BOISE, Idaho — Riley Romazko and her fiancé Julien Rivera were among the first to buy a shipping container home at Caritas Commons, a cluster of single-family houses built for limited-income residents on a quiet street in an older Boise neighborhood.
Romazko, 27, who runs an online naturopath consultancy and Rivera, 29, who owns a small moving company, had been living for three years with Romazko's mother and her boyfriend in nearby Nampa, and they were eager to find their own place. But as the median sales price in Ada County reached $595,000 earlier this year, Romazko said owning their own home looked increasingly out of reach.
"In this area there's such a shortage of homes, and the homes that are available in your price range are dumps," she said. "I could never find even an old, ugly moldy house at this price range in our market. It's just such an extreme shortage."
