Molly Messick was StateImpact Idaho's broadcast reporter until May 2013. Prior to joining StateImpact and Boise State Public Radio, she was a reporter and host for Wyoming Public Radio. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
A sign advertises a foreclosed home in Nampa, Idaho’s Blackhawk Subdivision.
The Idaho housing market’s boom and bust is sure to be a long-term focus here at StateImpact. RealtyTrac’s August numbers, out last week, show that Idaho has the fifth highest rate of foreclosure in the nation. The Boise area has seen the worst of it, with foreclosures concentrated in Ada and Canyon Counties. There, filings are a daily occurrence.
Idaho’s housing boom was concentrated around its two main metropolitan areas, Boise and Coeur d’Alene. John Starr of the global real estate company Colliers International had a front-row seat as capital poured into the local market in the years preceding the bust. When he thinks of the early 2000s, he remembers watching land prices rise with demand, and house lots shrink. What the area wound up with, he says, were more and more subdivisions, packed tight with houses. Now, many of those homes stand vacant.
In Starr’s analysis, the decision by big banks and out-of-state developers that Boise was a good place to put money has a lot to do with Micron Technology. When Micron took off in the early 1990s, other employers were drawn to the state. Idaho boomed. Census data show that the state’s population grew by more than 28 percent from 1990 to 2000, and by more than 20 percent from 2000 to 2010. To housing developers looking for places to invest, Idaho was a gem. But Starr says they should have looked closer. Continue Reading →
A pre-recession construction project south of Twin Falls
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week announced a new round of grants and loans from the agency’s rural development program. The funds are meant to spur rural job creation and business development. In Idaho, the one grantee is the Idaho Falls office of the Yellowstone Business Partnership.
Executive Director Jan Brown says they have big plans for their $49,500 allocation. They’ll hire two consultants to work with small businesses in rural counties of eastern Idaho. The aim is to help those businesses shift to more sustainable and, Brown says, money-saving practices. That would be things like more efficient waste management, energy conservation and water conservation. That, she says, could free up money for hiring.
This is the slow road to create jobs in rural Idaho and beyond. The New York Times detailed criticism of this route to economic growth earlier this week. The basic complaint? For all of its funding and effort in rural areas, why doesn’t the Obama Administration have more to show? But on the flip-side, where would rural communities be without this spending?
Economists like Lionel Beaulieu, the director of the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University, said financing for rural programs might have prevented even deeper levels of poverty and unemployment.
“The truth is,” Mr. Beaulieu said, “we don’t know how much worse it would have been if not for this funding.” — The New York Times
Some bad news today from the U.S. Census Bureau. The most recent poverty numbers show that the national rate grew to 15.1 percent in 2010.
“Another 2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line in 2010, meaning 46.2 million people now live in poverty in the United States, the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it.” –Â The New York Times
In Idaho, the poverty rate rose to 14 percent, up from 13.7 percent in 2009. That tracks with the state’s Medicaid enrollment numbers, which continue to rise. According to a report from the state Department of Health and Welfare, average monthly enrollment grew by 9 percent from 2009 to 2010. Enrollment grew further from 2010 to 2011.
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