Unknown

All right. Hello, everyone. Greetings and salutations. This is Volts for August 12th, 2026. Another bipartisan housing miracle, this time in Idaho. I'm your host, David Roberts. Roughly a year ago, I did an episode on the Montana housing miracle, a burst of bipartisan pro-housing bills out of a red state where you wouldn't necessarily expect them. Turns out, I wasn't the only one paying attention. Next door, in Idaho, they were facing many of the same problems, a rapidly growing population, an influx of wealthy people, and a lack of out-of-staters, suburbs sprawling out into the wilderness, and rising housing costs locking out the locals. Inspired by their neighbor's example, in 2025, the legislature convened a Land Use and Housing Study Committee composed of state legislators, developers, industry representatives, and city administrators. The committee was charged to meet between the legislative sessions to scour land use laws, housing codes, and other regulations to find ways to cut construction costs, speed building, and keep costs down. That committee's recommendation yielded several bills this past session, many of which passed, a few of which didn't. The reasons for both the successes and the failures are quite interesting and do not fall along conventional partisan lines. We are going to get into all of that today with my guests. Ben Taves is a Republican state senator who represents North Idaho's District 4, which includes Coeur d'Alene. He is the sponsor of the core Senate bills and the lead Senate champion of the whole package. Megan Egbert is a Democratic state representative out of Boise. She was a member of the Interim Study Committee. Needless to say, they come at the housing issue from very different perspectives, but remarkably have ended up on the same side in the housing fight. I cannot wait to talk to them all about it. All right then. So, with no further ado, Ben Taves, Megan Egbert, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming. Yeah, thank you for having us. Thanks for having us on. Awesome. Ben, let's start with you. You are a longtime business owner in the state, and I'm excited to talk to you about the housing issue. You sort of came to the housing issue. I understand it had something to do with you trying to build something. Nothing radicalizes people about housing in America more than trying to build something. Tell us how you sort of came to be engaged on this issue. Yeah, certainly. We recognized that there's a serious issue with affordable housing, especially for the next generation to own their own home. The cost in our area is around $550,000. $550,000 on average for a single-family dwelling. And so, back in 2020, we purchased a small piece of land. It had a PUD, so it had 20 units already set up to be built on it. And it was going to be small homes, probably average 1,000 square feet. The range would be 700 to 1,200 square feet. And it was on small lots. And I was like, we can sell these. We're open to sell these. And the $300,000 range opened the door for the next generation to be able to get into a house. And partway through the process, the city came back to us, and we went to renew the PUD. And they said, sorry, you can't do that. There's new green space requirements, and your plans don't match those requirements. And so, they shut the whole project down. And so, it was very frustrating. I wasn't in the legislature at the time. I saw it as a real issue back then, and it just became more and more of an issue. Awesome. And Megan, same question to you. You are a librarian for many years and then became a lawyer, an employment lawyer, and were appointed to the legislature a few years ago and then ran and won your seat. What brought you to the housing issue specifically? Yeah, it was actually during the pandemic. Myself, like many other Idahoans, were facing no child care while we were still trying to work, which was a very frustrating experience that I know many can relate to. And I have the fortunate ability of having a mother-in-law, father-in-law who live out of state, who are retired, who were willing to look for a home here to help with child care during this time. And I think that that was the first eye-opening experience for me was they were moving from Chicago, or in theory, were willing to move from Chicago to Idaho to be close to family. And there was just no options. It was not even a possibility to move here during that time. And then the second thing that has happened is I have older children. My oldest is 20 years old. She works in the medical field. She works in a hospital that's about a 20-minute drive from our house. And she works in a hospital that's about a 20-minute drive from our house. And she recently, she's still living at home, started looking for a studio apartment in a suburb of our capital city here, Boise, and cannot find a studio apartment that costs less than my mortgage for a four-bedroom house. And so I think there's just two examples of why this, you know, became so important to me. And then mostly it's just because this is the most important issue facing Idahoans right now. We know this from multiple surveys and just from our own conversations with people is that Idahoans are getting priced out of living in Idaho. Well, let me stick with you for a second, Megan. I want to hear a little bit about this committee, this Interim Housing Study Committee you were on. This was modeled on a similar committee they set up in Montana. I'm sort of curious about that. And I think it's interesting to me that you have this room, you have these free market North Idaho Republicans, you got Boise Democrats, you got realtors, home builders, a developer, the Apartment Association, the City of Boise. It kind of sounds like the setup for a joke. I'm very curious how that went down in the room, how that felt in the room and sort of like what you learned through that experience that you didn't know. Yeah, it was an amazing experience. I will say, though, I came to it late. I took somebody's spot on the committee when they stepped down from the legislature. So I was trying to do double duty of catching up. I think the beauty of the committee comes in is exactly the way you were just explaining of, you know, how different the perspectives were that were on it. And, you know, I myself, although I am technically a Boise Democrat, I probably find myself agreeing more with the free market North Idahoans on many, many issues, this being one of them probably. And I was mentioning before we started here, I grew up in North Idaho. And it was eye opening for me, I think, that we got to travel the state with this one perspective that we were looking at, right. So we have industry folks, we have legislators, we have cities, counties, we have representatives from everywhere. And we got to travel the state and look at this one problem. And I think the most eye opening part for me was that it became very clear that this is not a Boise problem. This is not a Coeur d'Alene problem. This is a statewide problem. And I think