HAILEY, Idaho — Blaine County is certainly known for its mountains – along with housing prices that are just as steep. To help address that issue, a local community housing trust is renovating a piece of Hailey's history to turn into affordable workforce housing.
The Inn at Ellsworth Estate is an old building providing a new solution for a tough challenge for the city to summit: a shortage of affordable housing.
Located in the heart of Hailey, the inn was first a single-family residence in the 1900s. It was converted into a bed and breakfast with 11 hotel rooms. The property went on the market last year, and could have been turned into high-end housing, but the City of Hailey had other ideas.
The city wanted to see the original structure preserved, and worked with the City of Sun Valley to purchase the property. The ARCH Community Housing Trust is now converting the building into six affordable one-bedroom apartments, and will build 12 affordable workforce houses on two acres around the inn's perimeter.
"There's great need [for affordable housing]," ARCH Executive Director Michelle Griffith said. "We have 300 households on our waiting list."
Housing will be available for residents making between 80% and 140% of the area's median income. ARCH expects the property to open in April once it is refurbished and brought up-to-code.
"We hope it serves the workforce, we know it will do that. I really hope that it serves as an example for jurisdictions in the future to work together and find one-off solutions." Griffith said. "We won't be able to enact one thing that is a magic wand that fixes the problem. We're going to have to do one-off things as they are available to us, and I hope that this serves as an example to jurisdictions – not just in Blaine County, but elsewhere."