The number of people experiencing homelessness in Boise and Ada County is down, according to the federal government. But it’s still significantly higher than a decade ago.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development found 756 people were homeless across Ada County in 2018. That’s down about 9 percent from last year. But it’s still up about 24 percent from 2008.
Peg Richards is the president of the Boise/Ada County Homeless Coalition. She says the city and county are helping to curb that number, but that neither is doing enough.
“They do what they can, in their minds, but there’s a lot more that I think that the county and the city could step up to do,” Richards says.
Boise helped pay for a 40-bed home for the chronically homeless that opened earlier this month. It’s a good start, Richards says, but more needs to be done, like requiring new housing projects to set aside a certain amount of units for low-income residents.
“It’s a single drop and we need a lot more drops to make sure that everybody’s housed.”
Boise does offer developer incentives for low-income units. It’s also partnering on a 25-bed project for homeless veterans that’s expected to open in 2020.
City spokesman Mike Journee says people experiencing homelessness “…is a challenging issue that there is no easy fix for.”
He says the city doesn’t have the expertise to tackle the problem by itself.
“The idea that we could pick and choose between all the different kinds of services that we provide in order to specifically focus on this is not accurate,” Journee says.
An Ada County spokeswoman didn't respond to a request for comment.
About 2,000 people across Idaho were homeless last year – nearly 40 percent of whom lived in Ada County.
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