Bozeman could learn a lot from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Fayetteville is a university town in the Ozarks that’s become an amenity destination for many of the same reasons as Bozeman (vibrant city, recreational opportunities, strong economy).
For example, Fayetteville’s development code requires that when a new business is approved next to a trail, the business has to build a connection to the trail. In the last six years Fayetteville has gone from being a bronze Bicycle Friendly Community to surpassing Bozeman and becoming a gold Bicycle Friendly Community.
Fayetteville has housing challenges of its own, but is taking proactive steps to address its housing shortage. This includes a new program of 30 permit-ready building designs that the City is developing and making freely available, including designs for ADUs and duplexes.
Last month Fayetteville’s mayor convened a Housing Crisis Task Force (similar in concept to Gov. Gianforte’s statewide housing task force) with representation from a broad swath of stakeholders. Bozeman could consider doing the same. It would be interesting to see what might happen if many of the vocal voices on housing issues in Bozeman were put on the same task force and charged with coming up with solutions.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic, did I mention that Fayetteville eliminated commercial parking minimums citywide back in 2015? As Sightline reports, this strategy has been a boon for local businesses and the city’s economy (and the meteoric rise in Fayetteville’s biking status is likely not entirely coincidental). I visited Fayetteville a year or so ago to check out the region’s famous mountain biking. I had no difficulty finding parking downtown—nor did I have any difficulty finding great restaurants and bakeries!
If looking for inspiration from peer communities in terms of reducing car dependency and practical housing solutions, Fayetteville offers ample inspiration.
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A form-based code is a land development regulation that fosters predictable built results and a high-quality public realm by using physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for the code.
The purpose of a form-based code is to provide a clear and predictable picture about how a neighborhood or area will look and feel for the foreseeable future by regulating the mass and scale of new developments.
Rather than describing how a structure may be used, the new development code would focus on how a structure fits into the fabric of a neighborhood. Areas designated for residential use will still be areas designated for residential use. The essence of the Residential A district is that new construction must have, generally, speaking, the size and shape of a house. If you look closely in the historic neighborhoods north and south of downtown, you can find many, many examples of buildings that don’t stick out in any way but are actually contain five or more units.
Five-unit building on East Story Street
For example, the building above on Story Street looks like a house but is a five-plex. This five plex could not legally be created under current code but could under the new code (provided it was able to meet the additional parking requirements). The image below shows eight units, seamlessly tucked into the neighborhood on South Black Avenue.
Eight-unit building on South Black Avenue
Some have fixated on the maximum entitlement of eight units per building, but that’s not how the new code works. The new code says, “within a building envelope that has roughly the size and scale of a house, and that sits on a lot with a yard and sits back from the street a similar distance as other houses, residential housing may be built.” That could be one unit, or that could be a structure divided into multiple units, so long as the form fits the neighborhood. The maximum of eight units is almost theoretical, since the other constraints (height, lot coverage, parking requirements, etc.) would almost always be the actual constraining factors.
The “new” dimensional limits are, in fact, quite similar to existing dimensional limits. I expect that many of the same concerns about size and mass currently would likely be vocalized if the city was proposing to re-adopt its existing code. The table below provides a summary.
Existing R-1
Existing R-2
Existing R-3
Proposed R-A
Lot area per unit (min)
4,000 SF
2,500 SF
3,000 SF
None
Lot width (min)
50’
50’
40’
25’
Building coverage (max)
40%
40%
40%
40%
Front setback (min)
15’
15’
15’
10’
Building height (max)
40’
40’
46’
3 stories
Wall plate height (max)
None
None
None
25’
Building size (max)
10,000 SF
10,000 SF
10,000 SF
10,000 SF
Parking (min) – 1-bedroom unit
1 space
1 space
1 space
1 space
parking (min) – 2+ bedroom unit
2 spaces
2 spaces
2 spaces
2 spaces
The current approach to zoning essentially defines differing ratios of much land is required for each unit of housing. Higher zoning designations (e.g. R-4, R-5) have lower ratios of required land to housing units and allow additional types of housing (e.g. four-plexes are allowed in R-3 but not in R-2). A single housing unit could be a 500 SF shotgun house or a 5000 SF 10-bedroom mansion. Both require the same amount of land under our current code. As a result, because land is expensive, smaller types of housing have been effectively zoned out, with the exception of high-density apartment buildings.
