Salt Lake City launches contest searching for new patterns for tiny homes

Mayor Erin Mendenhall urges “cause-minded” designers and architects to submit concepts for lesser dwellings to help relieve an economical housing lack.

Salt Lake Town is in search of clean strategies for setting up small homes and incorporate-on apartments as a technique for easing the dire scarcity of cost-effective housing.

Mayor Erin Mendenhall on Thursday released what metropolis officers are contacting the “Empowered Residing Design Competition” to highlight the ongoing crisis and to urge “cause-minded” designers, architects, other specialists and learners to contribute new designs for dwelling spaces with lesser footprints.

“We know we don’t have a corner on the market of great ideas,” the mayor explained as she declared the contest open to candidates nationwide.

Sometime in December, a 5-member jury will award $1,000 grand prizes and $500 for runners-up for the prime types in two types: tiny residences crafted stand-alone or in clusters and for accessory dwellings units to be situated in backyards of present residences.

“These type of buildings are not heading to operate for all people at all levels in their lives,” conceded Mendenhall, flanked by architects and metropolis housing professionals. “But we know that there are a lot of persons who want to make a residence in Salt Lake Town. They want to truly feel linked to a community, and they will need to be able to have their incomes match those people chances.

“That’s what we’re listed here to remedy now,” she additional.

Contest registration is owing by Sept. 10 and experienced submissions are acknowledged as a result of Oct. 29, by means of its web site, at http://bit.ly/empoweredlivingdesign.

While in the middle of a historic increase in condominium and solitary-spouse and children property development, Salt Lake Town and the relaxation of the Wasatch Front have also seen their inventories of readily available properties plummet with pandemic-pushed need and prices escalating speedily.

The city’s late April announcement that it hoped to make a village of tiny households to provide its inflammation homeless inhabitants drew a flood of keen calls and e-mails from would-be layout contributors, Mendenhall mentioned, spurring Wednesday’s wider call for input on dwelling plans suitable for a metropolis with undeveloped land in shorter provide.

Utah’s cash wishes resourceful strategies to scaled-down housing styles that are “affordable, livable, sustainable, long lasting and available,” according to contest principles.

Officials feel there is a specialized niche for smaller sized housing models, in certain, amid seniors on fixed incomes, new college or university graduates, people suffering from homelessness and partners searching for to downsize. Mendenhall mentioned incorporating more compact models to the city’s housing inventory also would “keep Salt Lake Town diverse” and make it extra welcoming.

Wednesday’s connect with also is section of a greater technique, claimed Blake Thomas, director of the city’s Office of Group and Neighborhoods, just one that aims “to empower people, raise housing affordability, and develop a more equitable city.”

“Too many of our people are getting priced out of our good cash city,” Thomas reported, “due to stagnant wages and record high housing fees, which are further fueling inequality.”

The contest is backed by Utah customers of the American Institute of Architects and the nonprofit Neighborhood Growth Company of Utah, with funding from the town, the Ivory Basis and the Utah Neighborhood Expenditure Foundation.

Patterns for the contest do not have to meet up with existing metropolis codes, observed Thomas. That is supposed to “have the door wide open up for creativeness.” Metropolis officers are open to establishing ideas even more in collaboration with their creators, he said, and adapting zoning regulations as they go.

“It is our drive to use this levels of competition to revisit making and zoning rules that may well now inhibit modest-residence developing,” Thomas stated. The great, he explained, would be to develop a library of options for different varieties of tiny residences that by now sq. with setting up guidelines to expedite acceptance.

However “no silver bullet,” Mendenhall and some others said, building a varied set of feasible and modern little household and ADU designs would assistance “create new remedies to housing” though also enlisting style specialists in owning “a direct impact” on the housing scarcity.