New land use plans across Montana bring hope for housing miracle

After years of intense work and public outreach, city planners carrying out those laws have all completed their plans. But they say it is too early to tell whether they will make a “miraculous” difference.

The administrators presented the plans to state lawmakers in late May. The Legislature compelled the state’s largest cities to revamp their growth plans in 2023 with the goal of increasing housing availability.

Anna Wickers with the Billings planning department said changes may improve housing supply, but the effect will not be immediate.

“While we’re doing the best that we can to be able to incentivize housing and obtain and provide the housing and achieve what the act does, there is a reality of the constraints of the best way you can operate it, even with the best-case scenario,” Wickers told lawmakers during a recent meeting.

Cities had to engage residents in the process every step of the way. That is because residents will not have the opportunity to weigh in on individual housing projects like they used to. Whether a new subdivision can be built will depend solely on whether it fits the cities’ new land-use plans — not how the public feels about the projects.

That new restriction makes some city planners, like Brock Cherry in Great Falls, nervous for when the first big development is proposed.

“From where I sit — and with my colleagues — I feel like we’re penguins at the tip of the iceberg, and we’ve got to jump in but no one wants to be the first one,” Cherry said.

Planners said the tight timeline to revise their plans pushed up costs.

But they expressed cautious optimism that new zoning laws allowing more than one dwelling per parcel and the streamlined approval process will have the “miraculous” effect lawmakers are hoping for.