While some missing middle housing types are allowed in R-2, R-3, R-4, and R-5 areas, they increasingly don’t economically pencil out to build. These smaller types of housing, e.g. duplexes, rowhouses, cottage courts, etc. are more affordable than single-family houses, and often provide a first-step on the equity ladder for a younger household, a downsizing option for older households, and rental options for young professionals.
This “zoning out” of smaller, more affordable types of housing (even while buildings which seem out of scale or out of character for the neighborhood get built) is what the new code is intended to address. For example, in R-1, a three-story 10-bedroom house could be built and rented out to ten college students but the same building envelop could not be legally used for a duplex for two families. Some neighbors in the Bon Ton and University districts have complained about the conversion of existing homes into college rentals, even while zoning prevents those existing houses from being converted into something that might be affordable to a younger family who might live in the neighborhood permanently.
Rather than a ratio of how much land is required for each housing unit, the new code describes allowable forms within a given zone, in terms of height, width, lot coverage, and space between units.
In the new “R-A” zone, buildings are expected to generally match the form of Bozeman’s traditional neighborhoods. Buildings should have the mass and appearance of houses, with lawns and yards, and space between lots. Building height is limited by the wall facing the street, which cannot exceed 25’ in height, and the footprint of the building cannot cover more than 40% of the lot. For a typical 5,000 SF lot, this means the maximum allowable building footprint would be 2,000 SF, and from the street you wouldn’t see a vertical wall of more than two-and-a-half stories in height.
The structure shown above is a 3750 SF (including basement) single-family house. Under the proposed code, this structure could contain four 950-SF two-bedroom units and look identical from the street. According to Zillow, the estimated monthly payment to purchase the pictured house would be $9,666 per month. Divided into four units, this cost would still be $2,400 per month. While $2,400 per month still isn’t affordable to many, that doesn’t support a counterfactual argument that, therefore, this house should be legally required to remain a single-family house.
The goal of the proposed code is to make it feasible and economical to develop “middle density” types of housing. It’s reasonable to expect that the resulting development patterns would resemble Bozeman’s traditional and historic neighborhoods, while creating attainable housing and opportunities for the next generation of Bozemanites in the process. While the new code promotes infill, it insists that infill must be gentle, hidden, or invisible.
If you’re supportive of Bozeman being a compact city that also offers opportunities for the next generation but have concerns about some of the specifics of the proposed code, please participate in the conversation by submitting comments to agenda@bozeman.net or attending an in-person event (e.g. the Community Development Board hearing in October). Nothing about the current proposed code is set in stone. Comments that adjust the code to make it fit and feel better (e.g. perhaps R-A should combine only R-1 and R-2 and limit height to two stories) will likely accomplish more than declarations of absolute opposition.
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While headlines concerning the 2023 Montana Legislative session were dominated by efforts of the Republican supermajority to dismember Montana’s constitution and strip the rights of women and trans Montanans, there was at least one vibrantly bipartisan issue in Helena this year: implementing zoning reforms to clear obstacles to creating the housing needed for Montana to remain an affordable place to live, even at its experiences population growth. Numerous pro-housing bills passed the legislature and have been signed by the Governor with significant bipartisan support.
Here is a very brief synopsis of what these bills mean for Bozeman:
SB 245 legalized residential uses in all commercial districts. Effectively, Bozeman’s B-2 zones all just became B-2M. The bill also limits parking requirements to no more than 1 space per dwelling.
SB 528 legalized ADUs statewide. Bozeman already has one of the best ADU policies in the nation, so the only meaningful change is that ADUs may now be up to 1000 SF or 75% of the size of the primary dwelling.
SB 323 legalized duplexes in all residential zones. Effectively, Bozeman’s R-1 district just became R-2, and all of Bozeman’s R-2 districts can now have duplexes regardless of their lot size.
SB 382 overhauls the overall comprehensive planning process in a manner that should front load much of the planning process (more engagement up front, less yelling and screaming when a development comes forward that complies with adopted plans and zoning).
Overall, these are all great reforms that will promote the creation of housing, and, especially, more affordable and compact types of housing.
Implementing these bills provides a great opportunity for Bozeman to show statewide leadership in pre-housing zoning reform. Specific opportunities include:
When implementing SB 245, Bozeman should eliminate parking requirements in commercial districts entirely. (This doesn’t eliminate parking, it lets developers choose the right amount for their development; see the Cannery District for an example of what this looks like.)
