The State of Housing
in Idaho

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Introduction

Behind every number in this report is a person trying to answer one plain question: can I afford to live where I work? In Idaho, more and more often, the answer is no - and the people who hear it first are the ones who keep the state running. The ski patroller in Ketchum. The nurse in Sandpoint. The teacher in Driggs. The line cook in Boise. They are not doing anything wrong. The math just stopped working under them, and it stopped faster than almost anywhere in the country.

Idaho is the state most Americans wake up surprised to learn about. Between 2020 and 2023 it was the fastest or second-fastest growing state in the country every single year, posting growth rates of 2.9 percent in 2021 alone - U.S. Census Bureau Population Estimates. The driver was not births. It was inmigration, and the largest single source of that inmigration was California - Idaho Capital Sun.

Between 2020 and 2022, Idaho gained roughly 84,000 new residents through net migration. Boise's median single-family home price rose from $325,000 in early 2020 to a peak of $550,000 in mid-2022 - a 69 percent jump in 30 months - Boise Regional REALTORS Market Stats. Sun Valley housing, never cheap, accelerated to a different stratosphere entirely. Sandpoint, three hours north of Boise on the Washington border, became a destination for buyers fleeing Seattle and Spokane. The state's housing math broke faster than its homebuilding could respond.

This report consolidates research across ten Idaho counties and metros, covering the state's two resort spines (the central Idaho ski belt and the Panhandle), the Treasure Valley metro along I-84, the eastern federal-lab economy around Idaho Falls, and the university town of Moscow on the Washington border. Every statistic is sourced to a specific federal dataset, government report, or verified news article. The goal is simple: present the reality of housing in Idaho with the rigor it deserves, so the people affected - and the people in a position to help - can see the full picture.

And there is a second story folded inside the first. The crisis is real, and Idaho genuinely needs to build. But across these ten markets, a large share of the homes that already exist are not reaching the people who need them - and what holds them back is often not a missing building. It is a missing layer of trust. The data builds to that, county by county. The numbers tell a story Idaho has barely had time to absorb.

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Idaho: The Big Picture

Statewide Housing Supply

Wages vs. Housing Costs

Cost-Burdened Renters

Idaho's Minimum-Wage Reality

Idaho has not raised its minimum wage since 2009, when it matched the federal floor at $7.25/hour. It is one of 20 states with no state-level minimum wage above the federal rate, and one of only five states whose legislatures have actively blocked municipalities from setting local minimums above the state rate - Idaho Statesman. That gap, $7.25/hour against a statewide 2BR housing wage of $27.83/hour, is the largest absolute gap between minimum wage and housing wage of any state in the Mountain West. A worker earning Idaho minimum wage needs to work 154 hours per week, every week, to afford a statewide-average two-bedroom apartment at federal HUD Fair Market Rent. With only 168 hours in a week, that leaves 14 hours for sleeping, eating, and everything else combined.

Statewide Initiatives

• Idaho Workforce Housing Fund - Established with a 2022 ARPA appropriation, the fund supports affordable rental and homeownership development for households earning up to 140 percent AMI; subsequent sessions have debated expansion proposals. - Idaho Housing and Finance Association
• Accessory Dwelling Unit policy debates - Idaho legislators have introduced multiple ADU-related bills in recent sessions; municipal-level ADU permitting rules continue to vary across the state, and outcomes are tracked by the Idaho Statesman legislative desk. - Idaho Statesman
• Governor Brad Little's housing initiatives - The Governor's office has announced multiple infrastructure-side housing initiatives, including workforce housing infrastructure funding (water and sewer extensions to enable new subdivisions) and revolving loan vehicles for affordable housing developers. - Office of the Governor
• Idaho Housing and Finance Association - State's quasi-public housing finance agency; administers LIHTC, HOME funds, and the state's first-time homebuyer programs. - IHFA

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The Resort Counties

Five counties drive Idaho's resort housing story. Each pairs a small year-round population with a tourism economy multiple times its size. The pattern is consistent across all five: housing exists, but the workers who keep the lifts running, the ski patrol staffed, the restaurants open, and the schools functioning increasingly cannot afford to live there.

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Blaine County

Key Towns: Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue Population (2024 est.): 25,261 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: ~14,200 | Occupied: ~9,800 (69 percent) | Vacant: ~4,400 (31 percent) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: ~3,470 (35.4 percent of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 2025 AMI (family of 4, Wood River HMFA): $124,200 - HUD User AMI Tables

Blaine County is Idaho's Summit County. It contains Sun Valley Resort (independently owned by the Holding family through Sinclair Oil heirs, and an Ikon Pass partner resort since the 2022-23 season after switching from Epic, with deep historical ties as the first destination ski resort in America, opened 1936), Ketchum's restaurant and gallery economy, Hailey's airport (Friedman Memorial, the gateway for private jets feeding Sun Valley), and Bellevue as the southernmost community where year-round workers still find lower rents - though that gap is closing fast.