anybody who participated in that committee would have to say the same thing. We can talk about local control all we want. Local control makes a lot of sense when something is simply a local problem. This, this is not this is impacting the entire state. And there was these common themes that kept coming through in the process. I think what's kind of interesting here is you introduced a bunch of these bills early in the session. They ended up getting stuck in committee, basically didn't make it out of committee. So you kind of had to go back, regroup, do some discussion and some compromise with some of the opposition forces do some rewriting and then came back later in the session, and then ended up passing a bunch of them. So I kind of want to go through the bills and talk about what happened. I think what's kind of interesting here is you introduced a bunch of these bills early in the session, and then ended up passing a bunch of them. So I kind of want to go back, regroup, do some rewriting and then came back later in the session, and then ended up passing a bunch of them. So I kind of want to go through the bills and talk about what happened and talk about some of these compromises that you had to make to get them. through. So let's just walk through the bills. We'll start with SB 1354, the ADU bill, because I think that's one of the big ones. Just talk about what that does. Yeah. So first of all, Idaho operates based on something called Dillon's rule. Essentially, any local municipality, whatever power they have is actually granted to them by the state. There's some states that have a home, that's a home rule. And the cities probably in their constitution actually have certain powers that are granted to them. But Idaho is different than that. And with that means that there's no reason why at the state level, we can't make some of these decisions, especially when they have to do with property rights. That specific bill gives homeowners or property owners the ability to build an ADU on their property by right. And stops the cities from stopping, from stopping those builds. The importance of ADUs can't really be overstated. It, it opens up the possibility for, you know, traditionally they're called mother-in-law's quarters. But right now I have two college age daughters living in my home and one's built. Same, same Ben, same. And one of them's building out a van to live in because she has zero, zero ability to see a path to home. And so it's, it's a lot of ownership and even, even like, like Megan was saying, even renting is difficult. So she's building out a van and planning to live in it. And I'm like, I mentioned it in hearings a few times. I'm like, hopefully the cities aren't listening, but my daughter's probably going to be living in her van against some city code. Um, and that's the reality of what we've come to, but that bill, um, yeah, it's just meant to open up the doors for families to live or live together on the same property. It allows, um, maybe retired people to downsize and live on the same property. As their grown children. Um, what does that do? It opens up inventory in the, you know, in the larger homes for people to buy. And when inventory gets opened up, it can drive the price down. So really important bill. Um, I, what I, some of the things I love about it, it can create supplemental income for, um, for homeowners. So it could open the door for them to be able to, um, afford to buy a house if there's an ADU on it. Um, I had neighbor a few doors up for me. She was, um, a stay at home mom. She was able to stay home with her two daughters, um, because she had a, uh, vacation rental and an ADU on her property up until the city came and shut that down. And then she went to work and, um, one of her daughters was essentially a latchkey kid from having mom at home to, you know, coming home from school without her mom there. That's the stuff that drives me crazy and makes, um, these types of bills so important. And, okay. So one of the, one of the sort of compromises, not just on this bill, but on almost all the bills is originally they were supposed to apply to cities with 5,000 or more residents. And that got bumped up to 10,000 or more. Does that bother you at all? Why, why did that come about? Yeah. Um, really we're talking about rural communities, smaller cities, and, uh, this is really probably going to impact places where there's populate more population density more so than rural community anyway. So we didn't feel like that was a major concession and it kind of, obviously for political reasons, you have representatives and senators that are, that are in communities where their district might not even have anything over 10,000, uh, people in it. So suddenly they don't really care about it. So it opens up the possibility for them to vote and not have to worry about their cities being upset. Right. Right. And one other thing about that bill is the homeowner association. This is the HOAs of course, or sort of, uh, you know, a fraught topic when it comes to housing. And I think the, the, the, where you ended up on this bill is a new HOA can, can prohibit these ADUs, but an existing HOA can't remove the right to build ADUs without the unanimous consent of the HOA. Is that, is that roughly right? Correct. That's exactly right. Yeah. Essentially you can't change the rules once people, uh, sign into an agreement and whatever they signed onto should be what it stays at. The idea of letting, uh, an HOA change the rules. I think it's wrong really. And the sad thing is, I mean, we had to make those concessions to get this through. The frustrating thing is people would say, well, if you don't, if you don't want the HOA rules, then don't buy a house in an HOA. Well, somebody told me that around 90% of the homes that are being built are in HOAs. So I think that's really not an honest answer. I don't think that's a good answer. I don't think that's an honest argument because if you don't have any other options, if there's only 10% of the inventory is not in an HOA, you really, HOA, you really don't have that option. All right. So other bills, um, there's SB 1352 about starter homes. Just quickly tell us what that one does. Yeah. So it allows, uh, it allows starter home subdivisions to be built, uh, on lots, four acres or more. A starter home subdivision can be something that has smaller lot sizes. So it allows, uh, it allows starter home subdivisions to be built on lots, four acres or more. Um, the idea there is to, uh, a lot of the cities will block smaller builds. And obviously the dirt is like one of the biggest costs of a, of a single family residence. So restricting the cities from having minimum lot sizes that are larger than 1500 square feet actually allows some of these smaller homes to pencil and the developers to be able to build. Right. And that's going to, that's going to allow up to 12 homes an acre. So just allow smaller homes to be built. Yep. Then there's a bill on manufactured homes. Yeah. The manufactured homes. I mean, manufactured homes are not the