With housing prices dramatically increasing across the state and making some communities unaffordable for Montanans, the three Democrats running in the western U.S. House primary all have their own ideas for how to alleviate the pain.
Communities in the newly drawn western district include some of the hardest-hit when it comes to affordable housing. In March, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported Gallatin County home prices were up about 66% since before the pandemic and rent in the region rose 11% from 2020 to 2021. The median price of a home sold in Missoula last year was $450,000, the Missoulian reported recently. That was a jump of more than 28% from the year prior.
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As people struggle to find places to live, businesses and local governments in communities like Missoula say they can’t hire employees to fill critical open positions because those workers can’t afford to live in town.
The race is between Cora Neumann, a Bozeman nonprofit executive who has focused on public health issues; Monica Tranel, a Missoula lawyer who has experience in the energy and natural resources sectors; and Tom Winter, a former state lawmaker from Missoula who works to expand access to broadband.
Monica Tranel said that it’s important to correctly diagnose the issues and that the right solutions look different from community to community.
“In this district in western Montana, the pressure points on the housing problem are different. Butte used to be a city of 100,000 people, now it’s a city of 30,000. The solutions for Butte look different than they do from Missoula or Bozeman or Whitefish,” Tranel said.
She pointed to the Alpenglow Apartments in Whitefish, which were completed in 2021 and are deed-restricted to be affordable options. She said while those apartments make a dent, only about a quarter of similar projects get funded in the state.
“Out of the federal government, what I can do in Congress to help the housing issue, which is so much a local problem, is really the levers of funding,” Tranel said. That would mean figuring out how to meet the needs on the ground and make money easier to use and access for builders and developers with eligible projects.
Tranel said that, if elected, she also would make sure tax credits for projects go to people who are “capable of building and accountable for what they’re building.”
Another way Congress could have a say is to make sure corporate investors are not getting the same financial incentives that individuals and families do, Tranel said.
She also said part of the job in Congress would be raising awareness about the issue.
“You can hold hearings. You can have town …….