Last year I did a pod on Montana’s surprising burst of bipartisan housing legislation. Turns out Idaho was watching. This year its legislature passed six housing bills of its own (two others failed). Republican state Sen. Ben Toews and Democratic state Rep. Megan Egbert join me to walk through what passed, what didn’t, and what they gave away to get it done — plus the property tax cap that quietly works against all of it, and why duplexes turned out to be the red line.
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 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 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions to scour land-use laws, housing codes, and other regulations to find ways to cut constructions costs, speed building, and keep costs down.
That committee’s recommendations 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’re going to get into all of that with my guests today.
Ben Toews 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 can’t wait to talk to them all about it.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction and the Idaho housing package
02:43 – How each guest came to the housing issue
06:39 – Inside the interim housing study committee
09:05 – SB 1354, ADUs by right, and Dillon’s Rule
12:52 – The 5,000 to 10,000 compromise, and HOAs
15:03 – SB 1352 starter homes, manufactured homes, lot splits
16:28 – HB 706 and single-stair buildings
18:11 – The permitting shot clock and the 6-day rule
19:48 – Living with the compromises, and why counties were left out
22:54 – The two bills that died: duplexes and YIGBY
28:41 – HB 389, the property tax cap, and the growth undertow
34:41 – What the public understands about growth
37:23 – Regulatory reform on supply side vs. incentives for housing
43:59 – The February deadline and city resistance
48:52 – Horizontal vs. vertical density
56:03 – What comes next for the committee & Idaho housing
Resources
People & Organizations
David Roberts (Substack - Bluesky)
Volts (Website - Podcast - Apple Podcasts - Spotify - YouTube)
Ben Toews (Idaho Legislature) & Megan Egbert (Idaho Legislature)
Other Orgs Mentioned:
Idaho Freedom Foundation (mobilized to kill property tax cap loosening)
Company & Industry News
Lawmakers approve bills to expand starter homes and ADUs in Idaho
Set of bills overriding local zoning rules on denser housing clears the Senate
Infrastructure, zoning, incentives: Idaho housing study committee homes in on recommendations
Bills Discussed
Idaho Freedom Foundation - House Bill 842, Taxing Districts, Budget Limits
Idaho Freedom Foundation - Senate Bill 1354, Accessory Dwelling Units
Related Volts Episodes
What YIMBYs are learning from their victories across the country
Want less sprawl and more urban infill? Try a land value tax!
Why climate funders don’t fund housing policy, and why they oughtta
Text Transcript
David Roberts: All right then, so with no further ado, Ben Toews, Megan Egbert, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Megan Egbert: Yeah, thank you for having us.
Ben Toews: Thanks for having us on.
David Roberts: Awesome. Ben, let’s start with you. You are a longtime business owner in the state, and I’m curious just to hear briefly how 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.
Ben Toews: 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 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 gonna 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 hoping to sell these in the $300,000 range,” open 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, but I saw it as a real issue back then, and I... and it just became more and more of an issue.
David Roberts: Awesome. And Megan, same question to you. You were 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?
Megan Egbert: Yeah, it was actually during the pandemic, myself, like many other Idahoans, were faced with no childcare while we were still trying to work. Which was a very frustrating experience that I know many can relate to. And, I have the, you know, 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 childcare during this time. And I think that that was the first eye-opening experience for me was, you know, 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, you know, 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 at a hospital that’s about, you know, a 20-minute drive from our house, and she recently, she’s still living at home, started looking for a studio apartment, you know, in a, in a suburb of our capital city here, Boise, and cannot find a studio apartment, that costs less than my mortgage for a 4-bedroom house. And so I think there’s just 2 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.
David Roberts: Mm-hmm. Well, let me stick with you for a second, Megan. I wanna 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, you had this room, you have these free market North Idaho Republicans, you got Boise Democrats, you got realtors, home builders, a developer, and the apartment association, the city of Boise. It kinda sounds like the setup for a joke. I’m sort of... 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 going in.
Megan Egbert: 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 though, what you were just explaining of, you know, how different the perspectives were that were on it. And you know, I myself, although, am technically a Boise Democrat, I probably find myself agreeing more with the free market North Idahoans- uh, 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 is not. This was impacting the entire state, and there was these common themes that kept coming through in the process.
David Roberts: Interesting. Interesting. All right, Ben, I want to do, a little work here just going through the bills. So there’s a, there was a lot of bills involved. I think there were, like, 8 bills involved totally. I think 6 of them ended up passing, 2 didn’t. I wanna start with the 6 that passed. 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 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, ‘cause I think that’s one of the big ones. Just talk about what that does.
