Idaho’s Big Housing Breakthrough Year

In 2026, Idaho pulled off one of the biggest housing affordability coups of any US state to date. It’s like Washington state’s “year of housing” and Montana’s “housing miracle” rolled into one—six bills passed, including backyard and basement apartments (ADUs), lot splits, manufactured homes, single-stair, permitting shot clocks, and a starter home measure—all from a conservative-controlled legislature where nobody saw it coming. Or did they?

Idaho’s affordability breakthrough was a sneaker if you weren’t paying close attention, but it didn’t materialize magically out of nowhere. The groundwork was laid a year ago when Republican and Democratic lawmakers pushed to fund a bipartisan housing study committee. Over the interim, the committee brought together odd bedfellows to problem-solve the state’s affordability challenges. When the gavel came down on the 2026 session, a coalition of support and a cadre of committed legislators was in place to get the job done.

Why Idaho? An unlikely state for national housing abundance leadership

People don’t necessarily think “housing shortage” when they see Idaho on the map. The Gem State is known for many things: iconic landscapes like the Sawtooth Mountains or Craters of the Moon, a unique brand of rugged individualism and western freedom, and, of course, an abundance of potatoes.

The potatoes are an obvious draw, but Idaho’s selling points are many. Possibly too many, if you ask locals. The Gem State has topped “best places to live” lists for many years now, and the influx of people is undeniable. Idaho is near the top of the list of fastest-growing states by population.

Now, eclipsing the allure of crystal-clear rivers and freedom-loving lifestyle are Idaho’s astronomical housing costs. Subdivisions are sprawling into what was once productive farmland (fewer potatoes!), and people who grew up here are consistently outbid by newcomers with out-of-state cash. Growing pains are very real and local governments have felt mounting pressure to do something about it.

The bills that will deliver more homes for Idahoans

When the problem is bad enough, partisan divides are easier to bridge, and it’s easier for state leaders to step in. Idaho’s big year for housing abundance bills would never have been so successful without legislators passing a bill in 2025 that established a committee to recommend solutions for the state’s housing shortage. The interim study committee convened stakeholders from every link in the homebuilding chain: planners, realtors, architects, landscapers, financers, contractors, and elected officials. It heard presentations, asked questions, and drilled down to identify barriers.

Some issues were off the table due to fraught politics, such as Idaho’s property tax law that caps what cities can collect for infrastructure improvements. That factor makes many cities hesitant to permit homebuilding projects if their sewers, roads, and schools are insufficient to serve them.

The committee’s final recommendations included preemptive zoning reform to allow more homes, streamlined permitting, and building code tweaks. Legislators took these ideas and ran with them in the 2026 session, passing an impressive slate of bills.

Backyard cottages, aka ADUs, as family and mortgage helpers (SB 1354)

Granny flats, mother-in-law suites, a place to house college kids . . . lots of names for ADUs floated around the Idaho Capitol Building this session. The appeal of intergenerational living was strong—Idahoans tend to be a family-oriented bunch on the whole, and they could get behind added housing options for keeping aging parents or young-adult kids nearby. The freedom to earn extra income on property you already own was appealing, too, especially with Idaho’s large gap between median income and home price.

Senate bill 1354 applies to cities with over ten thousand residents and allows for one ADU per house lot, either attached or detached, and prohibits cities from requiring off-street parking or guest parking for ADUs unless special conditions (like a dirt road) apply.

Unique among the session’s housing abundance bills, SB 1354 limits how homeowners associations (HOAs) can restrict ADUs. A brand new HOA can ban them outright, just like it can ban raised garden beds or parking in your driveway. But if an existing HOA does allow ADUs, it cannot rescind that allowance without written consent from each individual property owner. Existing HOAs can still have rules about the size and look of ADUs—if your HOA says no pink houses, it means no pink ADUs, either.

ADUs are unlikely to pop up over every garage, but in a shortage, each added home helps. As with most Western states, private property rights are a big deal in Idaho. Now that SB 1354 is law, property owners can build solutions that fit their family’s needs on land they already own. It’s a big affordability win.

