Five of the most popular Idaho jobs can’t cover fair market rent, data analysis says
The most common jobs in Idaho do not pay a sufficient median wage to afford a fair-market-rent apartment, according to a data analysis by the Idaho Asset Building Network (IABN).
To afford a fair-market apartment, averaged across the whole state, the analysis says one has to make $17.36 per hour.
Further, rent has increased two times faster than wages over the past 30 years according to IABN.
Virginia Wilson in Boise has learned this the hard way. She has lived at Edgewater Apartments, just off West State Street, for three years and when she renews her lease next calendar year, her rent will increase by $500.
$500 more a month for what? To cover new or rising costs? Or to take advantage of Boise’s population surge?
Rents/land values (and by extension home prices) follow the money…as wages or investment dollars flow in, prices go up. Land is finite and if you want to own part of a finite commodity, be it gold or land, you have to pay the market rate.
The real question is, why is there a market rate in land anyway? The value of land as an investment is what drives up housing costs. There is no way to build affordable housing without affordable land, so as land rises in value as an investment, it becomes too expensive to develop for anything but luxe properties. If that value were recaptured through a ground rent/land value tax, it would lower the cost to acquire it for affordable development.