same as, uh, as what we envision. I lived in manufactured homes three times, three different manufactured homes in my childhood. And the manufactured homes today are completely different than they were back then. Um, they look a lot like, uh, a stick built home, um, something that you'd see in a regular neighborhood. And so that bill allows by right or, uh, manufactured homes to be put in a single family, um, zoned area. Interesting. Interesting. And then here's a bill that's really interesting to me. Cause this is a hot topic. There's a hot topic everywhere where housing comes up. HB 706 is about single stair buildings. Talk briefly about what that does. Yeah. So, uh, it's really requiring double, uh, two stairways, uh, in these smaller apartment buildings, uh, really makes it cost prohibitive to build those. So the, the single stair, and I didn't actually champion this one. It was Senator Robbie that, that championed it, but, um, it allowed for just one stairway, as long as you had a variety of things like sprinkler systems. Um, it's really common sense bill. The idea of having to have, uh, two stairways when you have all these other safety mechanisms, uh, it was pretty ridiculous, but it was a battle anyway. It got passed by one vote. Just quickly, who, a battle with who's out there trying to insist on, on two stairs, two staircases. That would be mostly the firefighters. Ah, yes. This is, yeah, that's always, I mean, I don't want to get stuck on this, but that's peculiar to me because in Europe, you know, if anybody goes to Europe, these are, these single stair buildings are absolutely ubiquitous there and they, and they enable design that's much more friendly and, and costs that are much lower. And they're not, they don't have any like epidemic of apartment buildings burning down in Europe. No, the studies, the studies show that there's like, I think it was zero fatalities, but yeah, Ali had all the information. There's a big fight in Seattle right now too. They have some, some real single stair champions out there in Seattle right now. Okay. Um, then there's, this is also an interesting one. This one is about permitting shot clock, basically like a time limit on permitting, you know, cause everybody knows when it comes to building things, permitting is a huge gateway you have to pass through. What does this one say? Um, you know, I, I have, I don't have that information right in front of me, but the, the idea is, um, the, the details of it, but the idea is just to make sure that, that these projects can be approved in a timely manner. Um, a lot of times they're getting stopped up and sometimes they're getting blocked completely just by kind of, you know, delay, delay, delay, um, around 25%. They're estimating around 25% of homes now are the cost is in, you know, the whole process with the cities. Yeah. Well, um, just, just for the record, it's six days. There's a six day, six days. It says the city has to give you a permit within six days. And if it doesn't, then you can bring in a third party inspector, do the inspection yourself. And the city has to give you your fee back, your permitting fee back. So, and that one passed unanimously. Everybody seems in favor of that one. And then finally, the final one that, that passes about lot splits. Um, I don't know if you have anything in particular to say about this one real quick. Yeah, it's really, um, it's really meant for, it's a financing mechanism to allow a lot split to make it easier to finance like an ADU on your property. So allowing it to be two separate pieces of property so that banks can loan on them separately. All right. Six bills that pass. And that is, um, a lot. That's a, that's a lot of, that's a lot of reform. That's a lot of legislating. Thus the, uh, thus the miracle. Um, I wonder, um, how do you feel about the compromises you make, you had to make and the opposition you ran into? Do you feel like there was just a lot of fear? Was there a lot of sensible opposition or is it mostly just people scared of change or, and how do you feel about the compromises you ended up having to make? Do you feel pretty good about how things came out? Uh, it's a little bit mixed. I think that they had some realistic concerns, uh, and I list, I sat down and had the conversations and listened to the concerns and incorporated amendment after amendment. But here's the, here's the really frustrating thing is I would take all of their amendments. Like I took every amendment they asked for on the twin home duplex bill and I expected them to go neutral or to support it and they still opposed it. And so after I dealt with that a little bit, I was just like, you know, it's tough to, uh, negotiate with someone when it doesn't seem like you can ever satisfy their demands. So, but I, I mean, I think we incorporated some good changes. Um, we definitely narrowed the impact of the bills, but, uh, the way I'm totally an income incrementalist, I believe that, um, moving things forward, we can maybe allay some of their fears about what might happen to me. Um, most of them were irrational fears. And so I, I tried to deal with the ones that were. Reasonable and, and try to narrow it enough to get the votes to get it through. But, um, I mean, the, not the natural next step when you're doing incremental, uh, legislation is you narrow it to what, uh, we'll get it done and then you just expand it. So we'll look at air areas of impact as a way to expand the legislation in the next session. Okay. One other question about, about the compromises is these are cities of 10,000 and more, but counties are excluded from. Um, from the, the scope of these bills, I'm just curious about that because isn't, aren't the sort of unincorporated areas in counties. Isn't that where a lot of the sort of ex-urban sprawl is happening? Do you worry about excluding counties? How do you feel about that? It took one major organization off, uh, off the fight. So it was very, it was very helpful. That was my comment on areas of impact. Those are County areas that the cities are growing into. Um, most of like a starter home subdivision, you're not going to see that put out in the middle of a County because it's going to hook to city sewer and water. And so, uh, the, the concept is that the, the natural area to move to is the area of impact that's inside the County and the most likely place to, to actually build, uh, those starter home subdivisions, the ADUs on the other hand, there's no reason why we shouldn't move those into the counties right away. All right. There were two bills, two. I think significant bills that ended up not passing and they both didn't pass because of the house. They both kind of died in the house business committee on a seven to seven tie vote. And I guess if you get a tie vote, it doesn't pass. Correct. Um, I wonder if you have any insight into those. One of those been, uh, referenced it briefly is this duplex bill. Yeah. Talk a little, just talk briefly about what that said and. What your diagnosis is for why, for why, for why this one got