Relocating from California to Idaho (Boise, Nampa: apartment complex, rental, low crime)

[d1l3mm4]

Originally Posted by TohobitPeak

Those small towns near the border of Oregon are actually growing, not booming but growing. New Plymouth has a new hi tech company in a large new building. Lots on new lol.

Ontario is booming financially because of the generosity of thousands of Idahoans spending money there at the cannibas shops and supplying Ontario with tax revenue.
Every cannibas shop in that little town has parking lots full of Idaho vehicles. It's a quick 45 minute drive from downtown Boise. Treasure Valley Cannibas has a great mural showing all of the city names in the Treasure Valley. Boise is represented well there.

Can I ask why I’ve only seen negative things about Nampa?

[nowhereman427]

Weiser is right there on the Oregon border.

[NW Crow]

There are good, ok and bad things said about Nampa. Plenty of past threads to read for the various views.

Many who prefer Boise and Meridan see that Nampa is not exactly the same and criticize. It is not as wealthy, neat or chic. It has agricultural roots, activity, smells and agricultural workers. And more blue collar workers and less white collar than Boise / Meridian though there is still a mix. It is 25% Hispanic, versus 7% for Meridian and 9% for Boise. It has reputation for gangs in some areas, as many places do. It's public schools are not well regarded. There are charter schools, as a solution or one cause of public school deficiency.


If space or relatively more affordable housing are important, Nampa can be worth a look. If looking for the newest or trendiest restaurants and stores or best / most homogenous public schools, many probably focus elsewhere. But there are better and worse parts of most cities, so evaluate neighborhoods as well as cities as a whole.

[ejisme]

Nampa and Caldwell were the cheaper suburbs of Boise for many years. Both have their own downtowns and and commercial streets. They were pretty built out in their core areas. When new development money came it went to cheaper vacant land, or land in Boise proper. That left a big portion of Nampa and Caldwell with older and smaller "workers" homes and older apartment complexes. More economically challenged people and immigrants moved into those places, and some crime came with them. On the news if there are drug crimes or murder it is most often in Nampa or Caldwell. Just my observation. There is quite a bit of downtown revitalization going on in both towns, but they are both still the cheaper cousins of Boise, Eagle and Meridian, etc. of the more prosperous suburban towns.

[NW Crow]

Over long time Nampa and / or Caldwell MIGHT get closer to Meridian in composition and style. Not everyone who wants Meridian or Boise or Eagle will be able to move into them. It will be Nampa / Caldwell for some, Middleton / Star, Emmett for others and of course there is Kuna.

Metro has added 150k every decade since 1990. Between 2010 and 2020, Boise city got 15% of the metro growth, Meridian 30%. I dunno how much they'll get in this decade. Depends what density and price those residents will accept. Nampa got 15% of total metro growth last decade. Caldwell 10%. Kuna 4% and likely more next decade. Eagle, 7%.

[banjomike]

The Boise metro's growth tended to suck out all the growth of the edges of the Treasure Valley. Everything north of Caldwell began losing jobs to the central valley.

I remember seeing New Plymouth fade as soon as the Karcher Mall opened halfway between Meridian and Nampa back in 1972. I knew a guy from New Plymouth, and I visited him while he was still living with his parents while attending college.
Once he was on his own, he landed a job at the mall, and rented a house with some friends in Meridian. They were all from New Plymouth, but once they left, they never moved back there.

I moved to Caldwell in the fall of 1969 and left in 1973 to come back to my home town of Idaho Falls, to resettle with my new wife mostly because I.F. had more opportunity than Caldwell offered. Over those 4 years, I watched all the small little farm towns decay quite rapidly.

I began going to Weiser's big fiddle contest when I lived in Caldwell, and I loved the week-long event so much I never missed it for the next 25 years.

Driving to Weiser from the south, I passed through Ontario, then Payette, Fruitland, and the others because they're all connected with the same highway, and I never saw any of them regain their losses. Since I only came once a year, I really noticed how they withered; the highway was the Main St. for all of them, so the speed limit always slowed the drive down once I passed through Ontario.

Their small, local businesses gradually failed to compete, and most just closed up over time. Their young labor force migrated toward the Central Valley and were replaced with migrants who eventually became permanent residents in them all.

The western half of the Treasure Valley is the most productive farmland in the entire state. They can grow crops there that simply will not grow anywhere else, so once modernization set in, I think it was natural that all those small towns lost population. They've all settled into their smaller size and seem to be pretty stable now.

For as long as there's a lot of farmland that surrounds them, anyway. The crops the farmers grow are all pretty exotic; hops, mint, vineyard grapes, fruits, seed corn (and other seed crops), and they're all far more valuable than potatoes, wheat, and barley, the crops that were the first that were cultivated.

The hops alone are a huge land investment that deliver enormous profits to the farmers. Hops are vines. So every acre of a hop farm is a maze of 20-foot poles and cables that support the vines. Each vine is harvested by hand, then all the vines are industrially cut down, and are chopped up by specialized implements and machinery.

The hops are the best that an be grown in the North American continent, so their production has spawned an enormous industry around a single crop.

At the same time, many of the other crops have also spawned similar industries, all to supply and deliver the finished ag crops to their final usage. Mint, in particular, is also as difficult to grow, but a gallon of refined mint oil is ounce per ounce more valuable than gold and costs just as much to refine.

This makes me believe the cropland is so profitable it's not going to be sold to housing development or anything else for a very long time to come, if ever.

[nowhereman427]

Originally Posted by d1l3mm4

Can I ask why I’ve only seen negative things about Nampa?

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/idah...ent=nlbuttonB1

[d1l3mm4]

Originally Posted by nowhereman427

https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/idah...ent=nlbuttonB1

?

[NW Crow]

Just saw that Nampa, Meridian and perhaps Caldwell were in top 15 in country for % growth between 2020 and 2021. They had the base for it. Real small towns may not unless blessed with favored location, leadership or something.

[d1l3mm4]

Originally Posted by NW Crow

Just saw that Nampa, Meridian and perhaps Caldwell were in top 15 in country for % growth between 2020 and 2021. They had the base for it. Real small towns may not unless blessed with favored location, leadership or something.

So where we lived for most of my children's early years was a college town of about 65,000 (where about 20,000-25,000 were college students). All the kids played sports and the families would all get together for pizza after games and the kids would run around and play. Everyone lived fairly close so there were always kids running up and down the streets having fun. I never had to drive them to school, nor did they have to take a bus, they could walk or ride their bikes with their friends, safely everyday. I did have to commute about 30 minutes to work but it was totally worth it. If me or my wife couldn’t get them to a practice or a game, all the parent groups were always offering, same with us. There were always other peoples kids at other peoples houses, whether it was for dinner or before or after sports, whatever the case. Where we have been living now for the last two years I still haven’t even seen the faces of all my neighbors. I literally just found out yesterday the guy who lives across from me has a wife and two kids! I’ve never seen them, and I am always in the garage, with the door up, either working out, doing some weird project, or hobby. But my older kids are 16 and 13 now, and with my 2.5 year old I want to find another place like where I came from. With about a 50/50 chance of getting this job offer we’d be able to move to Idaho and put down roots for the baby. That’s kind of what I’m looking for.