Rent Data (Wood River HMFA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2020-FY2026: +29.8 percent ($1,233 to $1,600)
• Wood River HMFA still ranks among the highest-cost non-metro FMR areas in the United States - HUD FMR Lookup
• FY2026 note: HUD's FY2026 schedule reflects a methodology change that materially reduced the Wood River HMFA 2BR FMR from the FY2025 value. Actual market-rate Ketchum rents documented by the Idaho Mountain Express remain well above the federal FMR benchmark.
• Market-rate 1BR (Ketchum, 2025): ~$2,400/month - Idaho Mountain Express
• Median single-family home price (Ketchum, 2024): $2.45 million - Sun Valley Board of REALTORS
• Median single-family home price (Hailey, 2024): $945,000 - Sun Valley Board of REALTORS

Wages vs. Housing

Vacancy, Second Homes, and Short-Term Rentals

Housing Deficit and Workforce Impact

Sun Valley Resort and St. Luke's are both responding with employer-built housing pilots. Sun Valley Resort completed a 60-bed seasonal worker dormitory in 2023 at the base of Dollar Mountain; St. Luke's purchased an apartment building in Hailey in 2024 specifically to house nursing staff. - Idaho Mountain Express

The Blaine County dynamic shows up most acutely in the Hailey-to-Ketchum commute pattern: workers who could once afford Hailey rents (and from there commute 11 miles north to Ketchum and Sun Valley jobs) are now being displaced south to Bellevue and even out of the county entirely, into Lincoln County and the smaller agricultural towns along US-93. Bellevue's median rent has risen 54 percent since 2020 - faster than Ketchum's in absolute percent because Bellevue is absorbing the displaced - Idaho Mountain Express.

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Teton County (Idaho)

Key Towns: Driggs, Victor, Tetonia Population (2023 est.): 13,033 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: ~6,400 | Occupied: ~4,800 (75 percent) | Vacant: ~1,600 (25 percent) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: ~1,250 (26 percent of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023 2025 AMI (family of 4, Teton County ID): $108,500 - HUD User AMI Tables

Teton County Idaho is the bedroom community for Teton County Wyoming - which contains Jackson Hole, the most expensive housing market in the United States by median home price-to-income ratio. Workers priced out of Jackson commute over Teton Pass (elevation 8,431 feet) into Driggs and Victor, where rents are lower but climbing steeply. Grand Targhee Resort sits on the Wyoming side of the Tetons but is accessed exclusively from the Idaho side via Alta, Wyoming - and most of its workforce lives in Driggs.

Rent Data (Teton County ID, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2019-FY2026: +31.9 percent ($1,016 to $1,340)
• FY2026 note: The HUD FY2026 schedule revised Teton County ID's 2BR FMR downward. Local market rents documented by Teton Valley News and Driggs-area realtors remain materially higher than the federal benchmark; Jackson-side demand continues to set the regional pricing floor.
• Median single-family home price (Driggs/Victor, 2024): $725,000 - Teton Board of REALTORS

Key Data

The Teton Pass dynamic creates a unique inverse: workers earn Jackson wages but pay Driggs rents (still less expensive than Jackson, where 2BR FMR is $2,449 and the median home price exceeds $4 million). Teton County Idaho's NLIHC 2BR housing wage of $22.48/hr understates the local pressure - HUD's FY2026 FMR for Driggs is materially lower than the rents that Teton Valley News and the Teton Board of REALTORS document on the ground, and the Jackson-side wage spillover plus Grand Targhee staff demand keep the actual asking rents well above the federal benchmark.

Workforce Impact

• Driggs's primary employer outside the resort economy is the local school district, which reported losing seven certified teachers between 2022 and 2024 explicitly citing housing costs - Teton Valley News
• Madison Memorial Hospital (Rexburg) and Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center (Idaho Falls) both report Driggs-resident applicants increasingly declining offers due to commute distances becoming unaffordable when fuel + housing are combined - East Idaho News

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Valley County

Key Towns: McCall, Cascade, Donnelly, New Meadows Population (2023 est.): 12,254 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: ~10,800 | Occupied: ~5,400 (50 percent) | Vacant: ~5,400 (50 percent) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: ~1,440 (26.7 percent of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023

Valley County contains McCall (on Payette Lake) and Tamarack Resort (a four-season resort that emerged from bankruptcy in 2018 and has been steadily expanding ever since). McCall has long been Boise's mountain weekend retreat - two hours north on Highway 55 - but the post-2020 surge in remote-work residency and second-home buying has compressed year-round housing to a degree the local economy has not previously experienced.

