BOISE, Idaho — The City of Boise is working to address the ongoing housing crisis by building 1,500 affordable homes.
City officials say they are on track to add more than 1,100 affordable homes by 2026, and hope to have a total of 1,500 shortly after. Fourteen projects are currently in progress, with two set to be complete within the next two years.
"One hundred and eighty five of those new affordable homes will be at MODA Franklin. We broke ground on that project about a month ago. And then another 90, approximately, units of housing will be coming to the intersection of State and Arthur," said Maureen Brewer, the senior manager of the City of Boise's Division of Housing and Community Development.
Both projects are part of Boise's Affordable Housing Land Trust.
"The city retains ownership of the land and we enter into a public/private partnership with a developer that actually builds the affordable housing on that parcel," Brewer said.
The developer leases the land from the City, which requires a certain number of affordable units.
Other strategies the City of Boise is pursuing include acquiring land, prioritizing land the city already owns for housing, providing funding for developers trying to bring affordable housing to Boise, and working with a variety of stakeholders to maximize resources.
"We can't build at a rate fast enough to keep up with the deep need that we have so as we march forward in creating housing we have to ensure that we're also preserving housing," Brewer said.
The City hopes to have plans in place for preservation in the first quarter of 2022.
