HELENA — In its first year, a statewide task force made a long list of recommendations on ways to address Montana’s need for available, affordable housing — but leaders said there’s still plenty of room for more ideas.
“We didn't get here overnight, and we're not going to solve it overnight either,” said Gov. Greg Gianforte on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, during a meeting of the Governor’s Housing Task Force. “We have to continue to work on this problem.”
Last year, Gianforte extended the task force through June 2025. They’ve now released a final report with 23 new recommendations, ranging from limiting cities’ minimum lot size and parking requirements to updating building codes to investing in affordable housing loan programs.
“When we started this task force for the second round, I was really doubtful that we would be able to find much in the area of improvements — I felt like all the low-hanging fruit had been already secured by our previous work,” said Montana Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Todd O’Hair. “The fact that we’re at 23 recommendations, I think speaks loudly to the amount of work that was left to be done.”
Chris Dorrington, director of the Montana Department of Transportation, chaired the task force. He said the biggest differences from their earlier recommendations are that they had more time to work on these ideas and that they approached them from a different perspective.
“In this case, we looked under the lens of a project: projects that were in certain communities still facing challenges, projects in communities that were already being successful,” he said. “That different lens really added to a lot of the recommendations that we found.”
Many of the recommendations will require action from the Montana Legislature, and they’ll likely come up during the 2025 session.
For other recommendations, there’s already some progress. Montana Commissioner of Labor and Industry Sarah Swanson says her department has started proposing administrative rule updates to reduce red tape for housing development.
The state has also already committed money to do a study of whether federal “fair market rents” for housing voucher recipients are sufficient.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Montana League of Cities and Towns executive director Kelly Lynch addressed the task force. She said municipalities are already working hard to implement the housing-related measures the Legislature passed last year, and they have some concerns about more changes being piled on.
“I ask again, please do not run us off the tracks in working on that by requiring us to stop and work on other amendments to our ordinances, with some of the recommendations that I see here in the report,” she said.
Lynch told MTN recommendations like eliminating minimum lot sizes and parking mandates were set up as options for cities and towns in 2023’s Senate Bill 382, which required municipalities to choose five strategies for improving housing access from a list of 14. She said that framework gave them more flexibility to meet their local needs.
Dorrington said he understood the concerns Lynch was expressing, but that leaders also had to take into account that they’re still hearing a lot of feedback that housing is too expensive and hard to get.
“I wouldn't say that we want to take our foot off the gas yet,” he said. “I do respect that there are some bills and some changes yet being implemented – it takes time – but I don't think we can mute the concerns that we've heard even during this phase of the report development.”
Dorrington said this will likely be the last time the task force meets before the 2025 legislative session, but that he expects members will continue to make the case for their recommendations as lawmakers consider them.
“We'll probably reconvene following the session to see how our recommendations made it through in law, and to discuss what yet needs to be done,” he said.
Two 2023 laws that implemented earlier recommendations from the task force — requiring large cities to allow duplexes in single-family areas and all cities and towns to allow “accessory dwelling units” — are currently held up in court, as part of a lawsuit filed in Gallatin County.
The state has appealed to the Montana Supreme Court, which assigned the case to a five-justice panel earlier this month.
