A project that would bring some relief to McCall’s affordable housing shortage is being planned.
Michael Hormaechea is developing a potential workforce housing apartment project. Hormaechea is also working on the Avery Hotel in Boise.
The apartments would be off North Third Street on the over four-acre McCall Manor Mobile Home Park lot. Hormaechea is currently a partner in an entity that owns the property and is buying it from the existing partnership.
Park residents were given notice earlier this week. Hormaechea said they will give the residents first priority to rent the future apartments.
“In their notice, they’re going to get an offer of assistance on a number of factors,” he said about the mobile home park tenants. “Including, if they would like to come back to this property after our project is complete, they’ll be granted a place at the top of our tenant list. We’ll waive any application fees and essentially do what we can to get them in there – if they would like to be there.”
The plans are in the very early stages of the development process, but Hormaechea said they “expect” it to be more than 100 units. The final unit style mix, total number of units, and square footage are still being worked out.
“We’re planning for this long-term rental housing that’s meant to be attainable to this broad spectrum of McCall’s workforce,” Hormaechea said. “Something that is again, in this sort of desperately short supply.”
Right now, Hormaechea said the priority is working with the mobile home parks residents to assist them in any way they can.
“We have our existing tenants at the mobile home park. How are we going to address that? We recognize this is a significant burden on them to close the mobile home park and have them relocate,” Hormaechea said. “We’ve been spending a lot of time here recently, gathering resources wherever we can, however, we can, to offer them, and aid, and mitigate the challenges they’re going to find to move off the site. So that’s been a big effort of late.”
As for rent prices, Hormaechea said the team is doing their due diligence to better understand what the units should be priced at.
“We’re working hard on it,” he said. “We’re spending a fair amount of time talking to employers in McCall sort of small, medium, and large and understanding their needs, what’s holding them back from getting the staff they want – that they have not been able to hire. Universally, the reason they are understaffed is the lack of housing. So then we just try to work close with them. What are these jobs, what kind of pay, and what kind of housing costs is attainable for those folks? We’re going to do our best to drive our rents to match as many of those jobs…So we’re certainly going to try to get as many folks in homes as we can that currently can’t find it.”
Hormaechea expects that the application process with the City of McCall will be ongoing through the summer and fall, with a goal of starting construction in the spring of 2024.
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