Housing hullabaloo

UTAH

We’re not sure if Utah can help Arizona with its biblical interpretation skills, but it’s got a great idea for those empty mega-homes. The Beehive State is faring better than Arizona financially, but it’s still feeling enough pain to have some vacant McMansions. Rather than leaving them all to the rats, however, at least one landowner is adapting to the times. In 2005, a Salt Lake City contractor combined two lots to build a 16,000-square-foot monstrosity. Things went bad before it was finished, and the hulking beast remained empty. Now, the new owner is chopping it up and making it into three separate condominiums. “For every problem there is a solution,” new owner Ken Milo told the Salt Lake Tribune.

COLORADO

That’s what the non-profit Housing Resources must have thought when it had the opportunity to buy up 30 lots at discount rates in the western Colorado subdivision known as Wine Valley Estates. The once hot property, destined to be an upscale development with a smattering of 2,000-square-foot homes near the vineyards, had fallen on hard times, with only two homes built so far. The non-profit plans on putting affordable housing on the rest of the subdivision. It’s caused a bit of a ruckus: One of two current homeowners in the subdivision, Kevin Wold, isn’t happy. “If they come in here and build here, we’re finished,” he told the Grand Junction Sentinel.