Housing Heroes Profile: Roundhouse

The Housing Heroes profile series covers LEAP’s advocates and major donors who advance the mission of affordable housing in Idaho. Roundhouse is one of eight major donors to step forward and offer matching funds to all donations in the month of December during Avenues for Hope. To utilize Roundhouse’s match, visit our Avenues for Hope donation page.

As the COO of a market rate housing developer, you might assume she doesn’t care about affordable housing at all. 

You’d be happily wrong..

Katie Vila, 36 and part of this year’s Leadership Boise, is exactly who you want to be your company’s frontman. She’s smart, compassionate, ambitious. And she’s working with her leadership team to make an impact on affordable housing.

For the record, the phrase “market rate” is the industry jargon for apartments and houses whose rents aren’t adjusted based on income. Affordable housing rents are. Katie and Roundhouse know homelessness and gentrification will happen at scale if they don’t do something to help affordable housing builders like LEAP. 

“We want to combat homelessness and housing instability in the valley. Housing costs, construction costs and rents have skyrocketed during the last two years. A gift to LEAP is very meaningful,” Katie said.

She continued, “Increased costs have been disruptive to many people’s financial stability and lack of wage growth means that some people can no longer afford their home. It is heartbreaking that many people who have called the Treasure Valley home for decades are now forced to reconsider where they will live.”

“One of the things I have always loved about Boise is this notion of Boise Kind -- caring for one another. At a deep level, everyone has a home and a place here. That is what Boise Kind really means. That’s what Roundhouse wants. That’s how we can combat the housing crisis.”

Katie knows making a place for everyone won’t be easy. And maybe not even possible. Katie explained  that there is an ever-widening gap in income inequality. Wage growth in Idaho has been far out-paced by median rents. 

“People that are making $30,000 a year have nowhere to go,” Katie pointed out. “It doesn’t matter how much more supply you bring to the market if it is all market rate supply, they still don’t have a place to go. We need to support organizations who are building affordable housing.”

The daughter of two calculus teachers, the mathematics and economics of the housing crisis are not lost on her. But it’s refreshing to hear a corporation give a compassionate voice to the stories of the people impacted by the “calculus” of the situation. 

Maybe, just maybe, it’s not entirely a numbers game. Maybe kindness and compassion and understanding are part of the solution as well.