There are few places in America more beautiful than Montana. As Frontier Institute’s President and CEO, Kendall Cotton says, “Montana is one of the few places left in the world where you can get off work from your office job and be on a mountain bike path or hiking up the ‘M’ in 15 minutes.”

However, onerous zoning laws have increased housing costs so much that Montana is falling out of reach for many people.

For decades, local governments jockeying for power and NIMBY (not in my backyard) activists made Montana’s zoning laws more and more restrictive. The harsher zoning laws became, the slower the housing supply grew. The more Montana’s housing supply fell behind demand, the more expensive housing became.

But in 2022-23 something remarkable happened, a bipartisan coalition—led by the Frontier Institute—championed unprecedented zoning reforms in Big Sky Country. These reforms represent some of the most comprehensive housing and zoning reforms in the country and will making housing more affordable across Montana.

So how did Frontier do it?

Frontier Builds Bipartisan Coalition to Promote Housing Reforms

As with any successful policy reform, it all starts with the data.

To show Montana legislators and voters how the state’s onerous zoning laws were impacting housing, the Frontier Institute launched the Montana Zoning Atlas.

The Atlas’ authors Mark Egge and Kendall Cotton explain, “The Montana Zoning Atlas uses a parcel-level analysis to evaluate how Montana’s most in-demand communities treat affordable types of housing. The Atlas demonstrates how strict local zoning regulations exclude low and middle-income residents and worsen Montana’s housing shortage.”

Montanans have seen how housing prices have increased over the years, but Frontier’s Atlas provided undeniable proof that the state’s zoning laws were one of the biggest root causes.

So with the Atlas in hand, Frontier’s team began talking with Montanans and organizations across the political spectrum to build a coalition for zoning reform. As Bloomberg explains, Frontier’s coalition was made up of “a diverse group of advocates from both the political left and right. The coalition is clear about its goal: Montana needs to head off a housing crisis at the pass. On this point advocates can agree, even if on almost every other subject, they’re worlds apart. And by joining forces, this left-right coalition cleared a political impasse that has blocked so-called housing-abundant policies, which strive to remove barriers to new construction.”

By building a bipartisan coalition, Frontier’s team not only contributed to the housing and zoning debate, they shaped it from all sides. As Cotton explains, “It doesn’t break down on normal partisan lines. Advocates shouldn’t silo themselves. We were able to go to mostly Republicans and talk about free markets and the importance of property rights. They were able to go to folks on the left and talk about climate and social impacts.”

Thanks to their work building a coalition, and marketing their work with earned media and powerful online videos, Frontier’s team was able to work with Governor Greg Gianforte to form a Housing Task Force of the state’s leading voices on housing policy. Then, after the governor’s housing task force was formed, Frontier used data from their Atlas to show Montanans how—without major reforms—the state was in line to suffer the same type of urban sprawl as California.

Thanks to Frontier Institute, Montana is a More Affordable and Accessible Place to Live

Go to any state capitol—red or blue—and you’ll hear how difficult it is to pass any meaningful zoning reforms.

But thanks to Frontier’s superior strategy and tireless work, Montana passed some of the most substantial zoning and housing reforms in the entire country.

Montana’s reforms include:

• Broadly restoring the right of landowners to build duplexes in existing urban areas.
• Ending zoning discrimination that penalizes duplexes with stricter regulations than single family homes.
• Restoring the right of landowners to build an Accessory Dwelling Unit.
• Broadly restoring the right of landowners to build multifamily or mixed-use housing in existing commercial or retail zones.
• Restoring the rights of landowners to build affordable starter homes by eliminating discretionary permit approvals contingent on public hearings.
• Requiring local governments to adjust zoning regulations to provide landowners the freedom to adequately meet projected demand for housing.
• Establishing a menu of specific pro-housing zoning reforms that local governments must select from to encourage housing development.

These reforms represent some of the farthest-reaching zoning reforms passed nationwide. Frontier helped usher these reforms into reality through their incredible strategy, their ability to build bipartisan coalitions, and by being a prominent voice on the governor’s task force.

Today, thanks to Frontier’s leadership, Montana housing will never look like California. But more importantly, Montana will always be affordable and accessible to as many people as possible.

For their success in lowing housing costs for Montanans, Frontier was a finalist in State Policy Network’s Bob Williams Award for Outstanding Policy Achievement—in the “Biggest Win for Freedom” category.