stuck. Yeah. So the duplex bill would have created a new section of code that would have prevented HOA cities or counties from banning the construction of duplexes in residential areas where single family homes were already allowed. Um, this is something that like in my own city and city of Boise, they've already allowed this, uh, for decades, actually, uh, this. It passed strongly on the Senate side. I suspect that if we would have had more time here towards the end, we could have gotten it through the house side as well. I am very hopeful that this is one that we will see come back this session. Um, you know, to me, it's very similar to the ADU bill. You know, yeah, yeah, this, well, this was my question. Like if they're okay with ADUs and they're okay with small lots with. Right. Starter homes and they're okay with all this other stuff. Why would duplexes be a red line? I don't, I wouldn't totally get it. Yeah, it's perplexing to me, you know, what the first place I rented out of, you know, moving out of my parents' house, because back then we could move out of our parents' house. I was, you know, I join you both in having two college age, you know, students who live at home. Um, but the first place I moved into was a duplex where it was an older couple on one half of it, and then they rented out the other half. You know, to compensate for some of their mortgage on the property, it makes a lot of sense. The only argument I heard about this one, which I do not agree with actually at all, but, um, you know, somebody said that, that duplexes, you know, decrease your property value. If there's duplexes in your neighborhood, I think that's pretty absurd. We're literally just talking about, you know, the same type of dwelling as a house. It just has like a wall in between it. Yeah. It literally saves on infrastructure. You know, there, there's a lot of reasons that duplexes make sense. So I'm very hopeful that we can bring that one back with a little bit more time. Um, and then the other one was what we referred to as kind of the yes in God's backyard. Yes. Yigby. This was, there was one of these in Montana too. I think that these, these have popped up in several places. Yeah. I think this is also a really important one. So this would permit the development of mixed use and multifamily development on land that's owned or leased by a religious organization. So as an allowable use without any special approval from elected officials. And there's some exceptions in there, of course. Um, but it would also ban, you know, them from restricting the building height, like arbitrarily, it would put some sideboards on what they could declare for the setbacks and like parking minimum requirements, all, all the ways that we sometimes see people try and get around these things to begin with. Yeah. But this one is so important. I think because, um, you know, we're, we're, we have a lot of religious entities in our state and they actually own a lot of land. I did a, an internship before for the city looking at this specific issue was part of what I was tasked with doing because there's a lot of faith-based communities out there that want to do something about housing. Of course, it's the biggest issue facing our state right now. Why would they not want to help? And they are so restricted from being able to help. So this one. Wasn't there a big fight in Boise specifically about, there was a church that was going to build a bunch of homes for homeless people. There's a record of this happening. Yeah, we've had a few different things, right? Um, there was a, a church that was going to use its land, um, to, to build some, some housing. And I believe that it, it got denied. That might be the one that you are talking about. Um, and unfortunately, sometimes in this process, we think by having this, this process, whether it's planning and zoning or city council, these hearings, you know, that we can, um, somehow hear from the majority of stakeholders. But I think that's not oftentimes what happens. We just hear from a very vocal minority. Yes. A note, a notorious feature of housing politics is that the people who show up don't necessarily represent, you know, the broader polity. Let's just say. Yeah. So to me. This bill is really just extending some of, you know, our other ADU type ones about, you know, the rights that you should have when you own property and really just extending those to religious organizations as well. And do you think that one, um, is coming back? Both these are going to, you're going to push for next session. Yeah. I'm very hopeful this one will come back as well. I think there was just a lot of misunderstandings around this one, uh, specifically around people thinking that this would, you know, allow. them to open, uh, homeless shelters, which is not the intent of this piece of legislation. So I think that there's some education work for us to do with the committees, but I am hopeful this one will come back as well. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. That's the, the, the concrete legislation that was on the table this session. And as listeners can tell, that's, it's a lot, there's a lot involved. It's a very, uh, active, active session. Ben, I want to come back to you. And talk about what I think is a sticky and sensitive issue there in Idaho specifically. So without getting too deep into the details, basically Idaho has this law that caps the amount of property tax that cities are allowed to gather. And it caps the growth of property tax and, and it's a little bit complicated in practice, but the upshot is. Basically, as I understand it, like if a city approves a big new subdivision, the infrastructure costs that they have to pay to support that subdivision show up immediately, but the property tax that they would use to pay those infrastructure costs doesn't show up. I mean, it shows up later and it shows up in sort of a cutoff limited form. And so this kind of sets up a dynamic. where rapid growth hurts. city budgets which is supposed to be sort of an inversion i think of what you would want like cities are supposed to benefit from growth and this sort of makes them kind of averse to growth and so this was i think by common agreement in the legislature off the table during these during these sessions for all this housing bill but i wonder like do you not view this as kind of an undertow pulling against all these reforms like making cities averse to growth in some way and and one other thing before i turn it over to you all these bills have provisions in them loopholes i guess you would say are provisions basically saying cities can opt out of these laws obeying these laws if they can show that they can't support the infrastructure needed to build the new housing but if you have this property tax provision in place it almost seems like by definition mathematically they can't support the infrastructure because they can't raise the property taxes so i i just wonder like do you worry that this provision is going to undercut almost all your reforms and i guess