Over 136,000 Idahoans can’t comfortably afford to live. Here’s how much they need to make
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Affording Boise: Rental housing
Soaring rents. Skyrocketing home prices. The double-digit rates of increase in the costs of Boise-area housing create increasingly urgent problems for low-income, working-class and even moderate-income Idahoans who need places to live. Affording Boise is a series of Idaho Statesman special reports on housing. This collection focuses on rental homes, including apartments. A separate collection focuses on homeownership.
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Ever tried working 83 hours in a week? How about doing it week after week after week?
That’s the expectation in Idaho for someone working a minimum-wage job if they want to afford a fair-market one-bedroom home, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
NLIHC compiles a report called Out of Reach, which uses the standard of affordability that one person spend no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The 2022 report puts the situation for Idaho renters in stark relief.
The minimum wage in Idaho has been $7.25 per hour since 2009, when the state raised it by 60 cents to match the federal minimum.
The minimum wage in the Gem State would have to be more than doubled, to $15.03, for a person to afford a modest one-bedroom home while spending no more than 30%, the housing coalition says. The minimum would need to be $18.87 to afford a two-bedroom home.
Who is priced out?
There are just under 190,000 renters in Idaho, which makes up 29% of the state’s total households, according to the coalition.
Looking at the price of a fair market one-bedroom apartment, some of the state’s most popular jobs fall under the watermark to comfortably afford rent.
Just over 19,000 people work as retail salespeople in Idaho, with a median wage of $14.42 per hour. There are also 18,340 cashiers in the state with a median salary of $11.80, and 17,630 people are working in home health and personal care fields, making a median wage of $12.16.
In total, there are approximately 136,640 Idaho residents working jobs that don’t pay enough money to pay for a one-bedroom home at the fair market rate.
Another large demographic is customer service representatives. A further 21,620 people are working in customer service who average $15.37 per hour, just above the affordability watermark.
What can be done to help?
Outside of a dramatic increase in the minimum wage, all that Idaho renters can hope for is a decrease in rental costs.
The Idaho Statesman talked to Boise-area developers and property management companies in May to find out what can be done to help with soaring rental costs in the Treasure Valley.
Some solutions included the continuation of apartments being built in the area to create more supply than demand, funding Idaho’s Housing Trust Fund, and cutting property tax on low-income housing.
This story was originally published August 2, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
