The homeless men and women who live in Idaho’s largest city are well-nigh invisible. You might see a line waiting for the main library doors to open. Or a solitary shape, wrapped in a blanket, sleeping at the base of a bridge along the Boise River. Or maybe a grizzled veteran holding a cardboard sign at a busy corner. But just one.

The difference between homelessness in Los Angeles and homelessness in Boise is stark — as in orders of magnitude stark. There is no skid row here, no Tenderloin like San Francisco’s, no American River Parkway as in Sacramento.