Changes to state law during the past two legislative sessions are offering new ways to help builders create ‘workforce housing’ in Montana.
Workforce housing is sometimes called middle-income housing and in Montana, it is defined as people earning 60% to 140% of the area’s median income. Another way to put that is that these are people making $51,000 to $140,000 per year for a family of four. That includes nurses or teachers or first responders.
Now that workforce housing is considered 'infrastructure' in the state, we found out it means that the Missoula Redevelopment Agency (MRA) has the power to help get some of these projects going.
The footprint of two old houses that once stood on East Front Street in Missoula will eventually give way to 26 units of workforce housing. And that could be built with some financial help from the MRA which recently launched a brand-new grant program.
“The program is a new grant program utilizing Tax Increment Financing to help build workforce housing. This is a new way for TIF in Montana, where we can fund the bricks and mortar or the vertical construction,” explained MRA Deputy Director Annie Gorski.
Montana lawmakers voted to put workforce housing under the umbrella of infrastructure and the MRA is now allowed to offer help to finance actual buildings.
Matt Sullivan and his wife run their own company, building properties primarily for middle-income Missoulians and this new program could help.
“This program that the MRA has come up with is very timely because right now the way interest rates are. Like anyone looking for a home right now is finding out the interest rates at eight to almost 9% right now. Make the math on owning a home, buying a home, building a property -- really, it doesn’t work anymore. We will apply for it. There’s a lot still to be learned about some of the specifics and how it impacts the math.” - Missoula builder Matt Sullivan
"Many projects -- even market-rate projects -- are on hold...because of the financing climate that we’re in,” Gorski explained. “We’re hearing from a variety of different developers with interest in this because this is one more way that they can help bridge that gap to bring a product type that many in our community have wanted to build but haven’t had the resources to do it.”
Additional information about the Missoula Redevelopment Agency program can be found at https://www.ci.missoula.mt.us/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=3074.