When implementing SB 323, Bozeman should expand entitlements for triplex and fourplexes at the same time. R-1 now permits one additional unit due to state law. Add one additional allowable unit to R-2, R-3, and R-4. Eliminate all minimum lot sizes, recognizing that minimum lot widths and required setbacks (combined with lot coverage maximums and floor area ratio maximums) accomplish the same planning objectives.
Overall, in a legislative session dominated by vitriol and attacks on Montanans rights to a healthful environment and privacy, housing was a bright spot in an otherwise pretty awful legislative session.
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The City of Bozeman’s Capital Improvement Plan item SIF009 allocates nearly a year’s worth of transportation budget to widening Kagy, justified by doomsday forecasts of apocalyptic traffic and delay. Not only has this traffic failed to materialize—the trend is actually going the opposite direction.
From an auto-centric engineering perspective, widening Kagy may have made sense based on the information available in 2016. Based on the best available traffic data since, there’s no longer any justification for widening the roadway.
Volumes up to 22,500 vehicles per day are considered “ideal management conditions” for a three lane facility. Based on the trend through 2015 (see graph below), it once seemed plausible that the three-lane capacity would be eclipsed within a few years of the project completion (see forecast, below). Based on current information, however, there is no suggestion that three lanes will be inadequate any time soon (if ever). Ever since Graf Street opened, the upward trend in traffic volumes on Kagy has completely disappeared.
Moreover, transportation pundits are predicting a permanent reduction in peak hour travel demand due to flexible work schedules and work from home impacts of the pandemic. This matters since peak hour volumes typically drive traffic engineering decisions (even the busiest roads usually have ample capacity all but a few hours per day).
Zooming in on the count data, we see that not only are total volumes down since Graf Street opened, but that pandemic-era peak hour traffic volumes (relative to total daily volumes) have declined by an even greater margin:
Compared to 2018, 2021 Kagy volumes between 3 – 5 pm are only ~70 vehicles per hour lower (6%), but 5 – 6 pm (peak hour) volumes are 212 vehicles lower (14%).
It’s clear in the data that improving our road network elsewhere coupled with reduced peak hour traffic from COVID-19 has eliminated any suggestion of need to widen Kagy to four lanes. When Opportunity Way connects to 19th it’s likely that volumes on Kagy may decline further. Nothing about current traffic volumes or trends suggest any sort of urgency for completing this project. Widening Kagy will make our system worse for pedestrians and cyclists crossing Kagy to reach campus. Based on current traffic counts, it’s not clear that widening Kagy would even benefit motorists.
At its CIP meeting on Tuesday, City Commission should send Kagy for another round of design (and to move it to the unscheduled column). In its place, the city should move forward design and construction of SIF157 and SIF158 (College Street reconstruction, to include sidewalks and bike lanes) and to send Church Street (SIF165) for preliminary design. These projects will move the needle in support of Bozeman’s goals for providing an effective transportation network for users of all modes.
U.S. Senators Todd Young (R-Ind.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i) introduced the Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) Act to shed light on discriminatory land use policies and encourage localities to cut burdensome regulations. Instead of adopting inclusive land use policies that allow citizens of all income levels, backgrounds, and identities to live, work, and flourish in Bozeman, the city has erected paper walls of regulations that negatively affect and sometimes discriminate against low- and middle-income city residents. The YIMBY Act would require Bozeman and other cities receiving federal funding for housing to go on the record with why they are not adopting specific pro-affordability and anti-discriminatory housing policies.
(A) Enacting high-density single-family and multifamily zoning
B
The good news is that Bozeman has several good zoning designations for high density (R-5, B-2M, B3, etc.). The bad news is that these zoning areas apply to less than 5% of Bozeman’s total area. Elsewhere in the city, due to lot size minimums, off-street parking requirements, parks requirements, and other restrictions it is difficult to achieve densities higher than 8 units per acre net in Bozeman. The Bridger View Subdivision is a fantastic exception to this rule (achieving a net density nearly twice that of other comparable subdivisions)—but this achievement was only possible with 18 departures from existing code.
(B) Expanding by-right multifamily zoned areas
D
Although most newly annexed areas are zoned for multifamily, the City of Bozeman has never initiated action to expand multifamily zoning in existing areas. (In a few instances, specific areas have been upzoned at the request of a developer).
