Our community is mired in a deep housing shortage, particularly of starter homes, small apartments, and smaller, age-friendly housing. Instead of creating a livable Bozeman for everyone, we are pushing out younger generations, essential workers, and vulnerable senior citizens, while McMansions & sprawl replace our open spaces. 

We believe it doesn’t have to be this way. We imagine a future in Bozeman with abundant housing, diverse housing options, and responsible land use.

We want to bring back the workforce housing and affordable housing options that made Bozeman a great community in the first place – the duplexes, fourplexes, cottage courts, and other “missing middle” housing built before the Bozeman City Commission banned them in most of the city in the 1950s. Most of those bans remain on the books today, depriving our neighbors of the economical housing our community used to have. 

We recognize Bozeman’s housing landscape is complex and the roots of our housing crisis run deep. We know the reform we want to see must come from city- and state-level policy change and that the city cannot meet our community’s housing needs without the resources and statutory authority from the Montana Legislature. The Legislature has stripped Bozeman of key pro-housing tools that communities in other states utilize, such as eviction protections and rent control. Further meaningful reform and appropriations at the state level to protect tenants and expand subsidized housing options will be necessary to achieve our ultimate goals.

However, there is an opportunity for progress right now as the City examines our Unified Development Code for the first time in a decade. In the midst of this crisis, we have the chance to create more opportunities for affordable housing and homes for the continuum of incomes and lifestyles in our community today. While we continue the slow and vital work of state and federal housing advocacy, we can act in our community right now.

Our community has made great strides to create more opportunities for affordable housing through the Community Housing Action Plan, adoption of its new Affordable Housing Ordinance, and by consistently supporting below-market developers. With the UDC revision process in front of us, we have the opportunity to create more abundant and affordable housing in every neighborhood of Bozeman for decades to come. It is not too late to build a Bozeman that everyone is able to live in.  

We believe the city must prioritize:

• Discouraging teardowns of existing affordable homes by placing limits on the size of new housing to a modest square footage per home, and by requiring displacement assistance, where applicable. 

• Re-legalizing workforce and affordable housing options like fourplexes and sixplexes across Bozeman. If it exists in our residential neighborhoods today, it should be legal to build in all of our residential neighborhoods. 

• Reviving starter homes by allowing and incentivizing smaller houses to be built and sold on smaller lots.

• Making development less costly and homes more affordable by relaxing arbitrary rules that prioritize aesthetics over neighborhood livability and accessibility.

• Bolstering protections for mobile homeowners against landlord exploitation by helping mobile home park residents form co-ops to buy their complexes and protecting existing mobile home developments. 

• Increase our livability and reduce our carbon footprint by allowing more homes to be built within walking distance of transit, job centers, and quality-of-life amenities and by investing in people and public transportation choices, not more cars and wider roads. 

These changes represent a step forward towards a future where everyone can live and thrive in our community.