Herbert puts another $8M toward housing help

(Salt Lake Tribune) Gov. Gary Herbert is pumping another $8 million in federal stimulus money into Utah's housing market.
It is a reprise of the Home Run Program, backed by former Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., that advocates say helped spur the sale of 1,625 new homes worth nearly $377 million.
The new grant program will be smaller -- $4,000 per new-home purchase versus $6,000 in the previous incarnation -- but will be spread among 1,950 homebuyers.
Herbert predicted it could save or create 9,000 jobs in Utah and generate $25 million in tax revenues for the state.
"The infusion of this money into the housing market," he said in a statement, "will allow us to leverage our federal stimulus funds to give us the greatest return on investment and promote economic development in the state."
The goal of the original Home Run Program was to fill up some of the new homes sitting empty, so builders could build more houses, hiring construction workers and buying supplies.
James Wood, a University of Utah economist specializing in housing, said the original program helped builders get homes off their balance sheets, but financing for new construction has been tough to get, so the anticipated jobs from the first Home Run Program have yet to be seen.
Through the first six months of 2009, new-home construction is down 29 percent statewide compared with the first six months of 2008, also a bad year.
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