(C) Allowing duplexes, triplexes, or fourplexes in areas zoned primarily for single-family residential homes
F
38% of Bozeman’s existing residential land is set aside as the exclusive domain of single-family homes. Due to lot size minimums and other density restrictions in reality this number is closer to 50%. No duplexes, triplexes, or fourplexes allowed (except those those created prior to Bozeman’s modern zoning laws).
(D) Allowing manufactured homes in areas zoned primarily for single-family residential homes
A
Manufactured homes on permanent foundations are allowed in all residential areas.
(E) Allowing multifamily development in retail, office, and light manufacturing zones
A
Commercial and manufacturing zones currently allow multifamily development on upper floors.
(F) Allowing single-room occupancy development wherever multifamily housing is allowed
C
Although Bozeman allows single-room occupancy units under its “community residential facilities” definition, this designation is tied to off-street parking minimums, parkland dedication requirements, and lot size minimums that substantially limit the feasibility of single-room occupancy development.
(G) Reducing minimum lot size
D
In 2019 Bozeman reduced its minimum lot sizes from very large (5000 SF) to merely large (4000 SF) for (literally) 99% of residential areas. (Houston’s minimum, for context, is 1400 SF.) Lot size minimums are also enforced by other indirect minimums, including width minimums, large required setbacks, lot area coverage maximums, floor area ratio maximums, and off-street parking requirements. The research is clear: minimum lot sizes force people to buy more land than they want and drive up housing costs.
(H) Ensuring historic preservation requirements and other land use policies or requirements are coordinated to encourage creation of housing in historic buildings and historic districts
D
Bozeman’s NCOD is a significant barrier to the creation of housing in Bozeman’s historic district.
(I) Increasing the allowable floor area ratio in multifamily housing areas
C
Bozeman’s floor area ratios are higher in areas zoned for multifamily housing, but are pegged to zoning district not housing type.
(J) Creating transit-oriented development zones
F
To date, Bozeman has not engaged in transit planning as part of its transportation system or land use planning. Bozeman should identify future high-frequency transit corridors and then upzone along these corridors.
(K) Streamlining or shortening permitting processes and timelines, including through one-stop and parallel-process permitting
F
Bozeman’s permitting is notoriously slow. Best case scenario it takes eight weeks in Bozeman to obtain the same building permit that Belgrade issues in one week. In practice, subdivision and building permits can be mired in review for years. Parallel-process permitting could dramatically reduce permitting timelines.
(L) Eliminating or reducing off-street parking requirements
F
Bozeman’s off-street parking minimums are very high and one of the most commonly cited barriers to development in the city. Parking minimums force people to own more parking than they want, increase housing prices, and encourage driving over other modes.
(M) Ensuring impact and utility investment fees accurately reflect required infrastructure needs and related impacts on housing affordability are otherwise mitigated
A
By law, Bozeman cannot charge impact fees in excess of needed infrastructure. The City also gives breaks to lower fees for infill projects.
(N) Allowing prefabricated construction
B
Prefabricated housing is allowed so long as prefabricated housing meets certain standards of looking like other housing.
(O) Reducing or eliminating minimum unit square footage requirements
A
Bozeman’s minimum unit square footage is based on the International Building Code. Current limits are 120 SF. (However, reductions in lot size minimums would be necessary to make small units actually viable to construct and bring to market.)
(P) Allowing the conversion of office units to apartments
B
Office in Residential Office zones can be converted to apartments. In other commercial areas where offices are permitted residential units are typically limited only to upper stories.
(Q) Allowing the subdivision of single-family homes into duplexes
F
Subdivision of single-family homes into duplexes is explicitly prohibited in R-S and R-1 zones. In practice, off-street parking requirments and lot size minimums prohibit subdivision where otherwise allowed by zoning.
(R) Allowing accessory dwelling units, including detached accessory dwelling units, on all lots with single-family homes
C
Bozeman currently allows ADUs by right in all residential zones but stops well short of progressive ADU policies implemented in other cities such as on-demand permitting of pre-approved plan sets or allowing two ADUs per parcel. Bozeman’s otherwise reasonable ADU policies suffer from poison pill requirements such as lot size, lot width, and paved off-street parking minimums for ADUs.
(S) Establishing density bonuses
D
Bozeman does offer density bonuses—but to the best of my knowledge no developer has ever voluntarily used Bozeman’s density bonuses. Density bonuses that never get used on account of being too watered down or difficult to exercise are worse than no density bonuses at all.
(T) Eliminating or relaxing residential property height limitations
A
Bozeman relaxed and streamlined its height limitations in May of 2021.