Rent Data (Valley County, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2019-FY2026: +39.5 percent ($853 to $1,190)
• FY2026 note: HUD's revised FY2026 schedule lowered Valley County's 2BR FMR below the trailing trajectory; McCall-area market rents documented by Mountain Central Association of REALTORS remain materially higher than the federal benchmark.
• Vacancy rate (50 percent) is the highest of any Idaho county studied and reflects the dominant second-home/vacation-property mix in the McCall corridor

Key Data

McCall's situation is closest to Steamboat Springs (Routt County, Colorado): a destination that grew up as a working community, was discovered by Boise wealth in the 1990s, was rediscovered by California and Pacific Northwest wealth in 2020-2022, and is now confronting whether the people who keep it functional - paramedics, school teachers, restaurant cooks, ski-area lift operators - can still afford to live within commuting distance.

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Bonner County

Key Towns: Sandpoint, Ponderay, Priest River, Hope Population (2023 est.): 49,891 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: ~26,300 | Occupied: ~21,200 (81 percent) | Vacant: ~5,100 (19 percent) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: ~5,090 (24 percent of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023

Bonner County is Idaho's most rapidly transforming Panhandle market. Sandpoint sits on Lake Pend Oreille (the fifth-deepest lake in the United States) and 12 miles below Schweitzer Mountain Resort, which Alterra acquired in 2023 (announced June 1, closed August 22) as part of its Ikon Pass expansion - bringing Schweitzer onto the same season pass as Steamboat, Aspen, and Mammoth. The Alterra acquisition is widely expected to accelerate Sandpoint's resort-real-estate transformation in the same pattern the company's other acquisitions have followed; Schweitzer has since opened the 84-unit Schralpenhaus employee housing development to absorb part of the workforce squeeze. - Bonner County Daily Bee, Sandpoint Reader

Rent Data (Bonner County, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2019-FY2026: +50.4 percent ($836 to $1,257)
• FY2026 note: HUD revised Bonner County's 2BR FMR downward in the FY2026 schedule. Sandpoint market asking rents documented by the Sandpoint Reader and Selkirk Association of REALTORS remain materially above the federal benchmark, particularly within Schweitzer-adjacent neighborhoods.
• Median single-family home price (Sandpoint, 2024): $625,000 (up from $295,000 in 2019, a +112 percent increase in five years) - Selkirk Association of REALTORS

Key Data

Bonner County's NLIHC 2BR housing wage of $18.56/hr - more than two and a half times the state's $7.25 minimum - is the revelatory data point: a county with a long-standing working-class economy (timber, agriculture, fishing) now demands a wage threshold that conventional minimum-wage Sandpoint employment cannot reach. The Pacific Northwest inmigration story - documented by the Idaho Department of Labor as the single largest origin source for Bonner County newcomers post-2020 - is rewriting the local rent baseline faster than any local policy response, and the post-2023 Schweitzer-Alterra ownership change is layered on top.

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Custer County

Key Towns: Stanley, Challis, Mackay Population (2023 est.): 4,464 - Census QuickFacts Total Housing Units: ~3,800 | Occupied: ~1,950 (51 percent) | Vacant: ~1,850 (49 percent) - ACS 2019-2023 Renter Households: ~395 (20 percent of occupied) - ACS 2019-2023

Custer County is Idaho's most remote ski-economy-adjacent county. Stanley (year-round population: 70) is the northern gateway to Sun Valley, a 65-mile drive over Galena Summit (elevation 8,701 feet, often closed in winter). It is also the gateway to the Sawtooth Wilderness, the Salmon River whitewater corridor, and one of the most concentrated outdoor-recreation economies in the United States. The Custer County housing story is, in effect, a Blaine County externality: workers who cannot afford the Wood River Valley drift north into Stanley and Challis, where prices have followed.

Rent Data (Custer County, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2020-FY2026: +42.8 percent ($750 to $1,071)

Key Data

Stanley's housing story is the smallest scale in Idaho but the highest amplitude per capita: with 70 year-round residents and a tourism economy that swings 40x in summer, even modest second-home buying displaces entire categories of workforce.

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Resort Counties at a Glance

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The Treasure Valley

The Treasure Valley - Idaho's name for the Boise metropolitan area extending from Boise west through Meridian, Nampa, and Caldwell into the agricultural counties on the Oregon border - is the demographic and economic center of the state. It is also the housing-price epicenter of Idaho's post-2020 transformation. Boise was the single most-discussed housing market in the United States for an 18-month stretch between mid-2020 and late-2021, repeatedly topping lists of fastest-appreciating metros, with that appreciation directly traceable to inmigration from higher-cost coastal markets.

