“When we’re looking at the supply of multifamily housing or single-family housing, there’s not enough supply in any way to meet the demand of people coming into Meridian or people who are trying to stay in Meridian,” the students said. “The way to meet that supply is to allow more access to multifamily housing.”

The students, including Faith Spaulding, Kristi Spalding, Sunny Smart and Shiva Rajbhandari, said there was a lot of language in the comprehensive plan about being adaptable to change, that the city wants to have a diversity of housing types and incomes and that Meridian wants to be a city that continues to have economic development.

At some point, Meridian will run out of space, the students said.

The low end of two-bedroom rents in the city is $1,700, but hidden costs like deposits, application fees, last month’s rent and others make the cost over $4,000, according to the presentation.

The per capita income in Meridian is around $40,000 and the median household income is $85,000, according to the presentation. Over 6% of the population lives in poverty. The cost of living is high, and so is the average household income, they said.

“In addition, a very small percentage of Meridian’s populations are using public assistance income and SNAP, which gives the impression that housing is relatively affordable,” the students said. “However, as you look into the reality, we see many households are considered cost burdened, while also the majority of people who work in Meridian cannot afford to live in Meridian.”

Over half of Meridian residents are cost burdened, including 62% of renters, the presentation said.

The optimal vacancy rate is 4%-5%, but the vacancy rate in Meridian is 0.5%

“There is not enough supply to meet the demand,” Spalding said.

One of the students also compared Zillow listings to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s fair market rents. Just 3.8% of single family homes for rent met that fair rent and only 23% of multi-family homes met the fair market rent values.

“People who are looking to move to Meridian often can’t,” the students said.

The students also looked at how current Meridian residents are affected. An example family was the Alfred family, who are living in extremely overcrowded conditions in a multigenerational household. They are renters. Extremely overcrowded means there are two or more people per room, not just including bedrooms.

“There are approximately 595 overcrowded households in Meridian,” Smart said.

This overcrowding issue may be disproportionately affecting children, the presentation said. In Meridian, there are 342 homeless students — 304 are considered homeless because of doubling up.

One of the council members said “doubling up” isn’t the traditional definition of homelessness and wanted more clarity before alarming people. Smart said doubling up is considered homeless because it is unstable housing and anyone can be asked to leave at any time.

“Most often what they see is that families are renting and then the landlord is selling the home for a price that they cannot meet, and so they go to move, but rent has grown so high that there’s nowhere to move into that they can afford,” Smart said.

Many qualify for Section 8 vouchers, but there is little Section 8 housing in Meridian. There are also landlords who say they have Section 8 housing, take the application fee but there is no housing, the students said. Councilmember Brad Hoaglun said he was concerned about such behavior.

“Part of the barrier is that families can often afford the rent, they’re finding ways to afford it, but because on applications, they are required to make triple the amount of rent. They don’t match that criteria so no one will rent to them,” Smart said.

Rajbhandari said peer cities have reduced parking minimums, offered rental assistance, subsidized more affordable housing units, and expanded multi-family housing.

Councilmember Liz Strader said the housing presentation looked more positive than she expected. She said she was pleasantly surprised that 20% of the multi-family units met the fair market rents.

“I mean 20 percent is not great, but it’s not as horrible as I would have expected,” Strader said. “...This is a lot to contemplate.”

Most of the data is from before or during COVID-19, Rajbhandari said, so the city could be in a different place now.

In the past several months, Meridian’s city council and mayor have been trying to figure out a strategy to address housing, a key issue in the larger metropolitan area and Meridian itself.

Meridian’s lack of medium- and high-density housing was called “alarming” in a report released late last year. The report was commissioned by AARP and conducted by a design and professional services firm.

“Zoning codes need to better regulate the spectrum of multifamily housing types instead of as a one size fits all approach, as seen in the current Meridian UDC (Unified Development Code),” the report said.

The city doesn’t have a lot of housing options, Meridian Planning Division Manager Caleb Hood said during a presentation last December on possible code changes.

City councilmembers didn’t raise any objections to adding missing middle housing like duplexes and fourplexes. But they struggled to reach a consensus with other possible changes, including tiny homes, allowing smaller houses, accessory dwelling units and density bonuses.

And in a discussion last September, the Meridian City Council was largely noncommittal about whether the city should play a role in affordable housing. Multiple members said there was a limit to what Meridian’s government could do.

Last summer, Meridian Mayor Robert Simison said he didn’t yet feel comfortable with investing dollars in affordable housing.

“The price of food has gone up. We don’t support the Meridian Food Bank with general fund dollars,” Simison said at a budget workshop in June. “I would argue food insecurity is as big if not bigger. How many days can you go without food and water compared to housing? I don’t want to get into that debate.”

Simison, a homeowner, said later in the meeting he would be more comfortable using American Rescue Plan Act funds. And in August, Meridian budgeted $250,000 in fiscal year 2023 so entities like nonprofits can apply for funding to help with emergency housing assistance, as previously reported.

The assessed values of Meridian homes also went up substantially from last year to this year. From April 2022 to April 2023, the median value of a home in Meridian’s lowest density zoning went from $728,000 to over $1 million. The median home property value jumped by over $100,000 in other, higher-density zones as well.

The assessed value of a home does not necessarily mean that’s the price it would sell for, according to Brian McClure, comprehensive associate planner with the city of Meridian. However, he said the assessor’s office is consistent and there is some truth there to the jump in values. There isn’t much of the lowest-density zoning (only around 300 acres and 300 addresses), so there’s a very low supply.

At the same time, the gap between new construction permits for single-family and multi-family is narrowing. In 2021, there were new construction permits for 1,812 single-family units but only 820 multi-family units, according to the city’s land use report.

In 2022, there were 1,333 new construction permits for single-family units and 1,048 multi-family units.

“There certainly is an investment trend in the multifamily right now,” McClure said. “The market is struggling with finding workers and labor and material shortages and then just sort of economic concerns. The multifamily has been a great investor area.”