Starter home subdivisions, for boosting first-time buyers (SB 1352)

Buying a home is a big first step into your financial future; at least, that’s what Dad told me in the early stages of adulthood. In Idaho, the average first-time home buyer is now over 40. But when McMansions on quarter-acre lots are the only option on the market, can we be surprised? Senate bill 1352 undoes prohibitions on small house lots for smaller homes, which will also have smaller price tags.

For developments on four acres or more, SB 1352 legalizes lot sizes down to 1,500 square feet, with a maximum density of 12 homes per acre. Think: row houses or cottages built around shared open space. Like the ADU bill, it only applies to cities with more than ten thousand residents. Also, cities can deny permits if a development would exceed infrastructure capacity (for example, a maxed-out sewer or already stretched arterial road).

Building mini-subdivisions or pocket neighborhoods puts a different home product on the market, one that first-time homebuyers can more readily afford.

Fast, affordable, ‘made in Idaho’ manufactured homes (HB 800)

Idahoans value self-sufficiency and independence. The Made In America brand is great, but Idaho Made is better. Idaho has several manufactured home companies, and with the passage of House bill 800, more of the homes they build will stay in-state.

Manufactured homes aren’t the rickety trailers of my youth. With advances in construction practices and higher-quality materials, many are indistinguishable from houses built the traditional way on site. There’s more variety, too: the classic single-wide, of course, but manufacturers can also produce homes in multiple sections, including duplexes. That’s why HB 800 includes a mandate that all land zoned for multifamily must allow a manufactured duplex as small as 800 square feet.

HB 800 also opens up more opportunities for smaller manufactured homes by legalizing single-section homes (think single-wide or tiny house not on wheels) in all single-family zones, down to a minimum size of 400 square feet.

And they’re customizable to accommodate Idaho’s varying climates. Giant snowload? Steeper pitch on the roof. A 110-degree Boise summer day? High-efficiency cooling system and insulation. 

One big advantage of manufactured homes: they’re fast. This legislation unlocks more homes on an almost immediate timeline. A manufactured home built right here in Idaho can be delivered in a matter of weeks, at far lower cost than a conventional house.

Single-stair options for sunnier, roomier apartment homes (HB 706)

House bill 706 gives cities the option to allow single-stair buildings (aka sunlight suites). One complaint across Idaho is that what’s being built doesn’t fit peoples’ needs. It’s either a mansion or a 300-unit apartment building, without much choice in between. Single-stair buildings fill that gap—they fit into awkward lots tucked amongst other buildings, and they enable apartment designs with better natural light and cross-ventilation that are often more spacious than those typically found in larger, two-stairway buildings—meaning more family-sized options as well.

“Single-stair” refers to a reduction of the typical requirement for two staircases to one, but only for small apartment buildings. As has become the standard nationally, HB 706 restricts the single-stair allowance to buildings with up to four homes per floor and a maximum of four to six stories (at the city’s discretion), and requires extra fire safety measures.

Again, it’s optional: HB 706 lets cities choose to allow single-stair homes if they wish. Or not! Before the bill passed, a city couldn’t permit these buildings even if they wanted to. Now, thanks to this bill, cities can give urban Idahoans more options with more sunlight, more cross-breeze, more room. They can be rentals or condos, and they’re great for filling in small lots. More sunlight? Yes, please!

Unanimous support to speed local permitting (HB 585)

Anyone who’s built a home will tell you: time is money. Delays in the permitting process can add tens of thousands of dollars to a construction budget, a cost that either ends up in a higher sale price or prevents construction altogether. Recognizing that cities don’t always have capacity to provide inspections quickly, House bill 585 gives homebuilders the option to get inspections from a private third party.

HB 585 also establishes “shot clocks” for permitting that go into effect on July 1, 2026. If cities fail to provide a permitting inspection within six business days, the builder can request a third-party inspection and a refund of the city’s fee. And if a city inspection results in permit denial, cities have three days to provide a reason why. The sooner you know what the mistake is, the faster you can fix it and move on.

