In this interview I talked to Mike Barben, executive director of the St. George Utah Housing Authority. He shares about how he came to be in his current role and some of the specifics about what the organization does to help individuals find deeply affordable housing. They are in a challenging situation with very limited resources, but the housing authority makes a huge difference for the people it serves. Find out more about what the authority does by listening to our discussion.
Deon Spilker is the vice president of mortgage banking at Utah Housing Corporation, and David Damschen is the president of the organization. In this episode we have a conversation about what the organization does, who some of the key stakeholders are in affordable housing in Utah, and what are some of the complications attendant to solving the problem of unaffordable housing on the state level. This interview was a great pleasure for me. I loved to hear insights from two of the most knowledgeable people in our state on affordable housing.
Here are a couple of highlight quotes from our discussion.
“It takes all of us together to do the building, and the lending, and to do the tax credits and to have the knowledge.” – Deon Spilker
Spilker also pointed out that she frequently hears the phrase “We couldn’t have without you” in the context of getting into a home.
A couple more quotes I liked: “You need all hands on deck for problems of this complexity and magnitude.” – David Damschen
“Smart government, working hand-in-hand with the private sector can be very constructive and very helpful, but you want to have a light touch.” – David Damschen
We also talked about Low Income Housing Tax Credits, which I have wanted to understand better for a long time, and I loved hearing Mr. Damschen’s insightful explanation of how they work.
If you want to learn more about the Utah Housing Corporation, you can see their website here. There is a great calculator on there if you are interested in FHA loans or are a first time home buyer.
It was such a pleasure for me to talk to people who are truly making a difference for Utah families who need affordable housing every day. I hope you enjoy listening to this interview as much as I enjoyed having it.
Michelle Cloud is in her second term as a planning commissioner for Hurricane City. She recently sent me an article about the Ivins City open house about affordable housing, and in this episode we discuss that article as well as what NIMBYism is and what her role is as a planning commissioner for the city of Hurricane.
In this episode I talk to Hurricane City Planning Director Stephen Nelson. We talk about short-term and vacation rental policy and its recent history in the City of Hurricane as well as what the city is doing for affordable housing.
At my office the other day, we were talking about whether a person should look at the median or the average when it comes to home prices and getting a clearer understanding of the market. I remembered back when I had to educate myself about what those two different terms meant. I had learned their definitions in college, but I had forgotten their meanings from disuse. Here is what I learned as I refreshed my memory.
What is an “average” home price?
Finding the average price of a home in an area goes like this. Say you have 101 houses, all at different prices. You put the prices in a spreadsheet, and add the total of all of the prices together, then divide it by 101. That gives you an average price over the whole spread of homes.
What is a “median” home price?
On the other hand, if you want a median price, let’s take those same 101 houses and line them up from the least expensive to the most expensive. The median is the price of house number 51 in the lineup—the very middle house.
For an even simpler way to view this, look at the image below.
In this image, you can see that if you add 1+2+3+4+5 = 15, and then if you divide it by five (the number of houses you are comparing) you get three. For the median, you just line them up, and the middle one is three. This image is definitely an oversimplification, but hopefully it helps see what each statistical method is doing.
When I look at statistics on housing, I prefer to use the median, and here is why. If there are a 101 people buying a home, I am curious about what is in the middle of that situation. There are equal numbers of homes on both sides of that middle. One thing about the average is that if there are a large number of luxury homes in a market (as with Washington County, Utah) those home prices can pull up the average by virtue of the higher values of the more expensive homes. If we get a big enough number of those expensive properties, we see averages that look much higher than many homes are actually priced.
Occasionally it’s good to watch the average, too, though. For example, in a shifting market we can watch trends. If the average gets closer to the median, that could be a sign of shifting prices from higher to the middle or lower. So which one should you look at first? For me, I usually look at the median. Really, it’s up to you, and hopefully these median v. average notes have helped a little as you decide which to use.
Jenny Chamberlain 