Expert: Treasure Valley has the recipe for growth

The Treasure Valley for the past 20-25 years has already lived up to urban geographer Joel Kotkin’s recipe for how America needs to build its future.

Kotkin, a fellow in urban futures at Chapman University in California, sees an American population shifting from the overpriced coasts to the more affordable middle of the country.

“My vision is we’re in a transitional phase in this country,” Kotkin told 180 civic leaders Oct. 27 at the Eighth and Main banquet room in downtown Boise. “We cannot maintain a middle class if we decide everybody has to live on the coast. The only future is people moving back to the middle (of the country). That’s the only way to accommodate population growth. Boise has a big part to play in this transition.”

Kotkin was invited to Boise to share his urban theories by Idaho 2020, a policy group made up of Idaho’s leading business leaders, and Zions Bank.

Not that long ago, people flocked in masses to coastal hotbeds like Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.

“Since 2000, there has been a big reduction in migration to New York and San Francisco,” Kotkin said. “People are looking for affordable homes. In the Bay Area, about 12 percent of people can afford a home. High housing costs is absolutely driving migration. Dallas, Austin, Nashville are attractive. They have urban lifestyle at an affordable price.”

The Treasure Valley population has grown 50 percent since 2000, from 432,000 to 651,000, according to Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho statistics.

Kotkin said Boise also falls favorably in what he calls a “median multiple,” the price of a median house divided by an area’s median income. Kotkin said the ideal ratio is for a house to cost about three to four times a person’s annual salary. In Boise, he said, the ratio hits that sweet spot at 3.5, but many coastal cities have home prices eight, nine, or 10 times the median incomes.

In Boise, people earning $75,000 can buy a house, he said.

“$75,000 in Los Angeles is poverty wages,” Kotkin said. “If you make $75,000 in San Francisco, you’re living on the street.”

Kotkin sees millennials, retiring baby boomers and immigrants defining how this inland migration will play out.

First, he notes retirees “no longer move for five years to Florida and drop dead,” and Kotkin debunked the common views that millennials don’t want kids, don’t want to get married, don’t want to own homes or that they reject the suburbs. He cited a Pew Research Center report that 74 percent of millennials want children, 70 percent want to get married and 81 percent want to own a home.

“Millennials may be weird but they are human,” Kotkin said. “The idea they don’t want to own a home is false.”

He said only 15 percent of young millennials want to live long-term in a dense urban setting, that 66 percent favor the suburbs for the long term.

“Being 35, being next to the bar isn’t as important,” he noted.

Kotkin has gained a certain national notoriety for dismissing urban planners’ fascination with downtown housing as he insists Americans – even millennials – remain enamored with suburban living. But he sees changes in housing as millennials, retiring baby boomers and immigrants become increasingly important players in state-to-state migration.

“(There are) three things that will be different than our standard homes,” Kotkin said. “The parks are absolutely at the center of everything (for millennials).”

He said millennials prioritize parks over golf courses, while baby boomers increasingly want single-story homes so they can age at home without the encumbrance of staircases.

“People are looking for affordable, smaller towns,” he said. “Among immigrants, there are much more extended families, so (they want) multigenerational homes. You have a house, and then next to the house is a separate entrance with a little kitchen, like a small apartment that is part of the house.”

As for creating middle-skill jobs, which require education beyond high school but not a four-year degree, Kotkin said Idaho saw 9.7 percent growth from 2001 to 2014, far exceeding the 2.9 percent national average. But nearly all of Idaho’s regional competitors had higher middle-skill job growth rates ranging from 11 to 53 percent: North Dakota, Utah, Texas, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Nevada.

Kotkin said Boise saw a 19 percent increase in manufacturing from 2010 to 2016 with the region the strongest in manufacturing across the northern tier of states from the Pacific to the Great Lakes. Nationally, the north-south line from Michigan to Florida has seen strong manufacturing growth since 2010, while the northeastern states have experienced strong declines, he said.

“Manufacturing and the future of manufacturing is going to be very important for Boise and Idaho in general,” Kotkin said. “Take a look at manufacturing growth up here. Idaho has some of the most rapid manufacturing growth. Look at the East Coast, California, where it’s stagnant or negative. “

As other places in the country face high costs, high taxes and more regulations, Idaho is poised for people in other states looking for rosier pastures, a dynamic already in play in the Treasure Valley since the 1990s.

“Places like Idaho and this part of the country are really going to be the places that offer the alternative,” Kotkin said. “Your growth is well over the national average, people are coming on their own, people are here because they want to be here.”

Growth does present perils as countryside vanishes under development.

“It’s also how do you grow?” Kotkin said. “You’ve got to be able to preserve something of the quality of life.”