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Ada County

Key Towns: Boise, Meridian, Eagle, Garden City, Star, Kuna City Population (Boise, 2025 est.): 245,000 - Boise State Public Policy Center County Population (2023 est.): 524,033 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income (Boise, 2023): $77,531 - Census ACS

Rent Data (Boise City, ID HMFA - covering Ada, Boise, Canyon, and Owyhee counties, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2019-FY2026: +71.9 percent ($963 to $1,655)
• The Boise City, ID HMFA was among the fastest-appreciating large-metro FMR areas in the United States for FY2022 FMR purposes - Bisnow Boise
• Note on area definition: HUD's official area name for this market is the Boise City, ID HMFA (Ada, Boise, Canyon, and Owyhee counties); commonly referred to as the Boise-Nampa MSA in everyday usage.

Wages vs. Housing

Housing Shortage

Inmigration

Boise's post-2020 housing story is the most documented California-driven housing-price shock in the United States outside Austin, Texas. Between January 2020 and June 2022, the Boise MSA's median single-family home price rose 73 percent. That ranks first nationally among major metros for that period - Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco research. The dynamic reversed partially in 2023-2024 (median prices fell from $565,000 peak to roughly $548,000), but the housing-wage-to-rent gap remained: Boise's 2BR housing wage of $35.35 against an Idaho minimum wage of $7.25 produces the largest gap of any state capital in the Mountain West.

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Canyon County

Key Towns: Nampa, Caldwell, Middleton, Parma Population (2023 est.): 246,367 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income (Nampa, 2023): $62,310 - Census ACS

Canyon County is the western half of the Boise MSA. Nampa is now Idaho's third-largest city (population ~111,000) and Caldwell is rapidly approaching Idaho Falls in size. The county absorbs much of the Treasure Valley's overflow housing demand: workers commute east to Boise jobs from less-expensive Nampa and Caldwell housing.

Rent Data

The Boise City, ID HMFA FMR applies to Canyon County as well (Nampa, Caldwell, and the rest of Canyon County share an FMR with Ada, Boise, and Owyhee counties). 2026 2BR FMR: $1,655 - HUD FY2026 FMR Schedule

Key Data

Canyon County's growth rate (12.4 percent population in three years) is the fastest in Idaho and among the fastest in any county in the United States with population over 200,000. The housing-supply response has been substantial - Nampa permitted approximately 2,400 single-family homes in 2023 alone - but the supply has not closed the wage-to-rent gap.

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Treasure Valley at a Glance

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North Idaho and the Eastern Plateau

Outside the resort spines and the Treasure Valley, Idaho's other major housing markets sit in three distinct economic geographies: the Spokane-adjacent Coeur d'Alene metro in the Panhandle, the federal-laboratory anchor of Idaho Falls, and the university town of Moscow on the Washington border.

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Kootenai County

Key Towns: Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls, Hayden, Rathdrum Population (2023 est.): 184,538 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income (CDA, 2023): $66,485 - Census ACS

Coeur d'Alene's economic and housing fate is inseparable from Spokane, Washington - 30 miles west, the regional employment center. Coeur d'Alene operates as Spokane's bedroom city while also functioning as a tourist economy in its own right (Lake Coeur d'Alene, Silver Mountain Resort 50 miles east). The post-2020 inmigration story added a third overlay: ideology-driven inmigration from coastal Washington and Oregon, documented extensively in regional media as part of a broader pattern across the Idaho Panhandle - The Spokesman-Review, Coeur d'Alene Press.

Rent Data (Coeur d'Alene MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2019-FY2026: +67.6 percent ($923 to $1,547)

Key Data

Kootenai County is the second-largest source of Washington-state inmigrants to Idaho (after Bonner County). The Coeur d'Alene Press has run extended coverage of the housing-pricing impact through 2023-2024, noting in particular the role of all-cash buyers from the Seattle metro area in displacing local first-time buyers - Coeur d'Alene Press.

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Bonneville County

Key Towns: Idaho Falls, Ammon, Iona, Ucon Population (2023 est.): 132,135 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income (Idaho Falls, 2023): $63,925 - Census ACS

Bonneville County's economy is anchored by Idaho National Laboratory (INL), the U.S. Department of Energy's nuclear research facility - the single largest employer in eastern Idaho with approximately 6,100 employees - Idaho National Laboratory. INL's federal-paycheck wage anchor produces a stable middle-income economy that has historically kept Idaho Falls housing more affordable than the Treasure Valley. That advantage has narrowed sharply since 2020. Idaho Falls is also the gateway to Jackson Hole via Teton Pass (90 miles east), making it a secondary commuter base for some Jackson workers.

Rent Data (Idaho Falls MSA, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2019-FY2026: +65.4 percent ($789 to $1,305)

Key Data

Idaho Falls is the clearest case of "second-order" displacement in Idaho. Workers priced out of Jackson Hole (Teton WY) increasingly look to Idaho Falls as a viable home base; Idaho Falls workers themselves, particularly INL contractors at the lower end of the wage scale, are increasingly cost-burdened by the rent appreciation that displacement has caused. The INL salary anchor means median household income remains higher than the state average, partially absorbing rent shock - but the 65 percent seven-year FMR increase has still outpaced wage growth at every level except senior federal employees.

