Affordable Housing in Bozeman, Montana
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007Who’s not for affordable housing?
It’s a no-brainer of an idea to get behind, especially in a community like Bozeman where the line between the have and have-nots becomes increasingly clearer with every glance at the Bridger foothills.
The sticky part is how do you implement it…
The Bozeman Daily Chronicle’s Op-Ed piece yesterday spoke to the issue of affordable housing in Bozeman:
“The commission granted preliminary approval last week to an ordinance that will require developers to make about 10 percent of the homes built in housing developments of 10 homes or more available to qualified buyers at below market prices.
A final vote is slated for next month, after which builders will be required to sell the designated “work force-housing” homes at significantly less than $200,000 in today’s market. Those are prices have been rare to non-existent in Bozeman for some time.
On taking this momentous step, the commission is wished the best of luck. City commissioners have been trying to make Bozeman housing more affordable for nearly 20 years, a period during which home prices rose rapidly and steadily.”
A house in Bozeman for less than $200K is a rarity indeed these days. We have an interview coming shortly with a for-profit developer that does affordable housing and spoke specifically to this ordinance. More on that to come shortly later this week.
On a similar note, I attended the Affordable Housing Conference through the Wheeler Center over in Missoula last month. The future is not bright for home ownership in some of Montana’s more exclusive communities (namely Bozeman, Missoula, Kalispell, Whitefish).
You can read more about “The Price of Paradise: Affordable Housing in Montana” through the Wheeler Center’s website.
Basically, if you’re in a house by now you should consider yourself lucky. Many of my friends that I attended high school with have gone off to school, did the city thing for a bit, and decided Montana is where they want to settle down. Only problem is Montana grew up while we were all away and unfortunately it’s pretty tough to compete with the Boomers for a place to live. College towns only exasperate this problem. (The New York Times columnist, Michael Brooks, wrote an interesting book called Bobos in Paradise. In it he describes the psychographics of Boomers and even details Missoula and why college towns are so attractive to this generation.)