Ben Toews: 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 opens up the possibility for, you know... Traditionally, they’re called mother-in-law’s quarters. But, right now I have, 2 college-aged daughters living in my home and one’s building-
David Roberts: Same. Same, Ben. Same.
Ben Toews: And one of them’s building out a van to live in because she has zero ability to see a path to homeownership. And even 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 gonna be living in her van against some city code.” And that’s the reality of what we’ve come to. But that bill, yeah, it’s just meant to open up the doors for families to live or live together on the same property. It allows, maybe retired people to downsize and live on the same property as their grown children. 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. I- what I- some of the things I love about it can create supplemental income for homeowners, so it could open the door for them to be able to, afford to buy a house if there’s an ADU on it. I had a neighbor a few doors up from me. She was, a stay-at-home mom, and she was able to stay home with her 2 daughters, because she had a vacation rental and an ADU on her property. Up until the city came and shut that down. And then she went to work, and, 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, these types of bills so important.
David Roberts: And, 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 did that come about?
Ben Toews: Yeah. Really we’re talking about rural communities, smaller cities, and, this is really probably gonna 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 kinda... 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, 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.
David Roberts: Right. Right. And one other thing about that bill is the homeowner association, this is... HOAs of course are sort of a, you know, a fraught topic when it comes to housing. And I think the where you ended up on this bill is a new HOA can prohibit these ADUs, but an existing HOA can’t remove the right to build ADUs without, through the unanimous consent of the HOA. Is that, is that roughly right?
Ben Toews: Correct. That’s exactly right. Yeah. Essentially you can’t change the rules once people, sign into an agreement, and whatever they signed onto should be what it stays at. The idea of letting, 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 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 don’t have that option.
David Roberts: All right. So other bills. There’s SB 1352 about starter homes. Just quickly tell us what that one does.
Ben Toews: Yeah. So it allows, it allows starter home subdivisions to be built, on lots 4 acres or more. A starter home subdivision can be something that has smaller lot sizes. The idea there is to, 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 1,500 square feet actually allows some of these smaller homes to pencil and the developers to be able to build them.
David Roberts: Right. And that’s gonna, that’s gonna allow up to 12 homes an acre, so just allow smaller homes to be built. Then there’s a bill on manufactured homes
Ben Toews: Yeah, the manufactured homes. I mean, manufactured homes are not the same as what we envision. I lived in manufactured homes 3 times, 3 different manufactured homes in my childhood, and the manufactured homes today are completely different than they were back then. They look a lot like, a stick-built home, something that you’d see in a regular neighborhood. And so that bill allows by right for, manufactured homes to be put in a single family, zoned area.
David Roberts: Interesting. Interesting. And then here’s a bill that’s really interesting to me ‘cause this is a hot topic. They’re the hot topic everywhere where housing comes up. HB 706 is about single-stair buildings. Talk briefly about what that does.
Ben Toews: Yeah, so, it’s really requiring double, 2 stairways, in these smaller apartment buildings. Really makes it cost-prohibitive to build those. So the single stair... And I didn’t actually champion this one, it was Senator Rabe that championed it. But, it allowed for just one stairway as long as you had, a variety of things like sprinkler systems. It’s a really common sense bill. The idea of having to have, 2 stairways when you have all these other safety mechanisms, was pretty ridiculous, but it was a battle anyway. It got passed by one vote.
David Roberts: Just quickly, who... A battle with... Who’s out there trying to insist on 2 stairs, 2 staircases?
Ben Toews: That would be mostly the firefighters.
David Roberts: Ah, yes. This is... Yeah, that’s always... I mean, I don’t wanna get stuck on this, but that’s peculiar to me ‘cause 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 costs that are much lower. And they’re not... They don’t have any, like, epidemic of apartment buildings burning down in Europe.
Ben Toews: No, the studies, the studies show that there’s, like, I think it was zero fatalities, but - Ali had all the information.
David Roberts: There’s a big fight in Seattle right now too. They’re gonna have some real single-stair champions out there in Seattle right now. Okay. 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?
Ben Toews: you know what, I have... I don’t have that information right in front of me, but the idea is, the details of it, but the idea is just to make sure that these projects can be approved in a timely manner. 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. Around 25%. They’re estimating around 25% of homes now are... the cost is in, you know, the whole process with the cities.
David Roberts: Yeah. Well, just for the record, it’s 6 days. There’s a 6-day-
Ben Toews: 6 days,
David Roberts: yep ... It says the city has to give you a permit within 6 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 passed is about lot splits. I don’t know if you have anything in particular to say about this one real quick.
