The cost of homes in Clearwater County rose by 55% in the decade ending in 2020 while median income in that jurisdiction increased by less than 1.5%.
Those statistics are an illustration of how extreme the housing shortage is in north central Idaho, said Brian Points, president of Points Consulting, a Moscow firm that completed a housing assessment study for the Clearwater Economic Development Association this summer.
The increase in the gap in earnings and housing prices was the most acute in Clearwater County, but the pattern repeated itself throughout north central Idaho, Points said. During part of the same decade, more than 30% of the population in north central Idaho was considered cost burdened or severely cost burdened because of how much they were spending to keep a roof over their head, according to the housing assessment. Those labels come from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s definition of affordable housing, which says that families should be spending no more than a third of their gross income on rent or a mortgage, plus utilities and property taxes. (Lewiston Tribune)
