Three Lessons for Pro-Housing Reformers from the ‘Montana Miracle’

In 2023, Republicans and Democrats in the Montana legislature nearly unanimously passed a free market wish-list of pro-housing reforms. These measures aimed to legalize building affordable starter homes in Montana cities and streamline local regulations to speed up construction, ultimately driving housing costs down for everyone.

 An incredible bipartisan coalition of groups representing Montanans from all walks of life formed to champion pro-housing reforms during the legislature, all united behind the idea of giving landowners in cities more freedom to build affordable homes on their property.

While other states have spent decades attempting to pass similar zoning reforms, Montana miraculously did it in a year with wide bipartisan support. National media outlets have dubbed it the “Montana Miracle”.

Lessons Learned

1. Speak About Values

I’ve noticed a fundamental mismatch in most YIMBY vs NIMBY debates. You typically see YIMBY’s leaning on the overwhelming economic research about the impact of zoning regulation on the cost and supply of housing, spitting out data and statistics left and right. 

By contrast, NIMBYs don’t often speak in terms of data or statistics. NIMBYs speak to a community’s values. They use terms like protecting “neighborhood character”. I mean, who doesn’t want a neighborhood with “character”?

Values arguments almost always trump issues arguments. People, and policymakers especially, aren’t perfectly rational actors. No matter how much data and statistics are shown to them, policymakers largely make decisions based on their values. Values can be informed by many things: a certain foundation in morality, a sense of belonging to a particular community, a shared collective experience, fears, passions, etc. 

That’s why we specifically chose to frame our pro-housing arguments in terms of what Montanans valued most.

We asked ourselves: what would Montana’s special version of “hell” be like? Our answer: California. For a Montanan, becoming California means losing everything we love about our state — our wide open spaces, easy access to our beautiful outdoors, the quaint rural agricultural communities that still surround our population centers — and replacing it all with miles of sprawling urban development, crowds, and traffic. 

But, if you compare zoning maps of Montana’s fastest-growing cities, like Missoula and Bozeman, with those of California cities like Los Angeles, they look eerily similar.

We suggested that if Montana cities are zoned like L.A., they will grow like L.A. Since housing development is highly restricted in the city boundaries, it will inevitably get pushed outward. In 25 years, our cities could be home to miles of urban sprawl that takes over the treasured open space and surrounding rural communities that make Montana cities feel special. 

Our message was this: you want to keep Montana feeling like Montana? Then get rid of the California-style zoning in our cities. Give property owners in cities more freedom to build denser housing to keep up with demand. Free our cities to grow denser instead of sprawling outward. We sold our pro-housing reforms as the way to preserve the Montana way of life we all love while avoiding a California-style housing crisis.

Our anti-California message went absolutely viral. It really struck a chord with people who feared what would happen as our state grew. Instead of having to rely on particular partisan-coded issues, we landed on a unifying message that everybody could identify with.

Our message wasn’t all that different from the NIMBY message. NIMBYs say they don’t want development to change “neighborhood character”. We said that by prohibiting development in our cities, we threaten Montana’s character. We flipped the script, and I encourage other pro-housing advocates to find a way to do the same. 

Reflect on what makes your growing state or community unique. Why do people love living there? Imagine how they would feel if that “specialness” was lost. Tell a story about how exclusionary zoning is an existential threat to this special community character. Reassure people that it’s not too late to turn things around if you reform your land use regulation.

2. Diverse Coalitions are a Strength

In the case of Montana’s 2023 pro-housing legislation, committee testimony was an opportunity to showcase the groundswell of support for these reforms from an incredible bipartisan coalition of Montana organizations. Our coalition brought together industry groups, homebuilders, student associations, tribal nations, local chambers of commerce, affordability advocates, environmental activists, and conservative organizations – groups that lawmakers had hardly ever seen work together before. 

When we showed up to legislative committees, several lawmakers remarked about how pleasantly surprised they were to see such a diverse amount of support for these reforms. 

Our diverse coalition communicated to lawmakers that these pro-housing reforms were well thought out, and the bill drafts had already had many different eyeballs on them to help catch problems. They could trust that this legislation wasn’t just a hair-brained idea being pushed by one lobbyist or interest group; this was a serious movement. The impact came less from what was said in the testimony and more from the broad range of proponents who showed up in support.

Additionally, if any lawmaker had a particular concern, whether they were a Republican or Democrat, odds were that someone in our coalition had a great relationship with them and could discuss the issue from an angle that mattered to them.

Thanks to the trust instilled by our diverse, bipartisan coalition of proponents, almost all of Montana’s priority pro-housing reform legislation passed nearly unanimously, with overwhelming support from lawmakers.

3. Build a Foundation of Good Data

The ‘Montana Miracle’ reformers benefited greatly from having good, solid data to back up our arguments. If we didn’t have research demonstrating the true extent of zoning in Montana cities, we wouldn’t have been able to focus on persuasive “values” arguments. Before we tried to persuade, we had to make sure the facts were on our side.

My organization, Frontier Institute, published our Montana Zoning Atlas report in early 2022 to demonstrate on a visual, interactive map how strict local zoning regulations were contributing to Montana’s severe housing crisis. Our report revealed that vast swaths of Montana cities either outright prohibited or penalized affordable middle-density development. We profiled each city in Montana, showing how much land in each city allowed for duplexes, triplexes, accessory dwelling units’s etc. Our data made it crystal clear that our zoning and land use regulations were contributing to the housing shortage.

When we released our report, it sparked calls to action statewide from local city councilors, activists, lawmakers, and even newspaper editorial boards. Activists reached out to thank us, saying this is exactly what they’ve needed to bolster their arguments. 

All this conversation about zoning’s impact on housing affordability eventually led to Governor Gianforte creating a bipartisan task force to develop solutions, of which I was appointed as a member. Our Montana Zoning Atlas data was cited in the Housing Task Force’s report, and our data was used many times by lawmakers, advocates, and even the media when discussing the debates over housing policy. 

Frontier Institute wasn’t the only group that helped with data. For example, the Billings Chamber of Commerce put together an excellent Pro-Housing Database that I turned to many times.

This firm background of data helped our Montana coalition respond directly to the standard push-back on zoning reform and keep most of our messages focused on the more persuasive values arguments I talked about earlier. 

If your state or region doesn’t already have a Zoning Atlas, I encourage you to check out the great team at the National Zoning Atlas project to learn about how you can make your own. We are proud partners of the NZA and developed our Montana Zoning Atlas using their methodology.

Kendall Cotton is president and CEO of the Frontier Institute, a think tank based in Helena, Montana dedicated to keeping Montanans free to build, create, and innovate.