Ben Toews: Yeah, it’s really, 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 2 separate pieces of property so that banks can loan on them separately.
David Roberts: All right. 6 bills that passed, and that is, a lot. That’s a that’s a, that’s a lot of, that’s a lot of reform. That’s a lot of legislating, thus the, thus the miracle. I wonder, 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? And how do you feel about the compromises you ended up having to make? Do you feel pretty good about how things came out?
Ben Toews: it’s a little bit mixed. I think that they had some realistic concerns. And I lis- I sat down and had 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 negotiate with someone when it doesn’t seem like you can ever satisfy their demands. So, but I mean, I think we incorporated some good changes. We definitely narrowed the impact of the bills, but, the way... I’m totally an incrementalist. I believe that, moving things forward, we can maybe allay some of their fears about what might happen. To me, most of them were irrational fears, and so I tried to deal with the ones that were reasonable and try to narrow it enough to get the votes to get it through. But, I mean, the na- the natural next step when you’re doing incremental, legislation is you narrow it to what, will get it done, and then you just expand it. So we’ll look at areas of impact as a way to expand the legislation in the next session.
David Roberts: Okay. And one other question about the compromises is these are cities of 10,000 and more, but counties are excluded from 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 exurban sprawl is happening? Do you worry about excluding counties? How do you feel about that?
Ben Toews: It took one major organization 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. Most of, like, a starter home subdivision, you’re not gonna see that put out in the middle of a county ‘cause it’s gonna hook to city sewer and water.
David Roberts: Mm-hmm.
Ben Toews: And so, the concept is that the natural area to move to is the area of impact that’s inside the county and the most likely place to actually build, 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.
David Roberts: Hmm. All right. There were 2 bills, 2, 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 7 to 7 tie vote, and I guess it, if you get a tie vote it doesn’t pass.
Megan Egbert: Correct.
David Roberts: I wonder if you have any insight into those. One of those, Ben referenced it briefly, is this duplex bill. 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.
Megan Egbert: Yeah. So the duplex bill would’ve created a new section of code that would’ve prevented HOAs, cities or counties from banning the construction of duplexes in residential areas where single family homes were already allowed. This is something that, like, in my own city, in the city of Boise, they’ve already allowed this, for decades actually. This, it passed strongly on the Senate side. I suspect that if we would’ve had more time here towards the end, we could’ve gotten it through the House side as well. I am, you know, 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, the first-
David Roberts: Yeah. This, well, this was my question. Like, if they’re, if they’re okay with ADUs and they’re okay with small lots with 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.
Megan Egbert: 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 w- You know, I join you both in having 2 college-age, you know, students, who live at home. 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, you know, somebody said 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.
David Roberts: Yeah.
Megan Egbert: It actually saves on infrastructure. You know, 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. And then the other one was what we referred to as kinda the Yes In God’s Backyard.
David Roberts: Um- Yes, YIGBY.
Megan Egbert: YIGBY!
David Roberts: This was, there was one of these in Montana too. I think that these have popped up in several places.
Megan Egbert: 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. 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 the ways that we sometimes see people try and get around these things to begin with. But this one is so important in Idaho I think because, you know, we’re... We have a lot of religious entities in our state, and they actually own a lot of land.
David Roberts: Yeah.
Megan Egbert: Like 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-
David Roberts: Wasn’t there a big fight in Boise specifically about there was a church that was gonna build a bunch of homes for homeless people? There’s a record of this happening-
Megan Egbert: Yeah, we’ve had a few different things, right? There was a church that was going to use its land, to build some housing, and I believe that it got denied. That might be the one that you are talking about. And unfortunately, sometimes in this process, we think by having this process, whether it’s planning and zoning or city council, these hearings, you know, that we can, somehow hear from the majority of stakeholders. But I think that’s not oftentimes what happens. We just hear from a very vocal minority group.
David Roberts: Yes. A notorious feature of housing politics-
Megan Egbert: Correct ...
David Roberts: is that the people who show up don’t necessarily represent, you know-
Megan Egbert: Correct ...
David Roberts: the broader polity, let’s just say.
Megan Egbert: 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.
David Roberts: And do you think that one, is coming back? Both these you’re gonna, you’re gonna push for next session?
Megan Egbert: Yeah, I’m very hopeful this one will come back as well. I think there was just a lot of misunderstandings around this one, specifically around people thinking that this would, you know, allow them to open, 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.
David Roberts: Interesting. Interesting. Okay, that’s 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, active session. Ben, I wanna 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 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 immediately. It shows up later, and it shows up in sort of, a cut-off 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 one other thing before I turn it over to you. All these bills have provisions in them, loopholes, I guess you would say, or 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 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.