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Latah County

Key Towns: Moscow, Troy, Genesee, Potlatch Population (2023 est.): 41,283 - Census QuickFacts Median Household Income (Moscow, 2023): $44,820 - Census ACS

Latah County is dominated by the University of Idaho (Moscow), the state's flagship public university with approximately 12,286 enrolled students in Fall 2024 - University of Idaho. Moscow's housing economics are the textbook university-town pattern: high renter share (~52 percent of households), student-driven seasonal turnover, dorm-vs-off-campus pricing pressure, and a perennial squeeze on faculty/staff/graduate-student housing. The Washington State University Pullman campus, eight miles west, doubles the regional student housing demand.

Rent Data (Latah County, 2BR FMR)

• Cumulative FY2020-FY2026: +35.7 percent ($745 to $1,011)
• FY2026 note: HUD's FY2026 schedule held Latah County's 2BR FMR essentially flat versus FY2024 (down roughly 2 percent); Moscow market rents documented by Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Latah County Association of REALTORS remain higher than the federal benchmark, particularly in student-adjacent neighborhoods.

Key Data

The Moscow housing story has the structural quirk of all college towns: the cost-burden statistic includes graduate students living on $20,000 stipends paying $900/month rents, which produces high cost-burden percentages that overstate the structural rent crisis relative to the working-age non-student population. The underlying story is, however, real - faculty and staff retention has been a documented challenge for the University of Idaho since 2022, with the university initiating an internal housing-support working group in 2023 - Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

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Themes Across the Data

Five patterns emerge from Idaho's housing data that distinguish it from the Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, or Montana templates. None were preselected; each surfaced as the county-by-county data was reviewed in sequence.

1. The California Shock

No state in the Mountain West has absorbed a larger inmigration shock from a single origin state than Idaho has from California between 2020 and 2023. The Idaho Department of Labor's migration data shows California as the single largest origin source for net new Idaho residents every year since 2020, with cumulative California-to-Idaho net migration exceeding 30,000 people in just three years - Idaho Department of Labor. The housing-price consequence is visible in every Treasure Valley and Panhandle market in this report:

• Boise median home price: $325,000 (Q1 2020) -> $548,000 (Q1 2026), +68.6 percent in 6 years
• Coeur d'Alene median home price: $295,000 (Q1 2020) -> $498,000 (Q1 2026), +68.8 percent
• Sandpoint median home price: $295,000 (Q1 2020) -> $625,000 (Q1 2026), +111.9 percent
• Nampa median home price: ~$243,000 (Q1 2020) -> $415,000 (Q1 2026), +70.8 percent

The shock is not uniform across Idaho. Eastern Idaho (Idaho Falls, Rexburg, Pocatello) absorbed fewer California migrants and experienced lower price growth. The Panhandle (Coeur d'Alene, Sandpoint) absorbed primarily Washington and Oregon migrants - a different but parallel pattern. But the unifying story is the same: an outside-Idaho buyer base, often paying cash, repriced housing faster than local wage growth.

2. The Sun Valley Wealth Enclave

Blaine County is unique in the Mountain West for the velocity of its private-jet economy. Friedman Memorial Airport in Hailey routinely ranks in the top 10 U.S. airports for private-jet operations per resident - Idaho Mountain Express. The Sun Valley housing-displacement pattern is unlike Aspen-Snowmass only in degree, not in kind: a wealth concentration so intense that Hailey (the long-time workforce community) and now Bellevue (the new workforce community) are being pushed out of affordability as displaced workers buy what was previously workforce housing. Median Ketchum home prices passed $2 million in 2022 - the threshold typically considered an inflection point for "wealth enclave" status nationally - and have not retreated.

3. The Pacific Northwest Spillover

The Idaho Panhandle (Bonner, Kootenai counties) is absorbing a housing-price shock that originated in Seattle, Portland, and Spokane - not in California. The dynamic is structurally similar to the California-to-Boise story but with different cultural and political overlays. Local reporting in the Coeur d'Alene Press, the Sandpoint Reader, and The Spokesman-Review consistently identifies three drivers: (a) post-2020 remote-work mobility from Seattle, (b) ideology-driven inmigration tied to Idaho's political profile, and (c) ongoing Spokane-area cost-of-living migration as Spokane itself becomes less affordable. The Panhandle's housing-wage gaps now sit within striking distance of Boise's: Coeur d'Alene's $28.08 housing wage is closing on Boise's $35.35, in a county that was a discount alternative to Spokane as recently as 2019.

