Every week, public hearings across the Treasure Valley and beyond fill up with an emerging voice: residents, many of whom moved here in the last five to ten years, showing up to vote down housing options their communities need. They organize, vote, and pressure local officials to reject more housing.

I understand where that instinct comes from. I just don’t think it’s pointing us toward the right answer.

Idaho leads the nation in housing growth. The data shows it’s still not enough.

I grew up in Middleton, surrounded by farm fields. Those fields are gone now, replaced by one-acre lots with little infrastructure to support them. I’ve watched Idaho change in ways that make me sad, and I understand the anti-growth mindset. Too often growth here has meant sprawl, distant subdivisions, and longer commutes.

But growth itself isn’t the enemy. Communities grow and change, and that change can make a place better, not worse. The Treasure Valley will keep growing. The question is how.

During my nearly seven years leading Jesse Tree, the Treasure Valley’s eviction prevention nonprofit, I watched more and more Idahoans lose their footing here. People who worked full time couldn’t make rent, families were evicted, and some ended up homeless.

In recent years, eviction and homelessness doubled as regional housing costs climbed roughly 40%, and the gap between wages and home prices keeps widening. Meanwhile, most of what gets built on our fringe is the same product: large-lot homes pushing half a million dollars, aimed at out-of-state buyers.

Young Idahoans, our workforce, and longtime locals are left out.

There’s a better path, and it isn’t new. It’s called missing middle housing, and it’s a return to how Idaho used to build.

Missing middle housing means duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts, and small-lot homes woven into existing neighborhoods rather than dropped onto the fringe. It’s gentle, incremental density that adds homes without ruining a neighborhood’s character.

Look at Idaho’s historic neighborhoods and you’ll find these home types everywhere. This is how our cities grew before exclusionary zoning took hold in the 1970s and made large-lot sprawl the only easy path for developers.

It’s also better economics, for residents and for cities. Land is the single largest cost on a developer’s pro forma. When zoning only allows large-lot product, that cost gets baked into every home, which is why half-million-dollar houses keep getting built.

Smaller homes on smaller lots bring that cost down and open the door to starter homes again. For cities, more homes per acre means more property value per acre without miles of new pipes, roads, and schools. It’s a better deal for taxpayers on both ends.

None of this requires upending the neighborhoods people love. In my experience, when people see what missing middle housing actually is, rather than what they assume it is, most come around. Even hearing opponents soften once they realize it isn’t a five-story apartment complex next door. It’s a duplex that looks like the house beside it.

I don’t fault anyone for wanting to protect what they love about this place. I love it too, farm fields and all. But protecting Idaho doesn’t mean freezing it in place, and it certainly doesn’t mean a housing market that only works for people who aren’t from here.

It means asking a better question: how do we grow in a way that gives our young people, our workforce, and our own neighbors a shot at homeownership?

Missing middle housing is one of the clearest answers we have. If you want to help make the case in your community, Gem State Housing Alliance is activating pro-housing voices across the state, and we’d love to welcome you.

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