SANDPOINT — With roughly half the residents in Sandpoint living with unaffordable housing, "missing middle" housing may be the answer.

"Housing affordability is an issue," said Sandpoint planning and economic development director Aaron Qualls, during the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Aug. 9. "The way it's measured, the federal standard, is if you spend more than 30 percent of your income on housing, it's considered unaffordable. So by that standard, Sandpoint is way above the national average in unaffordability."

According to recent census data, Idaho is the fastest growing state in the nation, Qualls said. In addition, Sandpoint is the seventh fastest growing "micropolitan" area in the country, he said, and the fastest growing in the state.

Permitting trends are up in Sandpoint, Qualls said, with record breaking numbers for single family housing in 2016. With the addition of the Milltown Apartments, multifamily trends are up well. Those 123 units, more than half of which include a mix of senior and low-income housing apartments, were all rented out before the buildings were fully constructed.

"So that gives you a sense of the housing demand," Qualls said. 

Subdivisions that lay dormant for several years also began filling up with homes in recent years, he said. Much of the growth in Sandpoint stems from retirees, as well as millenials.

Census data indicates the median home value in Sandpoint is $200,000. However, Qualls said more recent data from real estate websites indicates the value is closer to $240,000. With a conventional mortgage at 4.5 percent, a person would need to make approximately $50,000 a year to afford a $240,000 home. More than 60 percent of Sandpoint households make less than $50,000, and the median income in is $34,000, Qualls said.

Qualls said he has been looking at ways to encourage "missing middle" housing, which is not the low density single-family units or the high density multifamily units — it is everything in between. This includes duplexes, triplexes and multiplexes, he said.

"If you walk around south Sandpoint, you notice there are a variety of home types," Qualls said. "There's larger homes, there's smaller homes, there's a variety of duplexes. If designed right (missing middle housing) would fit well within the existing neighborhood pattern."

The market, however, is swayed toward single-family homes, he said. The city has also seen an uptick in accessory dwelling units, which are small units attached to or on the property of a single-family home. The city made some updates to its zoning ordinance to allow for more "missing middle" housing, he said, but have not seen many developers take advantage of it. This includes cottage housing, Qualls said, which allows for more density on a parcel of land.

Qualls said four cities in the county have created the Bonner Regional Team for collaboration efforts, and one of the focus areas of the group is housing.

"That's really important, because this is a regional problem," Qualls said. "It's going to take collaboration figuring out how many units we need, where should they go, how are we going to grow, maintain our quality of life, maintain our levels of service, not saddle taxpayers with too much of a tax burden to support the infrastructure ... It's very complex, but we are beginning those conversations — or renewing those conversations, I should say."

Mary Malone can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.