4. The Federal Minimum-Wage Trap

Idaho is the most consequential test case in the United States for what happens when a state's housing-wage trajectory diverges from its minimum-wage policy. Idaho's $7.25 minimum has not changed since 2009. Idaho's statewide 2BR housing wage has risen from approximately $14.50/hr in 2009 to $27.83/hr in 2026 - a 92 percent increase against zero minimum-wage movement. The 154-hour-per-week-at-minimum-wage threshold for a statewide-average 2BR rental leaves a minimum-wage Idahoan 14 hours of every 168-hour week for sleeping, eating, commuting, and everything else combined; the math is functionally impossible even before factoring in non-rent expenses. Idaho's legislature has actively blocked municipal minimum-wage variation (HB 463, 2016), making the federal floor the only meaningful constraint - and Congress has not raised the federal minimum wage since 2009.

The practical consequence is documented across every county in this report: the renter base earning at or near minimum wage is increasingly housing-insecure, and the workforce-housing programs that exist in Blaine, Teton (Idaho), Valley, Bonner, and Ada counties are all attempting to substitute for what is, fundamentally, a wage policy gap.

5. The University Town Inversion

Latah County (Moscow) and Bonneville County (Idaho Falls, via INL) both demonstrate a pattern where a stable, federally-subsidized or research-driven institutional employer creates a wage floor that partially insulates the local economy from the worst of Idaho's housing-wage gap - but increasingly fails to do so. INL salaries have kept pace with national STEM wage growth; Idaho Falls housing has not stayed proportional. Moscow's university-anchored economy has historically tolerated high renter percentages because graduate-student wages are subsidized; the 2024 inflation-adjusted stipend numbers no longer cover Moscow rents, and the University of Idaho is responding with internal subsidy programs. The pattern suggests Idaho's institutional employers - INL, the university system, the major medical systems (St. Luke's, Kootenai Health) - will increasingly be drawn into housing-policy debates whether they intend to be or not.

6. The Schweitzer-Alterra Effect

Alterra's 2023 acquisition of Schweitzer Mountain Resort (announced June 1, closed August 22) brought Sandpoint onto the same Ikon Pass season-ticket footprint as Steamboat, Aspen-Snowmass, Mammoth, Palisades Tahoe, and Big Sky. Sun Valley is an Ikon Pass partner since the 2022-23 season - it switched from Epic - but it remains independently owned by the Holding family through Sinclair Oil heirs, not an Alterra property; Idaho's only Alterra-owned mountain is Schweitzer. Industry data from Steamboat and Mammoth suggests that Alterra acquisition is followed within five years by a measurable acceleration in luxury-second-home construction adjacent to the resort, a tightening of seasonal-worker housing supply, and a sharper bifurcation between resort-economy wages and resort-economy housing costs - SAM Magazine industry analysis. Schweitzer's response so far has been the 84-unit Schralpenhaus employee housing development, opened to absorb part of the workforce squeeze. The leading indicator to watch in 2026-2028 will be Sandpoint median home prices and Schweitzer-adjacent rents - Bonner County Daily Bee, Sandpoint Reader.

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The Hidden Capacity: Rooms That Could Exist

The data above documents Idaho's crisis. But embedded in that crisis is something less obvious: there is housing capacity in these communities that could be unlocked, if the infrastructure existed to connect it safely.

This is not an argument against building. Idaho needs the homes, and it needs them quickly. It is about the rooms, units, and properties that already exist but are not reaching the people who need them.

The Vacancy Paradox in Numbers

Across the five Idaho resort counties studied (Blaine, Teton ID, Valley, Bonner, Custer), approximately 17,750 housing units sit vacant - almost entirely as second homes, vacation rentals, or investment properties. Meanwhile, approximately 11,650 renter households compete for an extremely limited supply of year-round rentals. The ratio of vacant units to renter households in Idaho's resort counties is roughly 1.5:1 - lower than Colorado's 2:1 but still substantial.

Workforce Housing Proof of Concept (Idaho-Specific)

Blaine County has the longest-running workforce-housing model in Idaho via ARCH Community Housing Trust. ARCH manages approximately 150 deed-restricted units across the Wood River Valley and has a multi-year waiting list. Sun Valley Resort and St. Luke's Wood River Medical Center have both initiated employer-owned housing programs since 2022.

Comparable Idaho workforce-housing initiatives are emerging:

• Teton Valley Community School District purchased a small apartment building in Driggs for teacher housing in 2024 - Teton Valley News
• City of McCall approved a $4.2 million general obligation bond in 2023 for employee housing development - Idaho Statesman
• Idaho Housing and Finance Association announced a $40 million revolving loan fund specifically for workforce-housing developers in late 2024 - IHFA

The Trust Gap

The informal channels Idaho renters use to find housing - Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, regional groups - have the same lack of verification documented in Colorado. The Coeur d'Alene Press has covered an increase in rental scams in 2023-2024 targeting Pacific Northwest inmigrants unfamiliar with Idaho rental markets - Coeur d'Alene Press. The Idaho Real Estate Commission maintains an active scam-warning page that mirrors the Colorado DRE's structure - Idaho Real Estate Commission.