(U) Using property tax abatements to enable higher density and mixed-income communities
D
Bozeman does not currently use tax abatements to enable higher density and mixed-income communities. It’s unclear if state law would allow the city to do so.
(V) Donating vacant land for affordable housing development
—
The Bridger View subdivision is a great example of how effective this strategy can be (though donated by the Trust for Public Land, rather than the City of Bozeman). Bozeman should allow underutilized parkland to be converted to housing (that meets requirements for Affordability). Gallatin County should strongly consider relocating the fairgrounds and converting the existing site into a community land for permanently affordable housing.
The Final Word
The bad news is that Bozeman’s housing policy is littered with discriminatory and anti-development policies. The good news is that this recognition is a call to action (not a cause for despair). All of these policies are within our power to change. Many of these policies may be specifically called out in Bozeman’s pending consultant-led code audit. If we need a little help rewriting our code to be more equitable and pro-housing, the Biden administration is advancing a $300 million annual grant funding program to help cities and town like Bozeman remove zoning barriers to the construction of affordable housing.
I’m highly interested in building some sort of infill project in the northeast neighborhood. My primary intention is add additional units of housing (in part to offset my own guilt about being “part of the problem”). I also just think it would be neat to build something add something to the neighborhood and community.
The only problem is: Bozeman’s code makes infill development all but impossible. I’ve investigated a half dozen opportunities in the past year, and each time there’s some “gotcha” in the development code that ruins otherwise great infill opportunities. I thought maybe I’d document some of these, so if/when Bozeman decides to get serious about supporting infill, I can provide some reasoned suggestions with examples.
A 21,000 SF property on Church Avenue just went on the market. That’s a half-acre of land, listed just below $1m. It’s zoned R2, so right off the bat we’re thinking a theoretical maximum density of three 7000 SF lots, each with a duplex and ADU. Housing units before: 1. Housing units after: 9. Sweet!
Only, there’s a little problem: the lot is only 118 feet wide.
Why is that a problem? Although many of the existing lots on Church Street are only 30′ wide, the City of Bozeman (in an apparent effort to limit infill and keep housing prices sky-high) requires a minimum width of 40′ (when a lot has alley access; 50′ otherwise).
Note, the lot width minimum is in addition to other lot geometry requirements:
Lot size minimums
Setback requirements (15′ up front, 20′ out back, 5′ on each side),
Lot-area coverage maximums
Floor area ratio maximums
Off-street parking minimums
These multitudinous requirements all effectively do the same thing in different ways: impose a minimum on the size of a lot.
And, thanks to the City of Bozeman’s “white glove” approach to variances, a subdivision plan with two 40′ lots and one 38′ lot would never fly (the 38′ lot would be a “self-imposed hardship and therefore ineligible for any sort of exception to the rules”).
Assuming building costs of 2.5x land costs, a $1m lot implies $2.5m in improvements. That could be one $3.5m single family house on one lot, two $1.75m single family houses, or a maximum of two duplexes and two ADUs with an average cost of $583k. Without the lot width minimum, we could get nine units at an average cost of $388k per unit. While $400k isn’t cheap, it’s within reach of many Bozeman middle class families, in a way that $600k just isn’t.
If we’re going to have lot size minimums and setbacks, we don’t need lot width minimums. Having both subjects potential infill to double jeopardy. In this situation, with a half acre of available land, minimum lot widths mean that the smallest possible subdivision of this lot is two 10,500 SF lots. If we’re going to have affordable housing and compact neighborhoods, we’re going to need to allow small lots!
The Montana Department of Transportation has recently reconstructed the Rouse Avenue corridor. At the intersection of Peach Street and Rouse, MDT has taken away the existing bike lanes on Peach Street to install two additional vehicle lanes.
Strava’s Global Heatmap shows that Peach Street is the most significant E-W corridor for cyclists anywhere East of 19th Avenue. This is an essential connection for cyclists to access the businesses located in the Northeast Neighborhood and connection to our regional trail system, including the path to the M.
This situation is dangerous for cyclists and completely unacceptable.
Any intersection that requires cyclists to ride in mixed traffic fails to meet a standard of “appropriate for all ages and abilities” and fails to support Bozeman’s goal of improving multimodal accessibility.
Given the importance of this corridor, the City of Bozeman should not only fix this intersection, but should improve the safety and comfort of Peach Street for cyclists by removing the seldom-used parking on the north curb of Peach Street and installing proper buffered or separated bike lanes from 7th to Rouse.
