After Hours Event: Meeting the Challenge of Affordable Housing: New Options

Meeting the Challenge of Affordable Housing: New Options

The place we call home affects our mental and physical well-being, ability to make positive life choices, and inspiration to be our best possible selves. The Treasure Valley's population growth makes finding an affordable place difficult for many home seekers, and rising property taxes make keeping their home difficult for many owners--especially those on fixed incomes. How are we meeting these challenges? 

Join City Club of Boise to hear about the HomeShare Hub, a new program bringing home seekers and home providers together safely and efficiently, from Inga Hadder, Caile Spear and Diane Ronayne with the HomeShare Hub team at NeighborWorks Boise, and learn from Boise Mayor's Housing Advisor Nicki Olivier Hellencamp how the city is using increased density and sustainable development to keep people housed. This event will take place at the NeighborWorks Boise office, 3380 W Americana Terrace, Boise, ID 83706. Light refreshments will be served.

SPEAKERS

NeighborWorks Boise HomeShare Hub Team

• Caile Spear's lived experience included times of food insecurity and being unhoused. This informed her career choice: She taught public health at Boise State University for 25 years, during which time she also volunteered with the Student Basic Needs workgroup to increase students' access to healthy food. Her efforts with an intergenerational BSU/neighborhood housing workgroup starting in 2017 transformed after COVID into the NeighborWorks HomeShare Hub in 2023.
• Diane Ronayne has been both a home seeker and a home provider. After moving to Boise in 1980, Diane shared housing with friends for three years, and since buying a home in 1986, she and her husband, Gary Richardson, have shared their home with dozens of people. A retired journalist, she is a founding board member of City Club of Boise and serves on the Advisory Board of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Boise State University.
• Inga Hadder has called Boise her home for nearly five years and loves raising her two kids here. She is the Director of Communication and Community Engagement at NeighborWorks Boise, a local nonprofit bringing housing solutions to the Treasure Valley for over 40 years, as well as the sponsor of Rake Up Boise and Paint the Town, programs involving hundreds of volunteers and residents annually. She sees the HomeShare Hub as a community-driven solution that caters well to the diverse housing needs of Boise residents.

Mayor's Housing Advisor, City of Boise Planning & Development Services

• Nicki Olivier Hellenkamp, born and raised in Boise, has worked in the affordable housing world since her first job out of college as a volunteer coordinator for a housing and homeless services provider in Philadelphia. After graduating with her Master’s in Social Work from the University of Washington, she served as a Policy Manager for the Housing Development Consortium Seattle-King County, where she supported local governments in analyzing and advancing policies related to affordable housing development, and as a Senior Civil Rights Analyst for the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, where much of her work focused on allegations of housing-related civil rights violations. Nicki has worked for the City of Boise as the Mayor’s Housing Advisor since July 2021.

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. at the NeighborWorks office, 3380 W Americana Terrace, Boise, ID 83706.

Tickets: $10 City Club members, $20 non-members. Attendance limited to 30.  

City Club thanks our Annual Sponsor University of Idaho, Boise, and the 2024 Forum Series sponsors: AARP of Idaho,  Idaho Education Association, SelectHealth, Small Mine Development, and St. Luke's. Our media partners include Boise State Public Radio, Idaho Public Television and the Idaho Statesman. The Osher Lifetime Learning Institute is our Community Partner. This program is made possible in part by a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council, the state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

If you have any questions, call 208-364-4614 and staff can assist you.