Tag: Nampa

With Idaho simultaneously the nation’s fastest-growing state, but stuck at No. 36 for housing affordability, there is an increasing need for affordable multifamily housing, particularly in the fast-growing Treasure Valley and resort communities such as McCall.

“Affordable multifamily housing” means something different in each city. (See box.) Boise, though Treasure Valley’s largest and arguably most expensive city, has one advantage. It owns and operates its own rental housing portfolio of more than 300 units in 48 locations, said AnaMarie Guiles, housing & community development manager. It tends to serve households earning 50 percent or less of the median income, currently $64,300, she said.

Owning land or bringing money to the table also gives Boise more leverage with developers, Guiles said. “Boise was a partner, so we were able to say to the developer, ‘We will be a partner, but some of it has to be subsidized,’” she said. Funding for affordable housing is always an issue. (See box.)

With improvements in the economy, Garden City  – home to several trailer parks, some of which have been displaced by new construction  – hasn’t had an affordable multifamily project since Trailwinds in 2015, said Jenah Thornborrow, director of development services. “Garden City has traditionally had a larger share, proportionally, of affordable housing stock within the Treasure Valley,” she said. “I would suspect that that is still fairly constant, but it’s not meeting everyone’s needs.”

Similarly, while Nampa has eight multifamily housing projects underway, only two – intended for senior citizens – are technically “affordable,” said Karla Nelson, community planner.

Housing projects in McCall tend to be created for workforce. Eighty-two percent of McCall employees live outside the city and commute, because only 27 percent of housing units in McCall are owner-occupied, with 73 percent vacant due to second homes and vacation rentals, said Michelle Groenevelt, community and economic development director.

“The city lacks at least 700 units for the local workforce based on current household incomes,” she said. “There are even more units needed when commuters are considered.” The last housing development with an income qualification, the 72-unit The Springs, was built in 2016, she said.

“A never-ending question in mountain communities is how you provide affordable workforce housing,” said Andrew Mentzer, executive director of the West Central Mountains Economic Development Council.

Mentzer is collaborating with partners to pull together resources in this area – starting with landowners who might have a tract of land they’d be willing to develop but don’t know how, he said. This would be for deed-restricted housing – in other words, some legal instrument requiring occupants who live and work in the area. The type of help available could include aid to someone needing help finishing a studio above the garage for an accessory dwelling unit, all the way to multiple-acre, multiple-unit developments, he said.

“The challenge is a lot of the silos that exist in the development space scare people off,” Mentzer said. “Whether you’re a seasoned or a ‘shade tree’ developer, there are places in the process where you get dissuaded from doing a project.”

Idaho’s more expensive areas include the city of Boise, Blaine, Teton, and Gem counties and Coeur d’Alene. The largest gaps between the housing wage and average renter wage exist in smaller communities such as Bear Lake, Boise, Fremont, Latah, Lemhi, Valley, and Washington counties, according to a report from the Idaho Asset Building Network. The school district in Blaine County is now considering a proposal to build housing geared to teachers.

Several cities are changing zoning codes to encourage multifamily affordable housing. Caldwell amended its codes in 2005 to allow for mixed-use development with commercial on the ground floor and residential above, particularly downtown, said Brian Billingsley, planning & zoning director for Caldwell. His challenge at this point is setting up a quiet zone to keep the hourly trains from blowing their horns. “It’s taking forever to get that accomplished,” he said. “Developers are hesitant to build a project downtown until that’s a reality.”

In Melba, where the Canyon County city changed its zoning in 2016 to allow for housing in its commercial area, developers have been looking downtown for possible multifamily projects, said Noni Stapleton, city clerk/treasurer. She doesn’t know if any are considering affordable housing.

Other cities are looking at incentives to encourage developers to construct affordable multifamily housing.

