BOISE, Idaho — Neighbors at the Sage Mobile Home Park on the Boise Bench will soon see significant improvements, thanks to a multi-million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The City of Boise will invest $6.7 million in critical infrastructure repairs and upgrades to preserve affordable housing in the neighborhood.
“We can prevent displacement of people from their homes,” says Nicki Hellenkamp, Director of Housing and Homelessness Policy for the City of Boise.
The city’s goal is to help Boise residents stay in their affordable homes, and in 2022, it purchased the Sage Mobile Home Park as part of that effort. The upgrades will address essential utilities, including power, plumbing, and gas, and will be part of a broader initiative to improve existing mobile homes and manufactured housing communities across the city.
"Some really basic, kind of boring, but needed repairs that we’re going to be able to do there in the near future,” explained Hellenkamp.
The Sage Mobile Home Park, a two-acre site near Vista and Shoshone Park, has long struggled with deferred maintenance. With the funding, the city now has the ability to scope out the full extent of necessary repairs and prioritize improvements.
Hellenkamp says, “We’ll have the ability to do some scoping there and figure out what we’ll be able to pay for, which improvements to prioritize because you’re right— that was a site that really had some deferred maintenance for quite some time.”
I spoke with several residents of the park, knocking on nearly every door to gather feedback. While none of the homeowners wanted to go on camera, some shared that they had not experienced any significant issues with utilities.
The timeline for the project is still being finalized, with the city planning to engage with residents about the changes ahead. The city will also collaborate with the Boise City/Ada County Housing Authority, which manages the property.
“It’ll really be a matter of looking at the budget and looking at what the biggest priorities are from a health and safety perspective and from a stabilization of the site long-term,” Hellenkamp said.
With this latest grant, the City of Boise has now received a total of $16.6 million in funding to support housing for residents with low to moderate incomes. The city’s broader goal is to preserve 1,000 existing affordable housing units across Boise.
