These affordable apartments are opening soon in Southwest Idaho. Here’s what to know
While Southwest Idaho’s population grows ever upward and a housing shortage persists, novel opportunities to create affordable housing are bubbling up.
For thousands of people across Ada and Canyon counties, making rent is difficult enough, while home ownership can seem like a distant dream. In neighboring Elmore County, where Mountain Home and the Mountain Home Air Force Base are located, the situation is even more dire, according to Leap Housing, a Boise-based nonprofit focused on housing affordability.
The organization is taking steps to stem a tide of housing hardship in Mountain Home, including with Falcons Landing, a new 60-unit two-building apartment complex that will include affordable rent options. Construction is almost finished, and Leap is now accepting applications.
“This is the first income-restricted project in over 20 years in Mountain Home,” said Bart Cochran, the CEO and founder of Leap, by phone.
The organization is set to finish construction of the two-building development at 1355 SW Caracara Ave., about a mile southwest of downtown Mountain Home, before the end of October, according to a newsletter. The complex will include options for two-bedroom, one-bathroom units and three-bedroom, one-bathroom units. Amenities include a clubhouse, laundry room and playground. New residents could start moving in by mid-October.
Some units will have market rate rents, while others are receiving government support to be affordable for people making as little as 50% of the area median income. The median rent for all property types, including for more expensive houses and town houses, in Mountain Home was about $1,400 in September, according to Zillow.
In Mountain Home, 50% of the area median income for a three-person household is about $40,000. Rents for a three-bedroom, one-bathroom unit for that three-person household will be capped at $1,006 per month, or about 30% of their income.
“They’re artificially below market,” Cochran said.
Leap plans to add 50 to 60 additional units in the future and 16 affordable homes for sale, according to Cochran.
Idaho faces gap between wages and prices
The complex comes as the wages in the region struggle to keep up with home prices.
“The cost differential between median home price and the wages earned is so wide that it is putting housing out of affordability for many people,” Cochran said during a real estate summit put on by Boise Regional Realtors in July.
The median home price in Ada County rose from about $400,000 in August 2020 to about $537,000 in August 2024, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service. The median household income in Ada County rose from about $70,000 in 2020 to about $90,500 in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That means home prices increased about 34% and household income increased 29% in Ada County.
To escape this, some Ada County workers have left the expensive prices of Boise, Meridian or Eagle in favor of commuting from Mountain Home, which has further tightened the housing market already struggling to find homes for the estimated 500 airmen at Mountain Home Air Force Base.
In Elmore County, median home prices increased from about $244,000 in August 2020 to about $379,000 in August 2024, while the median household income increased from almost $46,000 to $55,000 in 2022 — the most recent numbers available.
That’s an increase of 55% for home prices versus about 20% for household income.
But you don’t have to be an airman to rent at Falcons Landing. Anyone can apply to live there.
High housing costs becoming a statewide issue
The issue isn’t just in Southwest Idaho — it’s a growing problem across the state.
From 2020 to 2023, 43 or 44 counties in Idaho saw an increase in housing costs by over 30%, Cochran said in July.
“How do you solve it?” Cochran said. “It’s really just a supply and demand issue. So what we’re dealing with is we just don’t have enough housing to go around … You can build your way out of this issue.”
But one difficulty in building more affordable housing, Cochran said, is a lack of state funding sources in Idaho.
“Most states use a state funding source, combined with federal resources (such as grants), to be able to build their way out of housing issues,” Cochran said. “Idaho is one of only three states in the U.S. that does not have a state funding source.”
Falcons Landing was mostly funded through federal low-income housing tax credits, which subsidize affordable housing, and some local charitable contributions. According to Cochran, Falcons Landing received no funding from the state of Idaho.
Leap recently received a $500,000 investment from Utah-based Sunwest Bank to help prop this up, according to the release. The money would help fund Leap’s housing impact fund, which funds below-market lending for builders and buyers of affordable housing.
Sunwest’s contribution brings the fund’s total to over $5 million, including $2 million from Intermountain Health and $2 million from individuals, according to the release.
A hope for the future
Cochran said there’s a simple avenue for the state to address the housing shortage: funding the Idaho Workforce Housing Fund that the Legislature created in 2022 to distribute American Rescue Plan Act money from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The fund, Cochran said, created over 1,000 housing units across the state and is still open and active. If Gov. Brad Little or the Legislature appropriate money, Leap could combine that with federal aid to build more affordable homes, Cochran said.
“Only so many projects can be built with federal funds … there’s limited resources for us to produce housing,” he said.
This story was originally published October 7, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
