BOZEMAN, Mont. — On Wednesday, Strong Towns, a nonprofit organization advocating for sustainable growth in cities across the U.S., held a virtual event with local neighborhood groups and Bozeman City Commissioners regarding the city’s housing crisis.
City Commissioner Douglas Fischer said it was a fitting time for the topic ahead of next week’s decision on the future of Bozeman’s Affordable Housing Ordinance, which was implemented in 2022 to tackle that very issue.
“It’s really refreshing to have an outside perspective on some of the biggest challenges we are facing as a community,” said Fischer.
Founder and president of Strong Towns, Charles Marohn, identified a lack of entry level housing as a major challenge facing many cities across the country, including Bozeman.
He said city code prohibiting or unnecessarily impeding the establishment of small starter homes or accessory dwelling units can be a contributing factor. He encouraged city code reform such as the implementation of simple approvals for incremental development and the removal of parking mandates as potential ways to combat the problem.
“What we see with parking mandates is that we tend to be more sensitive to where people will park and less sensitive about where people will live,” said Marohn. “Bozeman is primarily parking, with other things around it.”
Parking has been a controversial topic in the city as of late, especially the relaxation of requirements for developers building affordable units under the current Affordable Housing Ordinance’s incentives.
While some residents are in favor of reducing parking requirements, others say the city does not currently have the necessary public transit infrastructure in place to support that policy, with many members of the community relying on their vehicles to get around town.
At Wednesday’s event Marohn also cautioned the community against rapid change, especially when relegated to some neighborhoods, and not others.
“It prices out the person who would say, want to fix up their place,” said Marohn. “It creates this cycle of decline where your neighborhoods become kind of the playground for speculators and slumlords while you wait for redevelopment.”
Audience members likened that phenomenon to the forces currently at play in the city’s Midtown neighborhood, where residents are fighting the approval of an affordable housing development that some believe is at odds with the current character of the neighborhood and will have detrimental impacts.
Other recommendations made by Marohn are already underway in the city of Bozeman. City staff are currently undergoing efforts to update the city’s Unified Development Code. Localized funding, another element he said was key to solving the city’s housing crisis, is already available for the construction of affordable housing in the city through programs such as the Gallatin Housing Impact Fund.