Whitefish neighborhood defender, that is what I used to think of myself.
When I served on city council in from 2004-2007, I believed my role was to protect neighborhoods, and the people I considered my neighbors, from change and discomfort. This was during a major housing boom, when my community was changing rapidly. I grew up here. My dad worked on the railroad for more than 40 years. This was a blue-collar town where wealth was never a requirement to call this place home. Even then, we felt the early pressures of wealth inequality.
At the time, my solution was to prevent more housing. I believed that preserving “neighborhood integrity” would protect families who had lived here for generations. What I failed to understand was how that instinct, however well-intentioned, would shape the future of this community, including the future of my own children, who were in middle school at the time.
Rapid change can feel traumatic. Just as individuals respond to trauma with fight or flight, communities experiencing rapid cultural or physical change often do the same. My dad responded with grief and anger and eventually moved to Florence, where change felt slower. I went into fight mode.
Decisions made from fight or flight are often short sighted. The preserve and protect mindset that emerged from that era has contributed to much needed housing not being built. I repeated this pattern again in 2013 when a development was proposed on the open field at the bottom of East Second Street. It was a beautiful property with views of Big Mountain and regular visits from local deer. My husband and I opposed the project, citing traffic and concerns about neighborhood character.
The original proposal included 174 homes, most of them apartments. It was ultimately reduced to 54 single family homes and eight townhomes. That outcome, shaped in part by my own neighborhood defense, resulted in housing far out of reach for most people who work in Whitefish. Had the original plan been approved, it could have provided walkable housing for people earning local wages. Now as I walk through that neighborhood, at least 10 percent of the homes sit empty more than 50% of the time. In hindsight, I would rather see a more densely populated development full of families, elders and young adults. In the part of the development where the homes are smaller and lived in year-round, I feel the soul of the neighborhood. Where the homes are bigger there is a lifeless feeling … not community.
We also need to look to the past, before zoning in Whitefish. In many of the neighborhoods there were grocery stores that served their neighborhoods. These small businesses provided not only food but a place where neighbors could interact. Only the long-time locals remember when Markus was on Central Avenue, that there was a little grocery store on Somers Avenue, Tom’s grocery store, where the Community Center is now, or Snappy’s right across the viaduct. Fewer people remember that there used to be a drive-in theater near Bay Point. These small businesses provided services to neighbors before zoning, before those who felt the only place for businesses was on Central and Highway 93.
Though I can see the value of zoning to protect land and water, I now fail to see the value of zoning as a system of social engineering. I now understand that zoning has racist and classist origins. I also see that people who think zoning protects “community” are ignorant of the results: a breakdown of true community.
Neighborhood defenders often focus on what we might lose by allowing density. We talk far less about what a community loses when we fail to build mixed use development that includes housing that working class people can afford.
As the Planning Commission and City Council shape Whitefish’s Growth Policy, it is time to recognize that while neighborhood defenders often have good intentions and deserve a voice, we must also look to the future. We must ask how today’s decisions will impact the child sitting in middle school right now, and whether they will still have a place in Whitefish tomorrow.
Velvet Phillips-Sullivan lives in Whitefish.