One county, a lot of neighbors: who lives where in Kootenai County

Rathdrum and Hayden Lake are less than 10 miles apart. In Rathdrum, about 1 in 3 homes has a child under 18, more than any other city here. In Hayden Lake, the typical resident is past 50 and the typical home is worth about $800,000. Same county, very different neighbors. Kootenai County is about 182,000 people across about 80,000 front doors, and the towns behind those doors are not alike.

Put all of us in one room and we look comfortable. The typical household earns about $81,900 a year. The typical home is worth about $518,700. Seven in 10 of us own the place we live in, and the typical neighbor is about 41.

But nobody lives in an average. We live on a street.

In Coeur d'Alene, that street is more likely to have a renter on it than anywhere else in the county. About 37 in 100 households rent. It's a town of about 56,400 split two ways: about a quarter of its addresses are younger households getting their footing, and about another quarter are older couples who have settled in for good. The house with the swing set is the exception here, not the rule.

Drive west to Post Falls and the street gets younger. The typical resident is 35, the youngest of any town here, and about a quarter of the addresses are families with kids in newer neighborhoods. Head north to Rathdrum and about 1 in 3 homes has a child under 18, the highest share of any city here, some in new subdivisions and some on a little more land out past town. Rathdrum also has the highest typical income of the bigger towns, about $86,600.

Hayden is where people settle. About a quarter of its homes belong to households whose kids have grown and moved out, and about another quarter to well-off older households on rural land. Three in 4 own their home.

Then there are the small lake and country towns, where the neighbors have usually been around a while. In Dalton Gardens and Hayden Lake, the typical resident is past 50 and the typical home is worth about $800,000. Hayden Lake's typical household income, about $108,800, is the highest of any town here. Up north in Athol, the neighbors are a little older than the county average, but the typical home is worth about $367,700, the lowest of these towns.

So when the county argues about housing, schools, roads or taxes, it helps to remember who is on the other side of the table. A young renter in Coeur d'Alene, a family of five in Rathdrum and a retired couple in Hayden Lake can all love this place and still want very different things from it. They're all Kootenai County.

How we did this: the population, age, income, home value and ownership numbers come from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates. The share of homes with children comes from the same survey and counts only homes inside city limits. The other household descriptions come from Market Narc, a research tool built by Accelerated Experiences, the company that owns K County Media. Market Narc sorts each Census tract by the kind of place it is, its income level and its stage of life, then counts the addresses in it. The map shows every home address in the main part of the county.