BOISE, Idaho — The City of Boise's new website featuring the Housing Data Portal, is part of an effort to help Boiseans find housing suitable to their needs - providing an abundance of information on affordable housing within Boise city limits.
The idea is that everyone working to end the housing crisis is working with the same comprehensive data. You can see what's needed, what's getting built, where it's getting built, what incentives are being used and more. But what is all this information saying?
Kyle Patterson is the City of Boise's Director of Innovation and Performance. He spearheaded the creation of the Housing Data Portal. "We worked really hard to design the website around the needs of our users."
It's impressive how much information on affordable housing you can find there. What's not so impressive - is the information itself, which shows that this community is a long way from solving the housing crisis.
"The need for affordable housing in Boise and in virtually every city in America is really something that we are all struggling with," said Nicki Hellenkamp, Boise mayor's Housing Advisor.
According to a recent Housing Needs Survey, Boise needs 2,772 new homes each year to keep up with demand and to keep prices reasonable. More than 2,000 of those homes need to be affordable.
Specifically, 861 homes need to be affordable to folks making between 30% and 60% of the area median income (AMI) and 821 homes need to be affordable to people making less than 30% of the AMI.
"When it comes to households that are at 30% of the area median income, for a three-person household at that income level, an affordable rent is $600 a month or less. So, when you think about the inventory that's out there currently in Boise, that is really, really, really challenging to find,” said Hellenkamp. “And when you think about construction costs, the idea of building a brand-new building, and then renting out units at that rental rate, it is a very challenging thing to make even financially possible."
That is evident when you see that just two homes were built at $600 or less rent in a 6-month period in 2021. The community needs hundreds of affordable homes, and we didn't even get a handful. Most of the homes being built are at market price, which means developers are getting the price the market allows, which is a lot. That makes the most financial sense, but it keeps the community in a housing crisis.
So, what can be done? Whatever it is, no one can do it alone. According to Hellenkamp, "The only way we do it is through partnership, through the city bringing additional subsidy to the table, to additional funders coming to the table, is to say: 'We need this kind of housing in our community, because there are many folks in our community who that's what they can afford in rent. And they deserve to live here, too.'"
Partnering with and offering incentives to developers to build more affordable housing is starting to bear fruit. Hellenkamp said they have almost 1,200 affordable units designed, built, funded, bought, permitted, or already built and rented out. That's good, but still well short of the more than 2,000 affordable units Boise needs every single year.
Hellenkamp admits, "While that is not going to meet the need in our community, it is a really significant increase to what we would have seen otherwise without the support of Mayor and City Council for this very important issue. In previous years, with previous levels of support, we would see something like maybe 100 units coming online with city support every other year."
It is a significant improvement, but the city is still not hitting those needs or even its own goals right now. According to the Housing Data Portal, they're falling short, especially when it comes to preserving affordable housing. The data showed 49 existing affordable units were preserved and need to preserve 1,000 by 2027.
But Patterson said part of the reason is that the city set very aggressive goals, "I will say, I'm really proud of the goals that we've set and the progress that we've made so far. I know 1250 units might just sound like a random number, but that's thousands of residents in our community who are going to be able to access housing they can afford, that wouldn't be able to otherwise, which is huge."
Check out the portal. They want your feedback. There’s a place to do that, right at the bottom of the site. You can find the Housing Data Portal here.
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