Salt Lake City’s new Affordable Housing Incentives program has quietly turned into a workhorse. Planning staff told the City Council this week that more than 1,300 homes are now planned or permitted under the rules, with roughly 973 of them counted as affordable. Those units range from downtown mid-rise proposals to modest infill in single-family neighborhoods, and the tally has quickly become a go-to metric for how seriously the city is pushing to broaden its housing options.
The council adopted the ordinance in December 2023, and it took effect April 30, 2024. Under the program, developers can get extra height or density if they commit to long-term deed-restricted units, according to the Salt Lake City Guide to Affordable Housing Incentives. The incentives apply to both rental and for-sale housing, and they open the door for rowhouses, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes in more residential zones when the affordability rules are met.
What the staff count shows
As of March 15, projects using the AHI incentives totaled 1,338 dwelling units citywide, 973 of them classified as affordable, according to Building Salt Lake. The city had received 32 AHI applications, and 13 were later withdrawn. Of the remaining 19, eight projects had final approvals, seven had preliminary approvals, and four were still under review when staff pulled the numbers.
Unit mix and family-sized homes
For projects that have already secured building permits, staff counted 473 units, and a surprising share of them are built for more than just one roommate and a dog. The mix includes 160 two-bedroom units, about 33.8 percent of the total, 92 three-bedroom units, 19.4 percent, and 51 units with four or more bedrooms, 10.7 percent. Studios and one-bedrooms came in at 42 and 128 units, respectively. "Not all of those affordable dwellings have been approved just because of our Affordable Housing Incentives," Planning Director Nick Norris told the council, noting that many of the units were already tied to LIHTC or other funding, as reported by Building Salt Lake.
Restrictive covenants are slowing approvals
Every AHI approval comes with a recorded restrictive covenant that spells out affordability levels and what happens if a project falls out of compliance. Planning staff said those covenant negotiations, plus attorney review on all sides, are dragging out approvals for weeks or months. They also flagged tension between the city’s covenant language and lender requirements, particularly on LIHTC projects, and said the administration is trying to tighten up how enforcement works. Recent Planning Division materials indicate that the city has proposed adding a $100-per-unit-per-day fine for violations. See the city's pending zoning amendments for more on enforcement details and code tweaks.
How the tally ties into bigger zoning fights
Council members signaled that the early AHI data will feed directly into the separate Expanding Housing Options proposal, which aims to further loosen rules in single-family zones to allow more smaller, for-sale homes and other missing-middle housing. Some local projects, including the Ballpark-area 300 West proposal, are already serving as case studies for how AHI can tilt designs toward larger family units and deeper affordability requirements. For one such example, see Ballpark's 300 West.
What to watch next
Projects using AHI must file an annual report one year after receiving a certificate of occupancy, and planners noted that the program is still so new that neither of the two completed AHI projects has hit that deadline yet. Verified occupancy data and long-term compliance information will land later, according to the council staff report. For now, the early numbers suggest AHI is already reshaping project unit mixes and pushing more affordable homes into the pipeline. Whether those promises hold up over time will depend on how quickly covenants get recorded, how firmly the city enforces them, and how smoothly financing programs line up with the fine print.