i just wonder how you think about that whole issue yeah definitely i'm very familiar with the house bill 389 that was passed in 2021 before my time in the legislature i wasn't a part of the debates uh so i don't know all the rationale i think the concept was probably not thinking about how quickly idaho would be growing uh and the idea was just to try to make sure that uh that you know the local property taxes weren't going up really quickly i think it doesn't make sense at all in the in the case where an area is growing quickly and i think it's a good idea to and i think that the philosophy that that growth should pay for itself is something that's uh pretty well understood and you know i think most people agree that growth should pay for itself and this kind of this definitely stops that so i'd love to see us uh do something to reverse that or at least at least change it for areas that are growing quickly uh because i i think it is a i think it's a pretty serious problem i definitely think it can have a negative impact because the exact places that we need these uh these homes built um are the places that that are running into those caps right politically speaking do you see any prospect i mean two two bills to loosen not even remove the cap but just loosen the cap a little bit died this session in the legislature do you see any prospect politically for that chain i mean the the idaho freedom foundation the sort of anti-tax group basically mobilized and killed both those attempts do you see politically any prospect for that changing in the future hey there everybody don't worry i'm not going to tell you about a new mattress or push a credit card on you this isn't an ad there are no ads on volts it is supported entirely by listeners like you if you'll indulge me for a second i'd like to ask for your support i started volts because we're all surrounded by depressing news about climate change and misinformation about clean energy and it's never been more important to share the stories of the real people on the ground doing the real work of transition and all the ingenuity and courage and public spirit they are bringing to it people are hungry to hear these stories to learn from and find inspiration in them i've heard from people who change majors or careers after hearing episodes of volts people using it in classrooms and community groups even state legislators who have passed bills to change the world's climate change and misinformation about clean energy and inspired by specific episodes. Sharing these stories matters. It makes a difference. If you have found value in it and want to help me continue doing it, I hope you will join the community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. It's about the cost of a cup of coffee a month. If you don't like subscriptions, you can make a one-time contribution, leave a review on Apple or Spotify, or just tell a friend about Volts. I am grateful for any and all support. If you're already a paid subscriber, thank you. And now, back to the show. Do you see politically any prospect for that changing in the future? I actually, I believe there's an appetite for it in the Senate. I don't remember where those ones died, but I think there's more likely an appetite in the Senate. My perception is that there's, House leadership has actually been opposed to changing that and had maybe championed the original legislation. Maybe Megan can speak to that. Yeah, Megan, what's your take on the whole property tax mess? Yeah, it's definitely a problem. I think there's no arguing that. I'm pretty sure it did die on the House side, or one of the fixes at least. The House Bill 842, which was proposing basically doubling the ceiling, died on the House side. I will just say though, this is an election year and what we've seen in Idaho is elections can drastically change. They can drastically change. The appetite of one of the bodies. So I'm hopeful that we are going to continue talking about some solutions because it's a huge problem. It's a huge problem for like our ambulance districts, our fire districts. And so I'm hopeful that we might get some new ideas and some new votes on the House side that could increase the appetite for it this year. Yeah, I sit on the local government tax committee and it was like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. It was like there was Band-Aids being sent over to us to try to fix all of the issues. And it's like, it's a bigger issue than a Band-Aid's going to fix. So we passed a few pieces of legislation to try to stop the bleeding a little bit, but there needs to be some major reform. Interesting. And Megan, you traveled around with this committee and talked to a lot of diverse people on the committee. Do you know if the public makes the connection? You know, like obviously if you go to the public, and say, hey, we want to cut your taxes or limit the rise in your taxes, all things being equal, people are going to be like, yeah, that sounds great. Do you know if they make the connection between that issue and the housing issue? If people understand this? No, I think as a general idea, people understand like personal property rights and those types of things. I think the thing that's really hard, really complex about housing is the knee-jerk reaction that we see when we're talking about housing. We see from some municipalities actually make the situation worse, right? So people think that their city is being overcrowded. And so they might want to set a higher density for lot requirements, right? Like really high, like 8,500 square feet or something like that. And they think that that is going to help. And in reality, what happens is the opposite. Because all that means is that now you're pushing people out to areas where there is no infrastructure. Because our college-aged kids can't afford an 8,500 square foot lot. We're really just limiting then who can live there. And then it just becomes a bigger and bigger problem. And I found that that's one of the hardest things to explain to this about for a lot of people. They're feeling it, right? They're feeling it in their taxes. They're feeling it in the demands on the streets, you know, on the roads around their houses. They're feeling it just in terms of our population is growing. The thing that I think we have to do a better job of connecting is we can't just stop growth. It's not possible. We can't just tell people. And sometimes the ways that we're trying to curb it are actually making it worse for everyone in many of these scenarios. Yeah, well, I think more to the point, you can't stop growth and still have, all the amenities and nice quality of life you want. Like you can point to cities where growth stopped. Yeah. And it did not turn out well for those cities. Correct. But then your children can never live there. So if you're wanting them, you know, to stay here and, you know, they will have to go somewhere else. So yes, you can do it. Everything will stop. And, you know, the age will stop as well. Yeah. Here's a question I want to ask. Both