Ben Toews: Yeah, definitely. I’m very familiar with House Bill 389 that was passed in 2021, before my time in the legislature. I wasn’t a part of the debates, so I don’t know all the rationale. I think the concept was probably not thinking about how quickly Idaho would be growing. And the idea was just to try to make sure 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 that the philosophy that growth should pay for itself is something that’s, pretty well understood, and, you know, I think most people agree that growth should pay for itself, and this kinda... This definitely stops that. So I’d love to see us, do something to reverse that, or at least, at least change it for areas that are growing quickly, because I think it is a, I think it’s a pretty serious problem. I definitely think it can have a negative impact, ‘cause the exact places that we need these homes built, are the places that are running into those caps, right?
David Roberts: Mm-hmm. Politically speaking, do you see any prospect? I mean, 2 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 change? I mean, 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?
Ben Toews: 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.
David Roberts: Yeah, Megan, what’s your take on the, on the pro- on the whole property tax mess?
Megan Egbert: Yeah, it’s definitely a problem. I think there’s no arguing that. It, 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, you know, this is an election year, and, you know, what we’ve seen in Idaho is, elections can drastically change the appetite, of one of the bodies, so I’m hopeful that we are going to continue talking about some solutions, ‘cause 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.
Ben Toews: Yeah, and I sit on the local government tax committee, and it was like there was Band-Aids being set, sent over to us to try to fix all of the issues, and it’s like a, it’s a bigger issue than a Band-Aid’s gonna 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.
David Roberts: 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 wanna cut your taxes or limit the rise in your taxes,” all things being equal, people are gonna 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?
Megan Egbert: No, I think as a, as a general idea, people understand, like, personal property rights and those type of things. I think the thing that’s really hard, really complex about housing is the knee-jerk reaction that we see from some municipalities actually make the situation worse, right? So people think that their, you know, 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, right? Because all that means is that now you’re pushing people out to areas where there is no infrastructure.
David Roberts: Mm-hmm.
Megan Egbert: Because, you know, our college-aged kids can’t afford a 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. That 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 the p- 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.
David Roberts: 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- and it did not turn out well for them-
Megan Egbert: Correct.
David Roberts: For those cities.
Megan Egbert: 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, it’s... You can do it. Everything will stop, and, you know, the age will stop as well.
David Roberts: Yeah. Here’s a question I wanna ask both of you. I’ll start with you, Megan. So, the interim committees, this 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, you know, the other recommendations which have to do with subsidies or financial incentives for certain types of housing or maybe in certain places. None of those made it. And I, and I think that probably just has to do with the sort of, sort of ideological balance of the, of the legislature. You know, regulatory reforms appeal more in a red state. But I wonder, Megan, do you think that regulatory reforms are gonna be enough, or do you think for certain, you know, maybe smaller homes or low-income homes, et cetera, that at a certain point you’re gonna need financial incentives. You’re gonna need the state to spend some money to get things rolling.
Megan Egbert: Yeah. I think it’s a 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.
David Roberts: Mm-hmm.
Megan Egbert: 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 wa- 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. 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 and we are going to fix, you know, the housing situation in Idaho. It’s gonna take everything. It’s gonna 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.
David Roberts: Ben, I’m curious about your take on this same, on the same question. Do you think that just regulatory reform sort of just like kind of unleashing, un-inhibiting 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?
Ben Toews: 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, 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, 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, obviously. And I do think 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.
Megan Egbert: Yeah. No, I actually agree with a lot of that. And, you know, in talking about kinda 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 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.
Ben Toews: Yeah, I love the idea of incentivizing developers, and if they’re willing, um- 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 mean, I’ve lived in apartments, I’ve lived in a lot of different situations, and I just believe that it’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.
David Roberts: I wanna 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 do, what does the state do if cities push back or resist or drag their feet? Are there enforcement mechanisms? How do you navigate that?
Ben Toews: The, I mean, the hope would be that the cities would follow the law. Uh- Yes. And I think that-
David Roberts: Well I don’t know if you’ve seen California’s experience on this.
Ben Toews: 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’s 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, 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.
David Roberts: Yeah. Mm, that’s just... 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 s- you know, legal disputes, and it gets tricky
Megan Egbert: Well, and I would just add too though, you know, 2 things. One, I think there’s always gonna 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.
David Roberts: Right. 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, the, you know, I’ve heard people, for example, with the starter homes talking about, you know, infill. This isn’t about infill, right? So, like, there’s still 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 change is hard for everybody, and we just have to work through that part.
