It’s 2045, and time to recount the remarkable resolution of Whitefish’s long-term housing crisis. Today teachers, police officers, health care workers, and service employees can afford to live and raise families here.
For decades, city leaders spoke urgently, commissioned studies, conducted meetings, and produced jargon-heavy planning documents narrowly focused on controlling prices with deed restrictions. But zoning and price controls discouraged construction of affordable housing. Deed restrictions harmed buyers whose mortgage payments exceeded price-restricted resale values.
The turning point came when the city donated land and millions of dollars to a deed-restricted housing project that proved economically impossible. Even free land and public funding could not overcome the combined weight of zoning rules, building standards, and deed restrictions.
The community looked in a new direction. Over loud objections that it was destroying “community character,” the council adopted citywide zoning reform to remove unnecessary barriers to affordability. The “not-in-my-backyard” attitude that had checkmated affordability for decades lost its most useful weapon.
Determined to make entry-level housing economical, the city replaced 12 residential zones and multiple overlays with just one. It eliminated aesthetic-driven construction and landscaping standards, made most uses “by right,” cut setback requirements in half, and doubled residential density and height limits. It removed impact fees for housing units of 1,000 square feet or less.
With investment assistance from the Community Foundation, private donors created a loan guaranty fund to help lower-income buyers secure long-term financing for entry-level housing. Resale values stabilized as housing supplies grew, maintaining affordability without destructive deed restrictions.
Builders responded by constructing multi-story apartments and condominiums near downtown. Competition for tenants and buyers lowered prices, employers gained a stable workforce, and city tax revenues increased without higher rates.
A better community only awaited a better vision, one that understood the human cost of excessive regulation.
Jim Ramlow
Somers