of you. I'll start with you, Megan. So the interim committees, the committee's recommendations, the ones that ended up getting kind of taken up, made into bills and passing, were almost all regulatory reforms on the supply side, which sort of kind of by definition cost the state nothing to implement. They're just reforms of regulations. Then there was a sort of, you know, the other recommendations would have to do, you know, with subsidies or financial incentives for certain types of housing or maybe in certain places. None of those made it. And I think that probably just has to do with this sort of sort of ideological balance of the legislature. You know, regulatory reforms appeal more in a red state. But I wonder, Megan, do you think that regulatory reforms are going to be enough? Or do you think for certain, you know, maybe smaller homes or low-income homes, et cetera, are going to be enough? I think that at a certain point, you're going to need financial incentives. You're going to need the state to spend some money to get that. things rolling? Yeah, I think it's definitely a yes and question. So part of it, I think you nailed it, was just like, what is the appetite of the legislature right now? Most of that certainly focused around regulatory measures. We actually broke into some kind of interim committees or some smaller committees within the full housing committee. And I was the lead on one that dealt with finance. And part of the other thing is that last year, we were really facing a budget situation in our state as well, where we had to make some pretty drastic cuts to our statewide budget in the middle of the fiscal year even. And so that was, it was also off the table for that reason as well, right? So we have made, you know, workforce housing type investments in the past. And so we have made, you know, workforce housing type investments in the past. And so I am of the belief that, you know, when I first joined the committee, housing policy wasn't completely new to me, but thinking about it through a statewide lens was. And, you know, within the first few hours of reading reports and getting information, I was like, okay, this is one of those really sticky problems where there is not going to be a solution. It's not going to be, we pass this piece of legislation, we pass this piece of legislation, we pass this piece of legislation, and we are going to fix, you know, the housing situation in Idaho. It's going to take everything. It's going to take everything for multiple years, trying different things, adapting it as we learn more. So I am hopeful that in the future, we might be able to talk about some financial incentives again. I think it's really important, but I don't think we were there for the last session. And I don't know that we'll be there for this session. Ben, I'm curious about your take on the same question. Do you think that just regulatory reform sort of just like kind of unleashing, uninhibiting the market is going to be enough? Can you see yourself ever coming around to the need for more sort of direct state funding or intervention in this way? I'm definitely more looking at lowering regulatory barriers and letting the market fix the problem. I think it's obvious based on more of my ideology. And I am encouraged like I literally this morning, went through a housing development. These are kit built homes, they literally drive a semi with everything to build a house, they can build it in 21 days. And they're selling for in the $300,000 range. And they're perfect starter homes. I do think that there's a huge demand. I was told over and over again, that from the cities and from different people, if there's really demand, you know, there's a huge demand. And I think that's a huge demand. It's, you know, it would be taken care of. Well, no, it's that's not the case. And I'm already seeing how the market can solve the problem. I also I love there's some actually, some local nonprofits that are been pooling money and helping with down payment, helping pay the down payment. And then when somebody sells the if they sell the property in the future, it replenishes that fund. And I love more private solutions to that. But obviously, and I do think that that when people care about their community, and they're they care about the next generation, we can have more and more of those having a big impact. Yeah, no, I actually agree with a lot of that. And, you know, in talking about kind of the private public partnership thing, too, I think when we when we think about money, you know, we always jump to the conclusion that if we're going to somehow financially help affordable housing in Idaho, that we're looking at, like, you know, free giveaways, you know, the government's intervening. But I think some of the more creative ideas that we discussed, too, is maybe that's not what's right for Idaho. But is there a way that we can incentivize through, you know, tax breaks or something else, people who are using their land in that way, where they are ensuring that there's going to be an affordable cost for any housing that's built on it in the future. So those type of things, too, I think are more likely what we might see. in the future from Idaho. Yeah, I love the idea of incentivizing developers and if they're willing to to make it based on income level or to have, you know, some restricted deeds where it's for homeowners. Those are the things I believe that it's so, so important. It can't be overstated how important it is that people own homes where they can put down roots and become a part of the community. And I think that's really important. I know it's not always possible, but as much as we can, I'd love to see more and more people being able to own their homes. Usually it's the, you know, the most common wealth creation for the average person is owning a home and building equity in that home. And then they use that equity to either, you know, get a bigger home or to start a small business. You know, that's really what drives a lot of what makes our Idaho so special. I want to return to that in a second, but real quick, Ben, cities have until February, sometime in February, to bring their codes into compliance with this law. Some cities are more enthusiastic about that than others. I think there has actually been quite a bit of resistance in Coeur d'Alene, your district, to this. And you, as you said, you're on the sort of the city committee, the local, you know, the local control committee. I'm curious, you know, we're coming back to this issue of local control versus sort of state control. What are the mechanisms the state has to force compliance on this stuff, basically? What does the state do if cities push back or resist or drag their feet? Are there enforcement mechanisms? How do you navigate that? I mean, the hope would be that the cities would follow the law. I don't know if you've seen California's experience on this. Yeah. I think there's obviously, they have some liability they have to look at when they're not following the law and a developer