BOISE, Idaho — Earlier this week, Bloomberg released an article saying rent in Boise over the past year has dropped about 6%, but what does that decrease look like for renters in Boise?
KTVB spoke with Ali Rabe, the Executive Director of Jesse Tree, an organization that helps renters, she says the price drop is not telling the whole story.
"A 6% decrease isn't really making a dent in that problem,” Rabe said. "Rent has increased by 40% over the last two years. So if somebody was paying $1,000 a month, now they're paying $1,400 a month."
Rabe said, yes, rent is down a bit from last year, but the real problem is how much the need for emergency rental assistance has gone up.
"We've seen the number of applications we're receiving for emergency rental assistance, and the number of eviction court hearings more than double," Rabe said.
Normally Tree goes to about 20 or 30 eviction hearings a week now they are seeing more than 60 hearings a week. As for how many applications they're getting, they would normally get about 50 applications, but now they are getting over 100 applications a week. Part of the reason for the huge jump in need is because of the pandemic federal assistance some families were relying on to help pay rent ran out.
In the Bloomberg article, it claims the rent drop is because of new construction in the Boise area.
"Even though we are bringing more units online, the shortage of affordable housing, in particular for people under a certain income level, is not being met," Rabe said.
Rabe said the city of Boise and the state have made some strides to help with this problem.
“[The city] created the land trust, and they're purchasing certain buildings inland to create more housing that's affordable,” Rabe said. “The State of Idaho recently expanded $50 million in gap financing for affordable housing developers, which created 1,100 units of affordable housing for people who are working at lower income levels across the state, but we'd love to see more investment there."
Rabe mentions wages as another problem. The average wage in Ada County is about $21 an hour. Rabe said if you are a single parent, on a single income that person is paying about $2,000 for rent which doesn't leave much for other expenses.
“About 30% of our community rents, we know over half of them are living paycheck to paycheck, month to month,” Rabe said. “They have a health care bill, childcare issue, job loss, whatever it is, they are suddenly in a position where they can't pay their rent.”
Rabe would like to encourage people who are in a housing crisis to reach out to the Jesse Tree resource center at (208) 339-9486. You can also visit their website jessetreeidaho.org to find other resources they provide.
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