Will Utah Turn into California?

Utah’s political leaders cheer on the economic boom with huge increases in tax revenue, but this booming economy is not helping Utah’s middle class or small business owners but making the most basic necessities of housing less affordable.

Richard Markosian

February 6, 2021

A homeless tent camp on a sidewalk in downtown Salt Lake City

Utah’s tech boom is a double-edged sword

Utah’s housing and real estate boom are great for some businesses such as developers, real estate companies. The tsunami of new residents is mostly attracted to filling the open positions in Utah’s burgeoning tech sector. However, this boom is not helping non-tech workers middle-class workers, who make up 76% of Utah’s workforce.

The catering to Utah’s tech boom has produced the side effect of Salt Lake City experiencing both a massive building boom and an affordable housing crisis. These conditions have been the major problem that Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have witnessed for the past decade.

While hundreds of new units are currently under construction in downtown Salt Lake City, the homeless people we spoke to out in front of Rio Grand’s Homeless Resource Center (Rene from Miami, and Eric from Maryland) don’t believe they will ever be able to afford to live in this housing. Instead, they believe their best hope is to obtain free government housing.

California’s current exodus is due to the failed policies of California’s political leadership. In what is being called “The Mass California Exodus” thousands of middle class residents are leaving due to the burdensome policies that especially harm the working poor and middle income earners. The LA Times report this exodus is intensifying in 2021.

The homeless problem in Downtown Salt Lake City

Utah’s Strong Middle Class and Pro-Small Business Environment

Utah’s middle class has always been extremely strong and our small business environment has been one of the best in the country due to offering entrepreneurs low taxes and little regulation. But the current housing shortage is causing real estate prices to escalate to the point where the middle class is being forced out of most Salt Lake City areas, and starting a small business is becoming less realistic when housing becomes such a large percentage of average worker’s take-home pay.

We talk to Eric Vinin about his experience as a homeless man in Salt Lake City

Utah’s Housing Crisis

Last year the zip codes in and around Salt Lake City rose on average by around 20%. Holladay, Utah saw a 35% increase in real estate prices, Murray, Utah 30%. The housing boom and shortage is affecting Utah’s middle class the most, pricing out many people who can no longer afford to buy a home.

This trend begs the question: Is this massive influx of people from California actually good for Utah overall? If there are more people priced out of the market, and Salt Lake City’s affordable housing gets all replaced with more luxury apartments, will we witness the essential disappearance of the middle class from Salt Lake City?

Not if our new Governor Spencer Cox recognizes this problem and actually takes measures to protect Utah’s non-tech small businesses and non-tech middle class. (as California Governor Gavin Newsom has failed to do).

Meanwhile, there are not enough resources to help the homeless in Salt Lake City who actually want to work. “If you have SSI (Supplemental Security Income), they are much more willing to help, than if you are struggling and want to work,” said Eric Vini to Utah Stories, a man who was out in front of the Homeless Resource Center on Rio Grande Street.

Watch the entire Utah Stories show podcast below for all of our interviews and examination of the issues

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Richard Markosian

I am a story teller and journalist. I have a passion for farmers, local craftspeople, and folks who aspire to create, build and grow their business in the local marketplace. Why local? By supporting locally-owned businesses we create more opportunity for entrepreneurs, and we claim our sovereignty to shape our communities how we want to see them. I aspire to build Utah Stories Magazine into a household Utah name, and assist Utah businesses and makers with marketing. On the journalism side of things my passion is investigative journalism that offers true insight into issues. I believe strongly in the forth estate: strong, meaningful, insightful journalism is essential to a free market Democracy.

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Whiskey, Bullets & a Buried Town: Archaeologists Reveal Alta’s Wild Past

Before Alta was known for powder days and lift lines, it was a silver mining town clinging to the side of a narrow canyon. In the late 1800s, men lived at 8,000 feet, went underground each day, and endured winters that regularly buried buildings in snow. This past summer, that mining town resurfaced — literally — during construction at the Alta Ski Area.

To understand what Alta really looked like, you don’t begin with legend. You begin with its trash — and this time, that happened almost by accident.

Alta Ski Area was installing underground water reservoirs to support snowmaking. Because the project sits on Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest land, an archaeologist was required to monitor the excavation. No one expected the trench to produce much.

But, It did.

Artifacts began surfacing almost immediately. Enough that the Forest Service contacted the Utah State Historic Preservation Office for help. Lexi Little, who coordinates the Utah Cultural Site Stewardship Program, helped mobilize nearly 30 volunteers to assist with what quickly became a focused two-week excavation.

Winter deadlines were approaching. The pipes for the reservoirs had to go in the ground. There wasn’t time for a slow, extended dig.

“It was two weeks of digging in the dirt and helping figure out exactly what we were looking at,” Little said.

Most of the people screening soil weren’t professional archaeologists. They were trained stewards from around Utah — part of a statewide volunteer network that now approaches 500 people. They poured dirt through shaker screens, scanning for fragments that could piece together a town long buried.

“Archaeology is human trash,” Little explained. “Archaeologists are very into trash.”

Alta had left plenty behind.

https://youtu.be/hzIHzx3OGoo?si=dKcl2CEz-t6FZzYw

Victorian-style ceramics appeared first — the kind typically used in hotels. Medicine bottles followed. Ink bottles. Hand-blown glass. A porcelain doll’s foot surfaced from the soil, a small detail that shifted the mental image of the town. Families were here. Children were here. This wasn’t only a camp of miners.

The bottles helped establish time. Manufacturing details — whether glass was hand-blown or mold-made, whether a maker’s mark appeared on the base — allowed archaeologists to date many of the artifacts to the 1870s through the 1890s, when Alta was booming as a silver mining town.

“That gives you that range of dates for when Alta was really booming,” Little said.

One reusable soda bottle clearly stamped “Salt Lake City” connected the canyon to the valley economy below.

Then something unusual rolled out of a dirt pile.

A corked bottle. Intact. Liquid still inside.

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When a backhoe rolled a corked bottle out of the dirt at Alta this summer, no one immediately grasped what they were holding. It wasn’t empty. It wasn’t shattered. It was full. “The bottle that was discovered up at Alta is the only bottle of alcohol ever discovered in an archaeological excavation in the state…
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