can, you know, can go and sue the city and say, you have to follow the law. So that's one. And that comes from the private sector. I mean, there are other mechanisms we have. I really would hope that we wouldn't get there, but there are tax funds that are flowing to the cities. There's a lot of different ways, levers we can pull, but I'm hoping that we don't get to that point. And it's February 1st when they have to have it incorporated. I'm actually not as concerned that they'll ignore it completely as they'll find other loopholes that they can use to block it. I think that's more likely. Yeah. That's just it. Yeah. And that also makes enforcement trickier too, because, you know, some of the loopholes are of dubious legality and then you get into legal, you know, legal disputes and it gets tricky. Well, I would just add too, though, you know, two things. One, I think there's always going to be, you know, some potential bad actors out there, but I also feel like we are hearing from a lot of cities right now who are actually really thankful for this. Like they recognize that this was necessary. They did not know if they were going to be able to do it at that local level because of that very vocal minority that we're talking about. And so I think that there's a lot of people who know that this is going to benefit the state, even at the city level. And then the other thing that I think we're dealing with a little bit is just some misinformation. Like some cities not fully recognizing yet, you know, you know, I've heard people, for example, with the starter homes talking about, you know, infill. This isn't about infill, right? So, so like there's still some, some misinformation out there too about the legislation that was passed. So I think once, you know, again, hoping everybody is just operating in good faith, once they get it in place, once they see, you know, that it's actually very workable for Idaho, it's going to feel a lot better. It's just changes hard for everybody. And we just have to work through that part. Yeah, I agree. And I think there is political pressure at some point for the local city council and the mayors, you know, because even though they're that really loud vocal group that tries to stop it, there's probably 10 people for every one of those. And there is definitely an appetite for change. I mean, all the polls show that it pulls very highly for us to figure out how to help people get, get into homes. And, you know, I think that's, I think that's, I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's, I think that's a big part of the problem. And I think that's a big part of the problem. deal with housing issues. So I think that they're at some point, the political pressure, knowing that there's solutions on the table, and they're not implementing them, that should help as well. But I just want to point out that those small number, the people that are out there working hard, raising families, those are the people that often aren't going to be having the time to go to the city council meetings and, you know, weigh in. And so I think that they're going to have to weigh in at the voting booth. Sure. They're not at the city council meetings. Well, also, like, some Someone who might be able to buy one of these ADUs doesn't necessarily know that they're in that constituency. You know what I mean? It's sort of like they're not going to go mobilize for something that might happen in the future that they might be eligible for. You know, they don't have the same direct kind of involvement. Right. Quickly on this philosophical issue, Ben, you have this op-ed where you sort of distinguish what you call horizontal density from vertical density. Horizontal, I think, refers to getting more people in homes, home ownership, versus vertical, which means building up and more rental, basically. And you express a pretty clear preference for the former over the latter. I'm just curious. I mean, there are a couple of bills here. The single-stair bill, the Yigbee bill, you know, would mostly be about subsidized rental. I'm just curious what's behind that distinction and why you think, you know, renting is inferior in some way. Certainly. Yeah. I mean, and like I said, I rented my first house. I lived in multiple apartment buildings growing up. So I don't, I mean, I understand that you just have to find a place to live and if the situation doesn't allow, then. Then, you know, you might not be able to, but the clear preference from the vast majority of people is to own their own home. And the difference is that, obviously, with rent, you're perpetually, you know, you're not building any wealth and you're just perpetually working and paying the rent. The rent can go up. It's outside of your control. You think about the stability that comes from owning a home, building equity, having a monthly payment that you know. What it's going to be for 30 years. That creates stability and it allows people to build wealth. And that's really important, I think, for our society. I also think that there's a, there's more like when I was in, when I was younger and we were living in apartments. I mean, I might live in one city one year and then another city the next year. And so I like the stability and the way that it allows you to put down roots and become more a part of the community when you're able to own your own home. And that's why I'm such a proponent of what I call. Horizontal density. Like I'm like, if we have to build houses closer together, fine. But, um, but people need a way to put down roots. And so, yeah, that's the long and the short of it. Do you worry though, that the fact that in America, I think maybe more so than a lot of other developed countries that most people's wealth is in their home is part of what's driving homeowners resistance to some of that horizontal density. Do you know what I mean? Like if your property value. Is your wealth, you know, that's what, then you're going to fight off anything that you worry might lower your property value, like more homes or, or, or whatever. I mean, there's to some extent. Yeah. If you add supply, um, if you add supply, then you're potentially your house is worth less. Uh, I can, I can kind of see that. I think a lot of them are not well-founded fears. Um, like a starter home subdivision has to be on four acres. It's not infill. It's not putting tiny homes in your backyard in a, in a fancy neighborhood. So I think that a lot of times it comes down to people, you know, not reading the legislation, not understanding what it actually does and, and kind of projecting fears, uh, into their specific situation. But I would say that it's a very interesting cross section in both chambers of who voted for it and against it. And I couldn't help, but think that people were mostly thinking about their own house instead of thinking about their. Constituents that were voting against it, you know, because, um, if you're thinking about your constituents, um, the average age, when somebody buys their first house now is over 40 years old. Oh, geez. I