Neighborhood Housing Services of Boise was selected last week to develop affordable housing on 10 acres of Valley County land in McCall.

NHS is the same nonprofit development group that saw built the nine affordable homes on city land on McCall Avenue.

Between 80 to 100 rental apartments would be built on the 10 acres, of which 80 to 100 percent would target families with lower incomes between $30,000 and $45,000 per year depending on family size.

The master plan would also expand the Valley County Courthouse Annex that is adjacent to the site and put additional commercial space on Deinhard Lane.

The Valley Adams Regional Housing Authority board accepted the recommendation last week from an advisory panel and will forward it to Valley County commissioners who could consider the proposal at their Dec. 3 meeting.

Other proposals were submitted by the non-profit Housing Company of Boise, and the for-profit firm Pacific Companies, a group of development firms throughout the West that specialize in building affordable workforce housing.

The county still has not resolved how to transfer the property, although commissioners would prefer a long-term lease, VARHA Executive Director Michael David said.

Worry Over Delays
VARHA board member Murray Dalgleish wanted to avoid a repeat of the difficulties that held up completion of the McCall Avenue homes until August.

Weather had been blamed, but SMS Custom Home Builders, the Pocatello company that built the modular homes, had also changed owners during the project's construction.

NHS Executive Director Tom Lay assured Dalgleish the contract with a builder could specifically lay out a construction schedule and that penalties for missing deadlines could be written into the contract.

Dalgleish asked what protections could be included in order to win back public trust, which he believed was shaken by the delays in the McCall Avenue project.

"The reason I belabor this point is that this is the first project VARHA is going to take on," Dalgleish said.

"This needs to be a demonstration to the community. We just want as many guarantees in (the contract) as possible," he said.

Lay expects the planning and design phase to last about eight months. His organization would seek public and developer input during that time aimed at refining the final proposal.

Lay submitted a conceptual proposal about 60 pages long that generally called for a large part of the project to be multifamily housing.

Grants could be used to build infrastructure such as water and sewer lines.

Lay said he would want to see chosen firms experienced in building in cold, snowy locales.