Ben Toews: 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 polls very highly for us to figure out how to help, people get into homes and deal with housing issues. So I think that there, 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 wanna point out that those small number, the people that are out there working hard, raising families, those are the people that often aren’t gonna be having the time to go to the city council meetings and, you know, weigh in. And so I think that they’re gonna have to weigh in at the voting booth since they’re not at the city council meetings.
David Roberts: Well, also, like, 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? That’s sort of like a they’re not gonna 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.
Ben Toews: Right
David Roberts: 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 YIGBY bill, you know, would mostly be about, subsidized rental housing. I’m just curious of what’s behind that distinction and why you think, you know, renting is inferior in some way.
Ben Toews: 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 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 gonna 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 people need a way to put down roots. And so, yeah, that’s the long and the short of it.
David Roberts: 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 gonna fight off anything that you worry might lower your property value, like more homes or whatever. I mean, there’s, to some extent-
Ben Toews: Yeah, if you add supply, if you sup- add supply, then you’re potentially, your house is worth less. I can, I can kinda see that. I think a lot of them are not well-founded fears. Like a starter home subit- subdivision has to be on 4 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 lotta times pe- it comes down to people, you know, not reading the legislation, not understanding what it actually does and kind of projecting fears, 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, if you’re thinking about your constituents, the average age when somebody buys their first house now is over 40 years old.
David Roberts: Oh, geez.
Ben Toews: I bought mine when I was 20, I think I was 24 when I bought my first house. And I think about what that has, done for me. I still live in that house right now, and how much of a blessing that’s been, and I really want that for the next generation.
David Roberts: Megan, I wonder if you have any, or you wanna weigh in on 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, the equity issues involved in the way we’ve zoned traditionally and stuff like that. Do you have any thoughts on this question?
Megan Egbert: Yeah. I mean, like most things, I would say I don’t disagree at all, with what Ben is saying. But, you know, because my district is a little bit different, I might just approach it a little bit differently. 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 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 vertical, 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, because that’s what we need right now.
David Roberts: Well, in a city like Boise, don’t you think we do need some infill? I mean, just-
Megan Egbert: I absolutely do. It’s the only choice really when you’re talking about a city this big. You can build up or you can build out, 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. And so for a place-
David Roberts: And you’re jacking up those infrastructure costs every time you build out.
Megan Egbert: 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 my city, you absolutely, we need to be able to build up. We need to be able to build up a lot easier, but that’s not necessarily the case 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 might be a little bit different than some places, though.
David Roberts: 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 gonna, is it gonna reconvene? Is it still doing, is it still making more recommendations? What’s the status there?
Megan Egbert: Yeah, I mean, my understanding is it’s not necessarily done, but it’s also not necessarily, you know, meeting regularly right now either. 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 gonna need to do some tweaking, I think- um, based on what you learn. So I’m hopeful that it was just the beginning, but that we’re probably gonna 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 gonna see some more bills based on the work that we did, in this upcoming session.
David Roberts: Hmm. Ben, I know you are gonna have another go at the duplex bill, and I, and I know that this YIGBY bill will probably come up again. Gonna 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 think maybe, like, it’s time to pause and see what happens?
Ben Toews: Well, anytime you have a suite of legislation like we did go through, there’s gonna be areas that you need to go back and do, you know, kinda look and see if there’s cleanup areas. So there’ll be a few cleanup bills just to, um... And it’s actually really, it works really well that the February 1st is that deadline, because we’ll be back in session and, we’ll take care of any questions that are out there. We’ll close any loopholes is my goal. And then, there’s actually a lot of opportunity for just natural expansion with incremental expansion with the existing legislation. So, I’d see that incremental expansion on the starter home subdivision. I’d see the twin home duplex bill coming back. YIGBY for sure. We’ll look further at shot clocks 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 s- 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?”
David Roberts: But, you know, cleaning up the existing bills, passing those 2 outstanding bills, there’s not any big, new bill that you think covers something that really should’ve been covered this time that you, that you have top of mind?
Ben Toews: No, I think it’s just building on our successes right now.
David Roberts: All right. All right. Any final words, Ben? Any final words, Megan, you wanna do, before we wrap up?
Megan Egbert: Just thanks for having us. It was a great conversation.
Ben Toews: Yeah, I really appreciate it. Yeah, I appreciate being able to get the word out. Like you said, if 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’s even there. So I think that it’s important to, what you’re doing to get the word out.
David Roberts: Awesome. All right. Well, thank you both for coming on and walking us through it. Yeah.
Ben Toews: Thank you.
Megan Egbert: Thanks.
