Mayors in the Treasure Valley talk growth and what municipalities are doing about it

As the secret regarding the great lifestyle afforded Idaho residents continues to spread nationwide, local city leaders remain busy addressing the complex issue of growth in their communities, and the need for affordable housing in the Treasure Valley .

The strains of the ever-changing housing market are not lost on local leaders.

“My first home in Eagle cost $260,000, and now I can’t touch my home for under $1 million,” Eagle Mayor Brad Pike told a group gathered for a business luncheon hosted by the Idaho Mortgage Lenders Association (IMLA) May 16. “There is no way I could afford my own house right now.”

Pike was joined on the panel by Garden City Mayor John Evans, as well as Amy Bowman, communications director for the city of Nampa, who represented Mayor Debbie Kling in her absence.

During the casual lunch affair attended by about 50 area finance and mortgage professionals, the trio addressed issues centered on growth and development, and how their cities are working to keep pace with the heavy influx of new residents calling Idaho home.

For local municipalities, affordable housing remains a top concern.

In fact, recent figures released by the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index indicate that the median U.S. home price has eclipsed $420,000.

According to Zillow, that figure here in Idaho is even higher, topping out at $455,000.

Evans, whose background includes a lengthy and diverse work history in the areas of development and construction, said he is “quite surprised” at the sharp rise in housing costs in his city.

“A lot of people cannot afford to come up with the funds to purchase a home,” Evans said. “Shockingly, from my history, housing prices are quite expensive these days.”

Out west in Canyon County, and with a population easily exceeding 100,000, Nampa has now slid into the No. 3 spot of Idaho’s largest cities.

And that rising population figure Bowman said means Nampa is facing many of the same challenges as its neighboring cities.

“There is a lot of concern about growth in our communities,” she said. “The topic of growth and how to handle it is extremely complex. We know it is an extremely difficult market for first-time home buyers.”

On the same day IMLA hosted its mayoral luncheon, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean delivered her State of the City address to a full house who filled the top floor of JUMP in downtown Boise.

Like her neighboring counterparts, McLean strongly emphasized the city’s goal to continue to “support diverse housing options” for all Boise residents.

“From my earliest days in office, assuring homes for people with Boise budgets has been a relentless and central focus,” McLean said. “Our job will not be finished until everyone who needs a home in Boise has a home in Boise.”

Though housing affordability issues and growth and development remain constant in each municipality, the situations differ widely from community to community.

Pike, the self-proclaimed “new kid on the block,” and a mere five months into his first term as mayor, said he understands when people clamor to “stop the growth.”

But he also said he realizes you can’t just “prevent people from moving to where they want to go.”

“How fair is it to try to restrict people from living where they want to live,” he asked. “At the same time you have to be cognizant and respectful of the people already living here.”

In his previous role as a city councilman, and prior to winning the mayor’s race in Eagle this past fall, Pike held out as the lone council member to vote against the Avimor annexation, a housing development that will widely expand the city on the north side off of Highway 55.

A retired fire captain who came to Idaho from California, Pike said he opposed the Avimor project based on what he called “essential service needs,” or rather, what he deemed the lack of essential services that will be available for the sprawling development.

“Coming from California, I tell people, ‘cut off what you knew, assimilate into what you are and we’ll move forward together,’” he said.

However, Pike stressed that as the “city’s CEO,” he has now come to terms that Avimor, or what he calls an “unplanned pregnancy,” is now an official part of the Eagle community.

“I use that phrase to bring it home to the family concept,” he said with a laugh. “We didn’t plan for it, but we’re still going to accommodate and love that baby just like anyone else in the family.”

And with an array of housing and development issues that vary widely from city to city, the idea of working together is the common theme that bonds city leaders as they battle growth and housing issues.

Now in her second term, McLean, the first woman mayor in the 150-year history of the City of Trees, said people need to work in “common cause” to provide housing solutions.

“The best solutions are found together. To protect our way of life today and provide a sustainable future for those who will come after,” she said.

Speaking on behalf of Kling, Bowman said the mayor’s six-year-run successfully leading Nampa has generated many “positive things” in the city’s downtown area.

“We have new growth and are on the cusp of additional growth,” Bowman said. “Mayor Kling has been quite engaged in her efforts to move our downtown forward.”

To help spur growth and development, Kling is actively involved almost daily, Bowman said, with local private business owners.

“Hopefully, in the next few years you will begin to see even more new development downtown for both adults and for our young people to congregate,” she said.

In Garden City, Evans said development surrounding the quaint city nestled between Boise and Eagle will have a definite impact on both housing and land values.

Plans to develop the defunct Les Bois horse racing track, a 70-acre parcel that surrounds the city, but falls under the jurisdiction of Ada County, are taking shape.

Developers envision converting a huge portion of the site into a flagship park for the county.

“It’s going to be a huge draw regionally, kind of a Central Park in the Treasure Valley,” Evans said. “This will impact the rest of the properties where the state fair takes place.”

And, as Evans pointed out, parcels adjacent to the river will also be impacted.

“One of the biggest challenges we have had in the traditional model is the change in land values along the river,” he said. “Land is $1 million an acre along the river.”

Leading the charge in Boise, McLean said she remains committed to “taking care of and meeting the needs of a growing city and one another through every stage of our lives.”

“From my earliest days in office, assuring homes for people with Boise budgets has been a relentless and central focus,” she said.

And that focus unquestionably includes those without a place to call home.

“Our housing needs analyst told us to avoid the problems of other failing cities, we needed 250 homes for people exiting homelessness,” McLean said. “We set a goal of 2026.”

McLean asked private developers building affordable homes on city land to dedicate 10% of the dwellings to families exiting homeless, and the builders she said, “rose to the challenge.”

“We are providing a path into the future for our most vulnerable residents,” McLean said. “Everyone is valuable and we do not give up on people.”

A huge swath of that path includes her pledge to commit $7.5 million in city housing funds to launch the Support Housing Investment Fund, as well as to match a $250,000 private donation to Jesse Tree, a local nonprofit housing agency that helps tenants avoid evictions.

In Eagle, growth and accompanying traffic issues are what Pike said keep him up at night.

“We’re at 37,550 residents, and projected to exceed 42,000 quickly,” he said. “You have to be constantly and strategically planning.”

And those plans eclipse every corner of the city.

“On Highway 44, we have townhomes going in,” Pike said. “Here like most other communities, there is a fine line between demand for livability and affordability.”

As a native Californian accustomed to sprawling urban settings, Pike said he understands the dynamics and challenges local leaders face when it comes to rapidly expanding populations.

“When cities here were being formed, those doing the planning at that time had no idea about the amount of growth that would take place in the Treasure Valley,” he said. “They planned in accordance to what their population was.”

In a “landlocked” city such as Eagle, Pike said it’s best to “take a step, reassess and do it again” when it comes to development.

“Once you get landlocked like we are, you find an alternative route,” he said. “Traffic flow through our city is something that keeps me up. But every town is gridlocked based on the time of day you’re traveling through it.”

For Bowman, a former loan officer who found herself addressing a group of lending professionals, it all comes down to collaboration, within the city of Nampa, and with those that sit on its borders.

“Nampa is not its own island. All we do impacts the other cities around us,” she said. “It’s all about collaboration between the mayors. We could not do anything without partnerships and collaboration.”

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