“We don’t have a lot of tools to deal specifically with affordability, but we have tools to build higher-density housing,” said Hal Simmons, Boise’s planning director. The city is considering adding density bonuses for affordable housing in the future, but density runs into community opposition. “We have some pretty heated public hearings about density,” he said, though he pointed out, “There’s nobody who hasn’t lived in an apartment project sometime and needed housing on the affordable side.”

Meridian is looking at incentives for more dense, infill projects to provide affordable workforce housing, said Caleb Hood, planning division manager. But there are no specific affordable housing projects underway, he said.

And some cities, such as Kuna and Caldwell, are just getting off the ground with multifamily housing. “We didn’t issue a single multifamily dwelling unit permit from 2008 until 2016,” said Troy Behunin, senior planner.  While the city now has several multifamily projects underway, only one is affordable, a five-building, 10-unit project. Two existing projects – White Barn, and Leisure Village, intended for senior citizens – are affordable, said Wendy Howell, planning and zoning director.

“Our busiest year for permits was 2006,” when Caldwell had 1,100, Billingsley said. “Every single one was for a single-family dwelling.”

When is “affordable” not “affordable?”

Part of the problem with talking about “affordable housing” is defining “affordable.”

Certainly, due to land prices and demographic factors, an apartment in Kuna or Melba or Middleton might cost less than a similar apartment in downtown Boise. “Even if apartments are the same money per month, they don’t have to worry about maintenance, upkeep, insurance, and, and, and,” said Troy Behunin, senior planner for Kuna.

“Market-rate rents in Nampa have tended to be more affordable than in many of our neighboring communities,” said Karla Nelson, community planner.

But that doesn’t technically make it “affordable housing.”

Affordable housing is defined by the federal government as housing geared toward people earning 80 percent of less of median income, as defined each year by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said AnaMarie Guiles, housing & community development manager for Boise. “For us, a median income is $64,300 for a four-person household,” meaning $51,440 as the threshold for subsidies by the federal government or a municipality.

But due to stigma around the term “affordable housing,” over the past couple of years cities have started using the term “housing affordability” for all demographics, Guiles said. And that can cause confusion.

“We don’t have anything actually called ‘affordable housing,’” said Noni Stapleton, city clerk/treasurer for Melba, in Canyon County. “We’re really small, with only a population of 500. The city limits are very small – 6 blocks wide and 12 blocks long.” The city has two triplexes downtown, built in the late 1990s, that aren’t deemed affordable housing, most rented by dairy farmers for their workers.  There are also eight Section 8 units run by Southwestern Idaho Cooperative Housing Authority that date from 1995.

Similarly, Middleton has five apartment complexes “that are always full,” said Mayor Darin Taylor. The city has approved 12 fourplexes, six of which are under construction to open in 2018, but none built with government subsidies,

“We need to break down what we mean by ‘affordable housing,’” said Wyatt Schroeder, executive director of Catch Inc., with offices in Boise and Nampa. “Workforce housing for our firefighters and teachers? Senior developments so people can age in place where it’s safe?” Disabled people who need services also deserve housing, he said. “Too often, we talk very broadly, without defining what those mean and what they look like.”

Alejandra Cerna Rios, policy analyst at the Idaho Asset Building Network, said that in seven of eight metropolitan areas in Idaho and in 36 of its 44 counties, the ‘housing wage’ – or the hourly wage needed to spend no more than 30 percent of household income on rent and utilities on a two-bedroom unit at fair market rent- exceeds typical renter earnings.

In Idaho, the fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $803 per month, Cerna Rios said. To cover rent and utilities for a two-bedroom rental without spending more than 30 percent of income on housing costs, an Idaho household must earn $32,122 annually, or $15.44 per hour, she said.  On average, Idaho renters earn $12.19 per hour, she said. Occupations that earn less than the wage needed to pay for housing include ambulance drivers, bank tellers, child care workers, servers, home health aides, preschool teachers, nursing assistants, customer service representatives, and bus drivers.