MISSOULA — The City of Missoula has been focused on trying to make housing in Missoula more affordable of late.
It took a major step recently by passing the Unified Development Code, which completely overhauled the city’s zoning. Now the city is turning towards updating its housing policy strategies.
City staff, including housing policy specialist Parker Webb, provided an update Wednesday to the Missoula City Council on what was initially the 2019 housing strategy.
Watch to learn more about Missoula's affordable housing efforts:
“Given this framework, we've categorized the city's approach into five broad strategies,” Webb said.
The housing strategy is important because right now, according to Root Policy Research, more than 44% of renters in Missoula are cost-burdened.
As of October 2024, roughly 2,400 people were on wait lists for subsidized housing.
Renters are not the only ones seeing an affordability crisis, as only 1% of all home sales in Missoula three years ago were between $150,000 and $300,000.
Knowing this, the city is looking at updating its policies, taking an approach that divides the city’s housing goals into five different strategies.
Those strategies revolve around funding for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, preserving affordable housing, assisting those in search of housing, building more housing and tracking various housing metrics.
“The main goal and the biggest metric would be ongoing funding so that we can expand our region to support housing in Missoula,” Webb said.
Webb says that if the Affordable Housing Trust Fund receives large and consistent funding, the city would be better able to provide resources such as loans for homebuyers and renter support.
Watch related coverage: Developer says new Missoula housing won't be affordable but will free up older stock
But receiving that funding is challenging and with that, they are looking to developers to provide infill housing, but that also comes with its own hurdles.
“It's just hard to build. And so building affordable housing that costs the same to build, that you get less in return when you sell it or rent it, just makes it really hard to get projects done,” said Webb.
From here, the updated plan will go forth to the city council for final approval in the coming weeks.