The combination of shot clocks and third-party inspections will help keep construction projects moving and lower their costs. HB 585 passed without a single “no” vote—can’t beat that!

Lot splits to empower property owners (HB 707)

Let’s say you’re ahead of the curve: you built that backyard cottage ten years ago before it was cool. Your daughter lives there now, helping to take care of you as you age. She wants to own property, but she can’t afford anything in your neighborhood. You’d give her your home, but there are some messy tax implications there.

Before the nearly unanimous passage (only two “no” votes) of House bill 707, there was no way to split off the ADU to sell it to your daughter. It would have required a full-blown subdivision platting process, lots of paperwork and fees, and untold amounts of back-and-forth with local government entities to get the approvals needed before a bank will grant financing.

HB 707 allows simple lot splits not subject to onerous, bureaucratic subdivision rules. The catch—and what makes it different from lot split bills in other states—is that the split-off lot must already have a residential structure on it. Also, the lot split cannot result in non-compliance with density limits or other zoning restrictions.

This simple bill gives Idahoans the option to utilize their property in a way that best suits their financial needs. Your daughter can buy the ADU, and you can keep your house.

Authorized: Studying farmland and infrastructure impacts

Well over a decade ago in graduate school, I studied the issue of Idaho’s disappearing farmland. This year, the legislature authorized Idaho’s Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE) to take a formal look. OPE is a small agency tasked with studying things. Legislators commission reports, and OPE does the research.

Along with Medicaid in rural hospitals and growth in prison populations, OPE will study the effects of residential development patterns on farmland and local government infrastructure. Growing pains are real, and this study will give Idahoans more than anecdotes to move the needle on non-sprawling housing supply.

Building Idaho’s future—together

Idaho is roughly two-thirds public lands: playgrounds of wilderness, open space, and undevelopable acres. Our economy, though, runs on carbs. Potatoes, soft wheat, hops, seeds—these are the crops that have sustained us for generations. That means our ag economy has to fit inside the one-third of private land in the state and share ground with homes, highways, commercial property . . . plus everything else.

Canyon County, for example, is one of the largest seed-producing areas in the world. It’s also right next door to Boise, population around 235,000 (and growing), and has suffered a loss of farmland that’s noticeable to anyone who’s lived in the Gem State for more than a year or two. Suburbs are replacing ag land, and you can’t eat Kentucky blue grass.

This year’s zoning reform bills only apply to cities with over ten thousand residents, where roughly 60 percent of Idahoans live. Counties are excluded. This is intentional. Channeling growth into the cities, rather than sprawling into incorporated counties, helps curb farmland loss. Infrastructure funding is tougher to come by in rural counties, too. Lots of public land means not a lot of tax dollars.

The motivations to pass these bills varied: saving farmland, keeping kids in-state after graduation, fierce commitment to private property rights. The vote counts were fascinating, too. With Democrats constituting only 15 of Idaho’s 105 legislators, party means very little in Idaho. Caucus (“freedom red” or “main street red”), region (North Idaho or Snake River Plain), urban or rural—none of the labels predicted consistent votes.

Most legislators fully understand the lack of housing at attainable prices; they hear about it from constituents nonstop. Those who served on the Interim Land Use and Housing Study Committee in 2025 also understood potential solutions, having learned from stakeholders and taking action to tackle the problem. All this paved the way for a successful session, and with the OPE Study, we’re likely to see even more in 2027.

The Gem State still has room to grow—both in housing policy and population. Many hope that solutions passed this year will soon yield new homes and give local governments cover to take reform ideas further. Next year’s agenda is still in the works, but there are exciting prospects we’ll work on over the interim. Duplexes? Sure! Yes In God’s Backyard (i.e., building homes on faith institutions’ properties)? Amen to that!

What Idaho leaders accomplished for people across the state this year was no small potatoes. More homes of all shapes and sizes will hit a famished market as soon as mid-summer, giving Idahoans choices beyond the McMansion or the large apartment building. There’s more work to do—always—but the Gem State has a lot to be proud of this year.