MISSOULA – We’re just days away from next week’s Missoula municipal election means our coverage of the mayoral candidates continues.
MTN’s Kathryn Roley recently asked the five candidates for their thoughts about rental and housing costs in Missoula.
Mayor Jordan Hess says that the city should be proactive in helping the working members of Missoula who can’t afford to live in the city and to also partner with the private sector.
“We also need to work on workforce housing, so this is 60% to 140% of our area median income. It’s public employees, its teachers, its nurses, it’s a lot of retail workers – it’s a lot of people throughout different sectors in our community and that is the area that is the most challenging to support.
City council member and local Realtor Mike Nugent says when it comes to housing and rent prices, he says that there ISN’T much the city can do due to state laws, but he says there are ways the city could help.
“So. where I think we can help the rental market is making sure that we are partnering with projects that can take advantage of low-income tax credit opportunities to build more housing that then would take pressure off the renter market and get some of our most vulnerable Missoulians out of that part of the market and into safe and secure and kind of opens up the area up more,” candidate Mike Nugent said.
Andrea Davis, who has worked in the housing industry for the last 15 years, says that she would be working with the state to help with the housing crisis.
“Montana is a state with very strong private property rights and the city government more or less is dictated by constitutional state law. The state is the one that enables municipalities to have any kind of ability if we wanted to put rent controls in place for example or limits on rent. People ask me that all the time, ‘Is there a way that we can actually have tenant rights so that there is a more predictable increase in rent’?”
Brandi Atansoff says that protecting the renters at a city level would also help with increasing rent prices Missoulians are seeing.
“At the very least right now we need to be able to meet the people that are renting where they are and cap off the amount that can increase. But at the very least right now I feel like we need to find a way to protect the renters and letting development happen at the pace it’s happening helps the city kind of even itself out.
Shawn Knopp, the project manager at Montana Glass says that Missoula has always been a little bit more expensive, but talking with builders to ease the financial load of homebuyers is what he would do if elected mayor.
“It’s going to be hard to remedy that problem, especially until we have enough homes for everybody. As supply and demand, if there’s not enough housing then the price goes up to the highest bidder. So, [the] first thing we need to do is have enough of it. Secondly, we need to work with the builders to get some affordable entry-level homes that are down in [the] affordable range.”
The Missoula municipal primary will take place on September 12, 2023.
