In November 2022, the McCall City Council took action to create the McCall Area Housing Authority.
The agency was to be tasked with managing the city’s local housing program and implementing strategies outlined in the McCall Local Action Housing Plan, which was adopted earlier that year by the city. Establishing the housing authority was one of the top two priorities identified by the plan.
While the housing authority was created by resolution, the council still needed to appoint a board to steer the agency and hire a new employee to staff it. That has not happened.
McCall Community and Economic Development Director Michelle Groenevelt told Valley Lookout that the city is no longer planning to take those next steps to launch the agency.
Agency ‘not necessary at this time’
“It was determined that a separate entity was not necessary at this time,” Groenevelt said. “This is based on the fact that there is already an existing regional Housing Authority that covers McCall and owns two properties in the city.”
The Southwestern Idaho Cooperative Housing Authority was formed in 1972 and has been managing federally funded affordable housing projects in McCall since 2007.
The city only recently learned of the regional housing authority, which covers Adams, Boise, Elmore, Gem, Owyhee, Payette, Valley, and Washington counties, Groenevelt said.
“We reached out to the Southwestern Idaho Cooperative Housing Authority (SICHA) and formed a connection for future partnership with the City of McCall, to partner on future projects and grant requests,” she said.
A key benefit of housing authorities is that they can access federal funding programs for affordable housing projects. A McCall-specific housing authority would not open funding sources that are not already available through SICHA, Groenevelt said.
The city also determined that creating its own housing authority would be less efficient than creating a new position within Groenevelt’s department to focus on housing efforts.
“Another agency would take more staff resources and budget,” she said.
The city has been advertising the housing planner position since last year, but so far has not been able to hire anyone.
While the city has no current plans to stand up its own housing authority, Groenevelt said that could be re-evaluated in the future “if necessary.”
Local housing action plan
The housing plan that called for creating the housing authority estimated the agency would need $250,000 per year for its first three years.
The agency would have been responsible for implanting the housing plan, as well as marketing, collecting rents, applying for grants, reviewing tenant applications, creating more local housing projects, and forming partnerships.
The highest priority action outlined by the housing plan is for the city to coordinate with the Payette Lakes Recreational Sewer and Water District on local housing projects.
Without donors like you, this story would not exist.
Make a donation of any size here
The sewer district currently caps new residential sewer connections at one per acre, or per parcel, in much of eastern and southeastern McCall due to a lack of capacity in the sewer system. In May, the district will ask voters to approve a $7 million bond issue to begin funding improvements to the system.
A master plan completed last year by the district estimates $55 million is needed to fix the system and ready it for the next 50 years of growth projected in McCall.
Other ideas in the housing plan include paying owners of short-term rentals in McCall to convert them into long-term rentals.
The city could also ask McCall voters to pass a new local-option tax that would be used to fund resident housing, according to the plan.
The housing plan was drafted by a committee of representatives of government agencies, non-profit organizations and private employers.
Since being created in 2019, the city’s local housing program has produced 16 homes that are deed-restricted for use only by local workers, senior citizens, or people with disabilities. Another 45 units have been approved for construction.