The Sandpoint Reader has separately documented the dynamic of out-of-state buyers paying cash for Bonner County properties, leaving the long-term rental market reliant on a shrinking pool of in-county landlords who have neither the tools nor the time to screen tenants effectively - Sandpoint Reader. The trust gap exists in Idaho just as it does in Colorado; the channels through which housing is found are the same; the consequences for cost-burdened renters - scams, lease falls-through, unverified roommate situations - are the same.

The Demand Signal

When verified workforce housing comes to market in Idaho, demand patterns match those documented in Colorado:

• ARCH Community Housing Trust in Blaine County maintains a waitlist of approximately 850 households for ~150 units - 5.7:1 ratio - ARCH Community Housing Trust
• McCall's bond-financed employee housing project received approximately 380 applications for 24 units when it opened in 2024 - 15.8:1 ratio - Idaho Statesman
• Boise City Housing Authority Section 8 waitlist contains approximately 3,200 households with average wait times exceeding 5 years - Boise City Housing Authority

The demand exists. The supply, particularly the latent supply locked in second-home and short-term-rental inventory, exists too. What is missing is the trusted infrastructure to connect them.

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Why This Matters

The data across these ten Idaho counties paints a clear picture, and it is not confined to one region or one kind of market. It touches resort towns and working cities alike. It is pushing out teachers, nurses, ski patrollers, restaurant cooks, and the young families who would otherwise put down roots. Idaho's version of the crisis is distinct in three respects - the speed of the inmigration shock, more compressed than Colorado's decade-long evolution; the widest absolute gap between minimum wage and housing wage in the Mountain West; and the outsized role of out-of-state cash buyers - but the human result is the same.

The numbers point to a few clear conclusions.

Idaho genuinely needs more homes. Idaho is building faster than most of the Mountain West - roughly 17,800 permits issued in 2024 - but still short of the 22,000 to 25,000 units a year it needs to keep pace - Common Sense Institute Idaho. That construction is real, and it matters. But it moves slowly, and in the resort counties the deeper problem is that homes which already exist have been pulled into uses that do not serve the people who work there.

Trust is how more of that housing comes online. Look back at the vacancy paradox: across the five resort counties studied, roughly 17,750 units sit vacant while about 11,650 renter households compete for scraps. A real share of that capacity can be unlocked - the spare room, the second home leased to a local instead of a tourist, the hesitant owner with a cabin who has never listed it. What holds them back is not a shortage of rooms. It is the risk of handing your home to someone you cannot verify, and the risk of wiring a deposit to a landlord who may not be real. Where that trust is missing, the room never gets listed - and in Idaho, where the Coeur d'Alene Press has documented rising rental scams aimed at newcomers, that risk is not hypothetical - Coeur d'Alene Press.

Verification turns hidden capacity into housing. When housing is this scarce, trust becomes the thing that moves supply. Verified listings, verified landlords, verified roommates - these are not nice-to-haves. They are what lets an owner say yes, and what lets a renter commit. Idaho has already shown the demand: ARCH Community Housing Trust's waitlist runs roughly 5.7 households deep for every unit it manages, and McCall's bond-financed workforce housing drew about 380 applications for 24 homes - ARCH Community Housing Trust, Idaho Statesman. The rooms draw people the moment they can be trusted.

This is where you come in. When the housing-wage gap is as wide as Idaho's - 154 statewide hours a week at minimum wage for a 2BR, 140 hours in Blaine County, 195 hours in Boise - every dollar and every decision carries weight. If you live and work in Idaho, the moves you make now - getting verified, building a track record a landlord can actually check, choosing a place where trust is built in - put you a few steps ahead in a market that rewards exactly that. And if you own a spare room or a second property, the same trust that protects you is what lets you open it to a neighbor instead of a stranger.

That is why Rookd exists. Not to replace the homes Idaho still needs to build - that takes policy, investment, and construction. But to unlock the housing that already exists, by making trust something you can prove. A way to verify that the listing is real, the landlord is legitimate, and the person you are sharing a home with is who they say they are.

The Idaho parallel to Colorado's Summit County is Blaine County's Sun Valley-Hailey-Bellevue chain, where service workers, ski patrollers, nurses, teachers, and restaurant cooks keep the resort economy running and increasingly cannot find verifiable, affordable, year-round housing. The parallel to Aspen's wealth concentration is the same chain at its northern end: a Ketchum median home price above $2.4 million in a town where the workers serving the second-home buyers earn a small fraction of what the houses sell for. Idaho is on a faster trajectory than Colorado, which gives the trust question a shorter clock.

The more trust we unlock, the more rooms come online. In a market this tight, that is not a small thing. It is the lever.

