Commentary: If affordable housing sinks, we all sink with it

(Tyler Cobb | The Salt Lake Tribune) Construction crews work on the apartment buildings at the Hardware District in Salt Lake City on Tuesday January 23, 2018.Almost daily we read about the affordable housing crisis in Utah, and I picture many people reading the articles and thinking, “That’s too bad for young families.” But do they really know how it affects them when their home is worth much more?

This is how the real estate market works. If you put your home up for sale for $900,000, it will likely attract a buyer who sold their home for $700,000. The buyer for that home sold theirs for $500,000, after securing buyers who just sold their home for $250,000. It is the bottom rung of this…