The Voice of Local Utah

Moab

Blood, Sweat and Equity — Affordable Housing in Moab

A lack of affordable housing isn’t just an issue in Moab, but seems to be a trend across the country, where many families live paycheck to paycheck, and the thought of owning a house doesn’t seem within their reach.

by

Shannan Butler

|

Completed Mutual Self Help housing located off Millcreek Drive in Moab near Power Dam Road. Photos by Shannan Butler

Visitors come from all corners of the Earth to marvel at the majesty of Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, along with the other scenic parks and public lands that surround it. As a result of that popularity, property and housing costs are on a constant rise in Moab. 

A lack of affordable housing isn’t just an issue in Moab, but seems to be a trend across the country, where many families live paycheck to paycheck, and the thought of owning a house doesn’t seem within their reach. The American dream seems to fade away from the grasp of the working class, and is seemingly next to impossible for families with a low income. More than 50 percent of Moab’s workforce is at or below low income, and the rentals that are available have monthly rates in excess of $1,200, which makes it hard for residents to make ends meet. 

What if there was a program that would allow you to put your hard work into building your home and having some of the cost absorbed by that work? Does a “Sweat Equity” program exist? 

Enter the USDA’s program known as the Mutual Self Help Housing Program. This program offers USDA loans exclusively for low-income families in order for them to become homeowners. These families would otherwise not be able to buy a home in the conventional loan process, especially with homes that average over $350K in the Moab area. 

New homeowner and participant of the USDA Mutual Self Help Program, Dustin Roberts, said, “There really weren’t that many options in town for a house. There was an old complete fixer-upper that needed A LOT of work, a really expensive house that didn’t need that many repairs, and one that was way out in the valley. Then there was this option, and for a great price, we have a new house. It took about a year, and it was a lot of hard work, but it’s great.”

Groundbreaking at the Mutual Self Help Program’s newest location, located northwest of Spanish Trail Arena. Wingate Village will develop 11 new low-income sweat equity properties to help relieve some pressure of affordable housing in Moab.

In the Mutual Self Help Program, once approved, a family commits to 30 hours of work per week towards building their home. There is no experience needed because they are given guidance by a construction supervisor or construction assistant. This helps them gain ‘sweat equity’ in order to adjust the cost of the house by the amount of work they put into their future home. Tasks can include painting, roofing, trim, floor installation, and other finishing work. The best part of the program is that you don’t need to have previous construction experience to participate because qualified contractors complete the foundation, framing, electrical, plumbing, heating, and cooling systems. 

Dustin reflects on the experience of building the couple’s home. “The process was a little hard because I had to work my full-time job to pay bills, so it was my wife who did a lot of the 30 hours of required work per week. We had friends and family that helped out, too, but they had their own lives that they had to focus on. It was a stressful year, but it was well worth it.” 

Interest rates can be as low as 1% and are fixed throughout the loan term. There is no down payment required, and loan terms range for more than 30 years. Best of all, friends and family can volunteer to help you with the weekly hour requirement. 

For example, if you and your extended family of nine can work for three hours on a Saturday, your 30 hours are done for that week, or if you and a friend work for 5 hours together, you put a 10-hour dent in your weekly work requirement. 

There is a minimum annual household income of $30,000 that includes everyone in the household, and a maximum annual income of $56,900 (family of 1 to 4) and $75,100 for a family of five to eight. 

There are requirements that have to be met, and some may seem difficult, but when asked how successful the Mutual Self Help Housing Program is, program manager Jenna Whetzel said, “It’s definitely a difficult program. It’s difficult for people who are working full-time and have a family, and to give up 30 hours of time per week for nine months to a year, but it is worth it in the end. It’s a great program that helps low-income homeowners that otherwise might not be able to [afford a home]. I’d say everybody that embarks on this task of building their own home becomes homeowners, and I’d say it’s very successful.”

The task of increasing affordable housing in the Moab area remains a contentious issue, but one in which local residents and officials are working together to fix.

,
, ,

Shannan Butler

Join our newsletter.
Stay informed.

Join Utah Stories Newsletter

  • Moab

    Inside Moab’s Political Divide: Land, Tourism, and the Future of Grand County, Utah

    In the late 1950s, Edward Abbey took a job as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, just outside Moab. What he found there, and what he watched happen to it, would shape the rest of his life. Roads were being cut into the canyon country. Cars were replacing foot traffic. The National Park Service, in the name of accessibility, was engineering a kind of industrialization of the wilderness he’d come to love. Abbey wrote about it in Desert Solitaire, published in 1968, and the anger in that book wasn’t abstract. It came from watching something specific be changed by people who either didn’t understand what they had or didn’t care.

    Grand County has long been the most reliably left-leaning county in the state, a fact that puts it in sharp contrast to nearly everything around it. To understand how that happened, and where things stand now, I spoke with longtime residents and politicians who’ve watched it from the inside, people who’ve served in local government and lived through the shifts firsthand.

    Robert Greenberg.

    Bob Greenberg came from New York in 1976, took a job at the community mental health center, and never left. He went on to chair the Grand County Democratic Party and serve on the county council. When he arrived, he said, “the Democratic Party was said to be able to meet in a phone booth” — and even then, its members were a contradictory bunch. Yellow Dog Democrats from the oil patch were fiscally conservative but surprisingly open socially, allowing different demographics to feel safe moving to the county. 

    “The town fathers were desperate to have new people come to town,” Greenberg recalls. “They just didn’t want the people who actually showed up. They wanted some other people.”

    What followed was a demographic shift nobody planned. The people who filled the gap left by the bust were river guides, federal agency workers, artists, and eventually waves of outdoor recreationists discovering that southeastern Utah was among the most spectacular landscapes on earth. Tourism ended up being the only economic development avenue that actually worked. Manufacturing never had the labor force or market access, sewing factories came and went. The people the tourist economy attracted tended to be younger, more outdoor-oriented, and more liberal.

    Kevin Walker.

    Kevin Walker, a former Grand County commissioner who moved here in 1990 for the landscape, puts the county’s diversity in context. “Moab [is] a pretty diverse place since, I think, at least the 1950s with the uranium mining boom,” he says. “So it’s not a typical Southern Utah town.” 

    Part of what makes Grand County distinct is self-reinforcing. Federal agencies like the Park Service, the Forest Service, the BLM, have large presences here and pull in a different demographic than surrounding counties. People looking to live in Southern Utah with certain values gravitate toward the place where those values already have a foothold. Over time, that critical mass has made Grand County what it is politically, while neighboring counties went in very different directions.

    The defining conflict in Grand County has always been over land.

    In the 1970s and 80s, it was extraction versus preservation in the starkest terms. County commissioners floated toxic waste incinerators. A plan emerged to site a high-level nuclear waste repository at the entrance to Canyonlands National Park. 

    “It really, really galvanized environmentalists everywhere, but particularly in Grand County,” Greenberg says. Activists put up signs at the park entrance, watched them get chainsawed down, and came back with steel reinforcement. That stubborn, physical, unglamorous persistence became part of the local political character.

    Continue reading and support independent Utah journalism with a purchase of Utah Stories (Digital + Print) or 3 month free trial (Digital).


  • Moab

    Moab Trail Closures: The Fight Over Public Land Access and Off-Roading

    Trail closures threaten livelihoods and slowly limit access to ordinary families, says Dave Hellman, owner of Xtreme 4×4 Tours in Moab. Wilderness advocates argue that stronger protections are necessary to preserve fragile landscapes. As lawsuits reshape trail access across southern Utah, Moab increasingly sits at the center of a growing conflict over who public lands are really for.