Missing Middle: County looks for solutions to housing shortage

The “missing middle” is how housing advocates sometimes describe the lack of affordable housing for middle income residents of Lake County, or almost anywhere in Montana.  

As part of ongoing efforts to come up with solutions, the Lake County Commissioners have engaged IMEG Engineering Consultants of Missoula to help them review and update the county’s subdivision regulations and, at the same time, examine how related development costs may be a deterrent to building more affordable housing. As part of the process, they’ve scheduled two housing-related events next week.

First, commissioners will visit a county-owned parcel on Caffrey Road at 10 a.m. next Wednesday to brainstorm ideas about how the 37 acres could be subdivided to provide affordable workforce housing.

According to Billie Lee, the county’s grants manager and special projects director, as property values skyrocket, more and more counties and municipalities across Montana are exploring ways to use county- or city-owned land to reduce the cost to developers of building affordable housing.

“The county wouldn’t own housing or develop housing,” she emphasized. Instead, it’s a “what-if?” outing, aimed at considering how such a piece of property might be developed with the stipulation that it be maintained as affordable for working families.

The Lake County Planning Department, with IMEG Engineering, are hosting a listening session from noon until 4 p.m. next Friday, Jan. 24, to share changes under consideration to the county’s zoning and subdivision regulations and to listen and hear more about those regulations that discourage builders from embarking on affordable housing projects.

“The Planning Department wants to get all the pros and cons on the table,” Lee said. “They want to hear from contractors and developers who have found challenges in our subdivision regulations – whether it’s on two lots or a thousand.”

They are hoping for lively discussion from people in the field. “It’s not for answers. It’s for input,” she added.

Comments may also be submitted to Planning Director Tiffani Murphy, tmurphy@lakemt.gov.

This process was spurred by two grants Lake County recently received from the Montana Department of Commerce. The first is to examine the county’s outdated subdivision regulations and determine which ones create barriers to affordable housing, and to update existing regulations so that they’re congruent with laws passed by the Legislature.

The second grant will explore options other communities have deployed to make housing more available “at a price that the area’s workforce can afford.”

They will look at development costs as they relate to subdivision regulations, tally the cost of infrastructure, and review an array of building options that can be used to bring down the cost of housing while also creating mixed-model communities that are attractive to middle-income families.

Following completion, the report and its recommendations will be made available to financial institutions, developers and other parties, with a goal of stimulating the housing industry in Lake County.