Effectively ending the wait for homeless families to be rehoused was within the city’s grasp in 2019.
During former Mayor Dave Bieter’s final term as Boise Mayor, his administration launched an effort to start a five-year campaign to supercharge homeless services. He noted that homelessness can never truly end, but the vision was to increase services at multiple agencies so that once a family lost the roof over their head in Ada County, there wouldn’t be a wait for help.
This was feasible in 2019, when, on average, only 24 households were added to the waiting list per month. COVID-19 stressed Boise’s already tight housing market, and the continued rise in rents pushed this goal further out of reach as the number of families entering the wait list climbed…