‘Booming’ Boise ranks #2 on new list of US best places to live. You’ll laugh, cry at why
If you’re a sucker, like me, for mindless Google article suggestions, perhaps you noticed the latest bit of Boise glad-handing this week.
Irresistible headline: “The 15 places to live in the US, where homes are cheaper and there are lots of jobs to choose from.”
Finally, a “best of” listicle that wouldn’t include Boise! I had to click.
Starting at No. 15 — Lexington, Kentucky — the Business Insider piece rattled off city after city until, WTF, at No. 2: Boise, Idaho? (Naples, Florida, was top dog.)
How could this impossibility be?
I probably shouldn’t have skipped the intro. “This year’s top spots include a few cities consistently ranked among the best places to live,” Business Insider explained, “including booming Boise, Idaho.”
It never fails, right?
But. Come. ON! The headline shouldn’t allow it! Bargain-basement housing isn’t something I associate with Idaho’s capital city. Maybe it’s because of pesky data from Idaho Statesman articles like this one in April: “Ada County home prices just spiked by a record-setting amount in 1 month,” the headline proclaimed. A key sentence? “Ada County saw a massive increase in the overall median home price between February and March, skyrocketing by $33,000 to hit $555,000, according to the Intermountain Multiple Listing Service.”
As for all the amazing jobs that Boise offers? Look, the United States has been enjoying historically low unemployment levels. That’s a fact. But, in Boise, are these jobs the type that allow most people to afford the supposedly cheap houses everywhere?
Apparently, it does not matter.
“The secret is out,” Business Insider writes, “after thousands of new residents fled to Boise over the past decade, making it America’s fastest-growing city in 2018. Idaho’s vibrant capital city combines urban amenities such as microbreweries and cider houses with easy access to rivers, canyons, and mountains in nearby state parks.”
If the secret’s been out for six freaking years, how is Boise still ranked No. 2?
Perhaps it’s time for full disclosure. Business Insider stole, er, repurposed its rankings from U.S. News & World Report — which did not write a headline seemingly declaring the 15 cities as places for rock-bottom house pricing and sweet jobs aplenty. Instead, U.S. News’ annual report was called “Best Places to Live in the U.S. in 2024-2025.” Mind-numbing methodology notwithstanding, its overall explanation was this: “To make the top of the list, a place had to have good value, be a desirable place to live, have a strong job market and a high quality of life.”
Either way, shouldn’t transplant-trampled Boise start slipping down, or off, a few of these lists? The City of Trees jumped the shark long ago, if you ask a Boise OG. Or one of those Californians who’ve been in Idaho long enough to resent other Californians arriving. (Like, two years.)
It’s possible that those of us who have called Boise home for most (or all) of our lives might have to accept reality. That it’s not only Idaho that’s changed over time. So has the rest of America. Everything is relative.
So congrats on being No. 1, Naples. But no thanks.
Boise isn’t perfect, but I still love it — cheap homes and lucrative employment or not. No way do I fantasize about becoming Florida Man.
