Shepherd will advocate for investment in housing at the national level as part of the leadership for Mayors & CEOs for U.S. Housing Investment and America’s Housing Comeback.

“That’s really where we are, is how do we make that happen?” Shepherd told the Standard-Examiner. “What programs can we help the government understand and help emphasize that need to really invest in housing?”

Housing investment is a priority in Clearfield, a municipality of roughly 35,000 people. While the city has essentially been built out, more than 500 townhomes, 3,200 apartment or condo units and 250 single-family homes have been constructed there since 2018, according to the city.

Shepherd and city officials have managed this, in part, by identifying underutilized properties and working with developers to create the kind of housing that Shepherd says the city wants and needs.

“Redevelopment is crucial,” Shepherd said. “I mean, really, Clearfield has led the way there. We identified some properties that came up in Clearfield and we purchased them. We knew that if we could control them, we’d get what we wanted there and what made sense to be there.”

Shepherd cites the city’s purchase of the Clearfield Mobile Home Park and the resulting development agreement with The Lotus Group as examples of this strategy in practice.

“That allowed us to control it now and say, ‘OK, what are we doing?’ And it allowed us to partner with a developer who would do low-income housing there, and it is our nicest project in the entire city,” Shepherd said. “And yet, it’s the finest with low-income housing tax credits. That’s how redevelopment has to happen. You’ve got to be very intentional about it.”

Some residents have taken issue with the number of apartment complexes built in Clearfield recently. As Shepherd sees it, though, increasing the housing supply — including lower-income housing — is critical for meeting market demand and keeping rents and house payments at a reasonable level regionally.

“We won’t get housing prices to come down — especially when you look at rentals — until we can build more,” Shepherd said. “People tell me all the time, ‘Hold on. They’re not full. They’re not going to be full. No one is ever going to be able to fill those.’ Well, they are. Their vacancy rates are 3% right now. … If vacancy rates are below 6%, that’s the normal path is to raise prices.

“Until the demand stops, it’s going to continue to raise rents. It’s going to continue to raise housing prices.”

Where purchasing homes is concerned, Shepherd worries about the federal government “artificially lowering rates” due to the effect that could have on demand. He does believe the government can positively impact housing, though, particularly where low-income housing is concerned.

“The Fed needs to step up more and really be more involved in making more lower-income housing available,” Shepherd said. “They can do that through (the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit) and enhancing the LIHTC program.”

LIHTC provides federal tax credits to developers for the building or rehabilitation/preservation of housing that must remain affordable relative to an area’s median income for the duration of a multi-year affordability period. Essentially, it gives investors a reduction on tax liability in exchange for making an equity investment into rental housing with below-market rents.

There are some indicators that Clearfield’s approach to housing is working. The Ogden-Clearfield metro statistical area recently ranked second in the Milken Institute’s annual Best-Performing Cities report, of which housing affordability is a key metric. According to the report, Ogden-Clearfield ranked 15th out of the more than 400 metropolitan areas evaluated in the proportion of households with affordable housing.

Nevertheless, Shepherd says there’s still a lot of work left to be done at home and around the nation.

“It is horrible that we have allowed ourselves to get into this kind of situation to where housing has become this expensive and it’s totally impossible for people to buy a house,” he said. “We’ve priced our first-time homebuyers out of the market. But more so, housing costs have become so large and such a big portion of our income that, one hiccup and you’re homeless. … That’s my focus is take what we’ve done in Utah, try to replicate it and look at other states that have done other things. And how do we come up with the answers and really (fix) this housing problem.”