Everyone in Idaho needs to step up, help solve the crisis of rising rents and evictions

We first met Sara, a mom of two, in eviction court over Zoom when she was on her hospice bed in her living room. Sara had been hospitalized for a few months and had fallen behind in paying her rent. Her property manager, an out-of-state company, had hired a contract attorney. When Sara didn’t pay her rent, she was given a three-day eviction notice. On the fourth day, her property manager’s attorney filed for eviction. Five days later Sara was summoned to eviction court while she was literally on her deathbed.

It has been a year of housing loss for many of Idaho’s working families. Sara’s case is one of hundreds. In 2021, 853 eviction hearings have been scheduled so far in the Treasure Valley, and eviction court is still being held online nearly two years after the pandemic began. For the state of Idaho, this number is in the thousands. And there is a much larger number of evictions happening outside of the regular court process that we cannot track, as many families continue to live in their cars and enter our emergency shelters.

Boise is now ranked the least affordable place to live in the U.S. as rent increased by nearly 40% over the last year. Population growth and demand for rentals has increased. Many rentals have been sold and converted to homeowners. Out-of-state companies and investors continue to purchase and manage more rentals, which has led to more rentals being treated like profit centers and caused relationships and communication between landlords and tenants to be strained. To top it off, Idaho continues to contain few protections for tenants in its code.

Renters are routinely seeing rent increases they cannot afford. One senior citizen we met in eviction court had her rent increased by $450 per month. Others have received 30-day notices to not renew their lease, as many landlords have chosen to sell their homes. Unfortunately 30 days is not enough time to find a new place to live when the vacancy rate is less than 1%. We have seen some families in court over a month after receiving their notice, simply because they couldn’t secure a new place to live in time.

The housing crisis is a national problem, and the federal government has stepped in with some protections for tenants. However, not all of these protections have worked perfectly for Idaho. The eviction moratorium was in place from September 2020 through August of this year. Unfortunately, the moratorium was not consistently enforced in Idaho. During that time, there were 820 eviction hearings in the Treasure Valley alone.

Rental assistance funding has also been made available to states, but much of the funding isn’t trickling down to Idaho’s most vulnerable families, who might have barriers with digital access, awareness, mental health, eligibility, and simply the fact that they are busy working two or three jobs. Despite $200 million in rental assistance being made available to Idaho, many people are still ending up in court or our emergency shelters as much of that funding remains unspent.

It’s very possible to keep people housed with a little bit of support and funding at the right time. For Sara, our case management team paid her rental arrears and she was able to pass peacefully in her home.

I have some hope that governments, businesses, foundations and people in our communities will continue to step up for housing nonprofits across the state as we face down an unprecedented crisis. Idahoans will need to work together and get creative to stay ahead of this unique problem.

This story was originally published December 28, 2021 at 4:00 AM.