The eviction moratorium was extended for the final time.

June was another busy month as we supported 60 Treasure Valley families with rental and security deposit assistance, and another 40 with supportive services to keep them housed. It's powerful stuff when we think about the positive and long-term ripple effect of our work on all of the families we serve, empowering them to avoid homelessness and the negative impacts that experience can cause.

Still, the need for what we do only continues to grow as the Boise area experiences the fastest rent increase in the entire United States. We are still only able to support around 25 percent of families who contact us. The eviction moratorium was extended one last time through the end of July with additional enforcement guidance. Despite the moratorium being in place since September, however, and millions of dollars in federal rental assistance resources being made available through government agencies, we continue to see many of our neighbors being summoned to eviction court, showing up at emergency shelters, or living in hotels or their car. There were 20 eviction court hearings in the Treasure Valley this week alone.

The negative effects of job loss and the growing housing crisis are still very real for many of our neighbors, and many tenants do are not eligible for or cannot access federal protections or assistance. One example came from a client we helped last week: a 71 year old disabled woman living alone on a fixed income had her rent increased and was unable to cover it. She received a notice to evict with a court summons, and did not know how to access court via zoom. We talked her through the process and ran her through several trials of zoom. She successfully appeared in court online the next day, and Jesse Tree helped negotiate an extra month in her current residence and paid her late rental payment fees and June rent.

The solution to keeping a family housed is not always as simple as rental assistance. In eviction court over the last several months, Jesse Tree has witnessed some general trends:

Many eviction court cases are still occurring across Idaho, despite the moratorium, and a large majority are related to rental increases and nonpayment of rent.

Many families are moving out of the Boise area to Payette and Elmore Counties due to unsustainable rent increases and a severe rental shortage.

Families are being evicted from their mobile homes as the land is being sold for development. Many of those families are on a month-to-month lease and only receive 30 days’ notice to move. The cost to move a mobile home is at least $10,000 and many families cannot afford to move their home in time.

More cases involve tenants moving out before court, as their rent has been increased significantly and they cannot find a job to increase their income.

An increasing number of people are receiving 30 day notices from their landlords to non-renew the lease. This occurs because landlords are selling their properties, rehabbing their properties to lease out to higher-paying tenants, or because tenants have had past issues with nonpayment.

Despite the staggering situations of many people we see, we feel hope that we can continue to solve the housing crisis by supporting one family at a time. We are excited that this month, we will launch a Housing Crisis Hotline with our partners at Our Path Home, through the Campaign to End Family Homelessness. Ada County residents will be able to call the Hotline and be referred to the appropriate resource. We are also looking forward to many events this month, listed below, through which we hope to connect with you about our ongoing work to keep our neighbors housed.

We are also proud to officially launch our monthly giving program this month. If you are able, we encourage you to sign up to become a monthly donor. Recurring donations provide us with predictable funds we can get out to tenants who need it.