As Boise rents soar, assisted-living center will become temporary housing for homeless
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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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As housing costs have soared, it has become more difficult for people to leave the Boise Rescue Mission’s homeless shelters and find permanent places to live.
The dynamic has increased the need for housing that provides support to people who are ready to leave shelters but still need help before living fully on their own.
The Rescue Mission is converting an assisted living building into transitional housing. The mission bought a 55,000-square-foot building at 1777 S. Curtis Road that was previously home to Park Place Assisted Living of Boise. It is being converted into Sonrise Manor, with 60 units to serve as transitional housing.
There are 100 bedrooms in the building, and the renovations call for studio, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments. Men, women and children would be allowed to live there, with families in their own apartments.
“They’ve completed the drug and alcohol recovery program where they’ve been in work search and found work, saved their money, but there’s no place to go,” the Rev. Bill Roscoe, CEO and president of Boise Rescue Mission, told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “There’s no place they can afford to rent. And so we were thinking about what to do about that problem.”
The Rescue Mission bought the property in December and aims for the units to be fully open by September.
The entire project, to buy the property and renovate the building, costs $7 million, Roscoe said. The Rescue Mission has raised about $4 million so far and has an ongoing capital campaign to raise the rest of the money.
The 60 new units would double the organization’s supply of transitional housing. The Rescue Mission previously had 52 units of transitional housing spread throughout Boise and Nampa, with some of those units assigned specifically for veterans or women and children. The Rescue Mission operates four shelters, two in Boise and two in Nampa.
There are also plans to redo the commercial kitchen, upgrade the heating and cooling systems in each room, paint, clean and install new flooring. The Rescue Mission recently submitted applications for the necessary permits.
As the renovations take place, 13 families have already moved into units that have been completed, Roscoe said.
The previous owner of the building told Roscoe the assisted living center was going out of business, and Roscoe thought it was time to “take the plunge” and expand transitional housing resources.
Roscoe said the 52 existing units have constantly been full, and as soon someone moves out, another person is ready to take the spot.
The lack of affordable places has created a bottleneck.
“It’s no secret that it’s awfully hard to afford housing in the community right now,” Roscoe said. “And for the men and women who have been through the programs of the Rescue Mission — in other words, people who have recently experienced homelessness — it’s extremely hard to be able to move into a unit in the Treasure Valley right now.”
The Rescue Mission works with each individual or family to see how much they can afford to pay to be part of the transitional housing program. Requirements include no smoking, no drugs or alcohol and no weapons.
“We hope to make a difference in the lives of those people,” Roscoe said.
Learn more about this project at this live, virtual event. RSVP and ask a question of our panel:
This story was originally published May 24, 2022 at 4:00 AM.