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Methodology and Notes

Data Sources

This report draws from five primary categories of data, identical in structure to the Colorado housing research methodology:

1. Federal housing data: HUD Fair Market Rents via HUD FMR Lookup and HUD FMR Schedules, HUD Area Median Income tables via HUD User
2. National Low Income Housing Coalition: Housing wages, hours-per-week calculations, and cost-burden data from NLIHC Out of Reach Idaho (2024 and 2025 editions) and the NLIHC Idaho Housing Needs Profile
3. MIT Living Wage Calculator: County-level living wage data from livingwage.mit.edu
4. U.S. Census Bureau: Population, vacancy rates, housing unit counts, and tenure data from the 2020 Decennial Census and American Community Survey 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates (Tables B25003, DP04, B25064)
5. Idaho state agencies and local reporting: Idaho Housing and Finance Association, Idaho Department of Labor Migration Analysis, Common Sense Institute Idaho, Boise State Public Policy Center, and local newspapers (Idaho Mountain Express, Sandpoint Reader, Coeur d'Alene Press, Idaho Statesman, Idaho Capital Sun, Teton Valley News, Boise State Public Radio, East Idaho News, Moscow-Pullman Daily News)

Data Verification and Source Accuracy

Every federal figure in this report - all 10 county-level 2BR Fair Market Rents, the statewide and county-level NLIHC 2BR housing wages, the statewide housing-wage and hours-per-week figures, the Blaine County population, the University of Idaho enrollment, and Idaho's 2020-2023 population-growth rate - was checked against its live source as of June 16, 2026: the HUD FY2026 Fair Market Rent Schedule, the NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 dataset, and U.S. Census Bureau population estimates.

A few ownership and policy facts that are frequently reported incorrectly are worth stating plainly, because they shape how the resort-county data should be read. Sun Valley Resort is independently held by the Holding family (Sinclair Oil) and has been an Ikon Pass partner since the 2022-23 season; it is not an Alterra property. Schweitzer Mountain Resort was acquired by Alterra in 2023. Tamarack Resort is owned by MMG Equity Partners and added 2-day partial Ikon Pass access for 2026-27; it was not acquired by Alterra. Idaho's 2022 workforce-housing funding traces to an ARPA appropriation, not to HB 437 of 2024, which concerns midwifery licensure rather than housing.

The methodology of housing-wage-hours-per-week calculations follows NLIHC's standard convention (annual rent equal to 30 percent of annual income; required hourly wage equal to that income divided by 2,080 working hours; required hours-per-week-at-minimum-wage computed as that required wage divided by the applicable minimum wage, then multiplied by 40). All Idaho counties use the state minimum wage of $7.25/hr since no Idaho municipality has a higher local minimum wage (Idaho HB 463 of 2016 preempts local minimum-wage ordinances).

Idaho-Specific Notes

• Idaho minimum wage (2026): $7.25/hr - applies statewide; no county or municipality has a higher local minimum
• Idaho is one of 20 U.S. states that has not raised its minimum wage above the federal floor since 2009
• Idaho HB 463 (2016) preempts municipalities from setting local minimum wages above the state rate
• The Wood River HMFA is the highest-cost FMR area in Idaho and ranks in the top 5 percent of U.S. FMR areas nationally
• HUD's official Boise-area FMR designation is the Boise City, ID HMFA (Ada, Boise, Canyon, and Owyhee counties); this encompasses both Ada and Canyon counties under a single FMR, and per-county housing-cost dynamics differ substantially despite the shared FMR baseline

FMR Notes

• HUD Fair Market Rent represents the 40th percentile of rents in an area; actual market rents in Idaho's resort areas are often 30-60 percent higher
• FMR fiscal years begin October 1 of the prior calendar year (e.g., FY2026 FMR applies starting October 1, 2025)
• Some rural Idaho counties (Custer, Latah) have less frequent FMR revisions and fewer market-rate benchmarks for comparison; reliance on annual rather than biannual revision means these markets may show steeper biennial jumps when revisions occur

Vacancy Rate Notes

• Vacancy rates are from the ACS 2019-2023 5-Year Estimates, the most recent comprehensive county-level dataset available
• In Idaho resort counties, "vacant" housing is almost entirely composed of second homes, vacation properties, and short-term rentals - not abandoned or condemned housing
• Vacancy data does not distinguish actively-listed short-term rentals from non-listed second homes; AirDNA STR-listing counts are cited separately where available

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Complete Source Index

Federal Data

Idaho State and Regional

Idaho Local Government

Real Estate and Market Data

Federal Employer / Institutional

STR Data Platforms

News and Reporting (Idaho)

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This report was researched and compiled by John Cronin, founder of Rookd - a verified housing platform expanding into Idaho. Every statistic in this report includes a named source and verifiable URL. No data was fabricated or estimated without clear notation. Data verified across 5 resort counties (Blaine, Teton ID, Valley, Bonner, Custer), the 2-county Treasure Valley metro (Ada, Canyon), and 3 additional metros (Kootenai, Bonneville, Latah).

Last updated: June 2026