bought mine when I was 20, I think I was 24 when I bought my first house. Um, and I think about what that has done for me. I still live in that house right now. Um, and how much of a blessing that's been. And I really want that for the next generation. Megan. I wonder if you have any, you want to weigh in on this, this sort of distinction between homeowners and renters. I know that equity was a big part of what drew you to the housing issue in the first place, the sort of equity issues involved in the way we've zoned traditionally and stuff like that. Do you have any thoughts on this question? Yeah. I mean, like most things I would say, I don't disagree at all, um, with what Ben is saying, but, uh, you know, because my district is a little bit different, I might just approach it. I get asked all the time, well, what are you doing for renters, right? There's always going to be some renters who, regardless, who just aren't at that place yet where they can buy a house. And, you know, I am kind of a purist when it comes to supply and demand here. I actually believe that building more affordable housing, starter homes, you know, that people can begin purchasing is going to be a big part of that. It is going to drastically help renters because it's just going to mean that there is more and more, you know, supply out there. So I don't think it's like an either or. I am because my district is a little bit, you know, different. Sometimes I do think that we need some, some vertical, uh, compression here as well. But I think the most important thing is that we are creating opportunities at different price points for a variety. Of Idahoans, uh, because that's what we need right now. Well, in a city like Boise, don't you think we do need some, some infill? I mean, I absolutely do. Um, it's, it's the only choice really, when, when you're talking about a city this big, you can build up or you can build out, um, in Boise, right? And the consequence of building out is that you are eating into ag land. And so that's not an option that I think our state is, should be interested in at all. Um, and so for a place. And you're jacking up those infrastructure costs every time you, you build out. Correct. Correct. Because then people are further away from the infrastructure, right? And then you're jacking up the costs for transportation and everything else because then they're having to commute to where their jobs are. Right. So, yeah, in, in my city, you absolutely, we need to be able to build up. We need to be able to build. Build up a lot easier, but that's not necessarily the case for, for everywhere. But I do think for a place like the capital of the state, that's really important because the alternative is just not an option, right? We can't eat into ag land. We have a huge amount of public lands in this state. And, you know, we have historic neighborhoods here. We, any pre-war city in Idaho already has, you know, high density neighborhoods in it. We know that it can work here. So we, we might be a little bit different than some places though. All right. We're almost out of time. So I guess I would like to wrap up with a look at the future. Megan, is this committee, is the committee done or is it going to, is it going to reconvene? Is it still doing, is it still making more recommendations? What's the status there? Yeah. I mean, my understanding is it's not necessarily done, but it's also not necessarily, you know, meeting regularly right now. I think we still have some work to do from our initial investigation and some of the lessons learned last year. And we still need to see, you know, how the implementation of the bills that did pass, how that goes. You're always going to need to do some tweaking, I think, based on what you learn. So I'm hopeful that, that it was just the beginning, but that we're probably going to pause a little bit just to take some time and reflect on what has happened and how it's working. But I would suspect that we're going to have some work to do. I think we're going to see some more bills based on the work that we did in this upcoming session. Ben, I know you are going to have another go with the duplex bill. And I, and I know that this Yigbee bill will probably come up again. Going to try to push that through. Are there other, like what's left on the legislative, are there big pieces of a legislative agenda that you think are still outstanding? Are there other bills, other areas you want to cover in coming sessions? Or do you have any other ideas? Or do you think maybe like it's time to pause and see what happens? Well, anytime you have a suite of legislation, like we did go through, there's going to be areas that you need to go back and do, uh, you know, kind of look and see if there's cleanup areas. Um, so there'll be a few cleanup bills just to, uh, and, and, and it's actually really, it works really well that the, the February 1st is that deadline because we'll be back in session and, um, we'll. We'll take care of any, um, any questions that are out there. Um, we'll close any loopholes is my goal. And then, um, there's actually a lot of opportunity for just natural expansion with incremental expansion with the existing legislation. So, um, I, I, I'd see, um, that incremental expansion on the starter home subdivision. I'd see, see the twin home duplex bill coming back. Um, Yigbee for sure. We'll look further at shot clock. and things to lower regulatory barriers as far as the timing of permitting and the cost of permitting. Sometimes it's a constraint that has to do with just they don't have enough manpower to get that done. So there's potential for saying, well, why can't we have some type of private parties as a relief valve if things are getting, you know, getting extended out too long for permitting? But, you know, cleaning up the existing bills, passing those two outstanding bills, there's not any big new bill that you think covers something that really should have been covered this time that you have top of mind? No, I think it's just building on our successes right now. All right. All right. Any final words, Ben? Any final words? Megan, do you want to, before we wrap up? Just thanks for having us. It was a great conversation. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate being able to get the word out. Like you said, people don't know about the opportunities for housing. They can't make their voices heard because they don't know that, you know, that the possibility is even there. So I think that it's important to what you're doing to get the word out. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you both for coming on and walking us through it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, everybody. You've been listening to Volts, founded and hosted by me, David Roberts, produced by Nate Peavy, and supported entirely through the generosity of listeners like you. If you enjoyed this conversation, please consider telling a friend about Volts. That's how this show grows and survives, through word of mouth. See you next time.