For residents on all sides, Salt Lake City’s latest bid to encourage smaller homes on yards throughout existing residential neighborhoods is already feeling momentous.

Depending on where you fall on the issue, what City Hall refers to as “expanding housing options” — or EHOs — could chart a future of housing renewal and growing homeownership for new families across the city — or it could threaten to displace residents and alter the character and appeal of existing neighborhoods forever.

But just as public input began to heat up, leaders have opted for a de facto two-week pause on public airing for the draft zoning changes, which are aimed at allowing construction of new starter homes, duplexes and other small dwellings on 77% of the city’s residential land.

The City Council voted last week to push out a new mailer informing all affected residents of the zoning amendments and their stakes, in hopes of widening input when its review resumes. That $70,000-plus mailer and a possible digital ad campaign to reach all those thousands of residential property owners, however, won’t go out until after the planning commission weighs in on the new zoning initiative.

After listening to nearly two hours of wide-ranging and lively public testimony on the proposed changes, the planning commission decided last week to delay its formal review. The reason: A simple error in public noticing meant their vote on any recommendation to the council that night probably wouldn’t have been fully legal.

So while it agreed to keep its public hearing open, the commission opted on Wednesday to postpone a scheduled vote, at least until its next hearing on Sept. 23.

That’ll delay the council’s mailer, too.

So as the public portion of this latest housing debate takes a two-week breather, here are some highlights so far:

What the new rules would do

Considered a capstone on housing reforms in Salt Lake City since 2020, these zoning revisions would permit small single-family dwellings, duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes and town homes of up to four units on smaller lots than are allowed now, across what are the city’s lower-density neighborhoods.

The rules are designed to produce more affordable homes of a great variety, especially for families buying for the first time. The proposed changes are based on similar moves in cities such as Austin; Minneapolis; Durham, North Carolina; Portland, Oregon and others that have led to a definite spurt in affordable home construction.

The package would create a new land use for such small dwellings, allowing them on contiguous areas of 2,000 square feet on existing residential properties and accommodating homes as small as 1,200 square feet on those footprints.

The existing residential zones where those homes would be allowed — referred to as R-1, R-2, SR-1 and SR-1A — are also seeing tweaks to elements such as permitted home lot dimensions, building heights, setbacks from other properties, how much of a lot the home might cover and other changes.

If approved, the whole package would apply “by right,” meaning an interested property owner would be able to bypass a lot of planning review that might typically be required at City Hall today.

The underlying idea, according to planners, is to create what they are calling “gentle infill” compatible with surrounding neighborhoods. And while there are no specific rules that homes built under the the new initiative be kept affordable, the assumption is that smaller housing types would generally have lower price tags.

Changes would likely be gradual, planners say

As to the potential impact, planners expect the changes would affect the city’s housing stock at a gradual if not glacial place if they’re approved.

Here’s how that math plays out:

• Of the 40,000 homeowners or so that fall within the affected residential zones, about 35% would actually have the yard space to qualify. That subset of home lots is spread pretty evenly around the city, planners say.

• For guidance, planners looked at new dwellings that have been permitted under the city’s new rules for accessory dwellings and new affordable housing incentives, passed in 2023 and 2024. Of the number of eligible properties that could have used those incentives, the take rates have been relatively low, at about 0.22% and 0.4%, respectively.

• So even with an optimistic rate of 1% based on other cities with similar ordinances — when applied to only properties here with available yard space — Salt Lake City could likely expect somewhere around 130 new homes to be built under these small dwelling proposals over the next handful of years.

Impact on families central to this debate

Judging from initial testimony, many residents ardently believe these changes are needed for the city to be more accessible to those with a wider range of incomes, including families and first-time buyers.

Clearly informing that perspective: A decade-long exodus of families with kids from Utah’s capital and closure of four public schools in 2024.

“Starter homes — the kind of housing that expanding housing options would legalize — can bring families with children back into the city,” said District 4 resident Thomas Christiansen, “instead of pricing them into the suburbs the moment they need more space or more affordability.”

But concern for families also infuses the views of some opponents, under the belief that the zoning tweaks could undermine neighborhoods of single-family homes that attract families to the city. Many have also voiced worries the zoning changes could disrupt existing neighborhoods by incentivizing demolitions of older affordable homes.

“If we dramatically increase development potential, does it actually create affordable housing?” asked Poplar Grove resident Michael Lane. “Or does it create incentive to replace existing homes and displace the communities we’re trying to improve?”

Other points of contention

Between the City Council’s initial public look last week, and other public testimony, here are some of the other concerns emerging around the proposal:

• Some worry they might clash with the city’s ADU ordinance and affordable housing incentives, by giving those who want to build a set of incentives that don’t require affordability, as those other two measure do.

Planners counter that relatively few properties would qualify for both the new zoning rules and for the other sets of incentives.

• The impact of these smaller homes on the character of existing neighborhoods, mostly due to the potential increase in building heights and diminished setbacks from adjacent properties.

Those rules on height and setbacks are modest and carefully crafted, planners say, and are aimed at boosting compatibility between smaller dwellings and their future surroundings, while still actually making more land available for new dwellings.

• Parking is contentious on all sides. Some supporters of the new housing options say the rule for one parking spot per dwelling is too restrictive and could pinch off development, while opponents saying the ratio is too small and risks big disruptions in some neighborhoods.