhere to go, but at least one or two of them are still alive today because they got housing.
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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