Housing is human right.

Secure housing is fundamental for Missoula families to thrive. I moved to Missoula in 2001 and housing costs were well on their way to outpacing wages. Today, the gap between the average family’s income and housing costs is simply not sustainable. The people our community depends on – teachers, firefighters, police officers and nonprofit employees – can’t find and keep stable housing. Rent is high, renters aren’t often protected, and housing prices are unattainable.

As a city we must continue to aggressively seek out and support affordable housing. Since 2020, the city and county have brought nearly 500 units of transitional and permanently affordable housing to the market with hundreds more units in the works. We did this by getting creative (for example: using incentives, requiring developer contributions to the affordable housing trust fund) and working with community partners.

Missoula is increasingly becoming a town of renters. And renters deserve the right to counsel, the right to unionize and the support of elected leaders when dealing with rent hikes, unsustainable conditions and property managers that may not have their best interests in mind. Landlords need support too. They need education about how to be better at their jobs and they need support, sometimes in the form of incentives, to keep units in the rental market.

There are many pieces to the housing puzzle – affordability, a comprehensive houselessness strategy, the rights of renters to name a few -- and is critical work that requires the ability to be able to work with others on council and in our community to get things done.

The implementation of Our Missoula, the city’s new development code, has the potential to be a gamechanger when it comes to leveling the playing field for Missoula’s neighborhoods. Some parts of town have taken on extensive growth without the infrastructure to support that growth. I’ve been a strong voice for the people in these neighborhoods that tend to be traditionally working class, already dense and often they have old and sometimes failing infrastructure. Missoula’s building codes, like many in municipalities across the country, proved to be historically racist and classist. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to untangle the reasons why and build a more equitable code moving forward -- one that allows for small businesses in neighborhoods, that encourages multi-modal transportation and allows for more density in the urban core. Putting this code into practice won’t happen without challenges but I believe with invested partners we can work through those to get to a more equitable way of developing our city.