This intersection must be fixed to provide safe passage for cyclists on Peach Street to cross Rouse Avenue. Removing car storage for a half-dozen vehicles to improve the safety and comfort of a heavily used bicycle corridor at the same time just makes sense.
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Interested in some light summer reading? Consider picking up a copy of Bozeman’s Unified Development Code! Carve out some time, though—it’s longer than Kafka’s The Trial and The Castle combined. Critics are calling Bozeman’s little book of rules:
“A haunting chronicle of stifling and inhuman bureaucracy—Kafkaesque in the fullest sense.”
“Essential reading for affordability advocates.”
“Byzantine!”
Contained within is the secret to understanding why it’s so hard to build anything in Bozeman, why generic “Anywhere USA” buildings are easier to build than anything with character, and a big part of why housing in Bozeman is suddenly astonishingly expensive.
Bozeman will never achieve its climate or affordability goals without updating its zoning code to allow small lots, small floor plans, and more shared walls.
Bozeman’s development code bans small lots. A ban on small lots is, effectively, a ban on affordable, sustainable and desirable missing middle housing.
The current Bridger View subdivision being developed by HRDC is a case in point. Bridger View will provide 62 new units of housing on 8 acres of land, mostly in the form of single-family houses. Half of these units will be affordable “missing middle” houses. To accomplish this miracle of affordability and compactness the lots sizes within Bridger View (averaging 2500 SF) will be approximately half the size of a typical single-family lot in Bozeman (5000 SF+) and floor plans will be substantially smaller (800 – 1500 SF) than typical new construction. The result will be the most affordable and sustainable neighborhood built in Bozeman in living memory.
Artist's Rendering of the Bridger View Subdivision
Bridger View is only able to accomplish this by using a special provision in the City development code called a “Planned Unit Development” which allows relaxations in code requirements in exchange for better design. To become a reality, Bridger View requires waiver of nineteen sections of our zoning code, including at least four prohibiting small lots:
Minimum lot size. The minimum lot size in Bozeman is 4000 SF. (Table 38.320.030.)
Minimum lot width. All new lots must be 50’ wide (unless accessed by an alley, then 40’). (Table 38.320.030.B)
Setbacks. Setbacks are the minimum distance between the lot line and the building. Per code, all lots must have a 15’ front setback, 5’ side setbacks, and a 20’ rear setback. The “required space for setbacks” formula is “Empty Space for Setbacks = 350 + 10L + 35W” where L is the length of the building envelope and W is its width. To build a 100 SF shack you would need an 800 SF lot. That works out to 100 SF of space for you and 700 SF for the planning department (Table 38.320.030.C). Of course, even without the 4000 SF lot size minimum, an 800 SF lot is impossible, since lots must be at least 50’ wide and have 20’ of empty space at their rear—1000 SF of empty space for the rear setback alone.
Lot coverage. In addition to required setbacks, and a minimum lot size, city code also places a strict maximum on how much of the lot your house can cover. (Table 38.320.030.C) This is separate from the Floor Area Ratio (FAR) maximum that prescribes how many square feet of interior space you can have.
It’s not just the lot size minimums. The ban on small lots is also codified in our lot width minimums, required setbacks, lot coverage maximums, FAR maximums, block frontage requirements, street access requirements, off-street parking requirements, utility easements, and elsewhere. All of these different regulations do the exact same thing: they effectively prohibit small lots. This is redundant and counterproductive to the city’s affordability and sustainability goals.
We live in a city with an affordability crisis that bans small lots. Because land is expensive, a ban on small lots is effectively a ban on small houses (like many of those built in Bozeman in the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s). Consistent with national trends, our average house size in ballooning, even as fewer existing Bozemanites are able to afford housing.
What justifies Bozeman’s ban on small lots? Why do we ban small lots but not large lots? Why do we prescribe lot sizes at all?
We live in a city that pays lip service to “sustainability” and yet over half of residential areas are zoned in a way that prohibits multiunit development or duplex conversions. Low density development fuels sprawl increasing our reliance of cars. Single-family detached houses are far less energy efficient than housing units that share walls. Obviously, many people prefer to live in a detached house that does not share walls, but why explicitly prohibit the occasional duplex or triplex across vast swaths of town?
In her book “The Five-Ton Life” (a profile of American communities that produce less than half of Bozeman’s per-capita greenhouse gas emissions) Susan Subak demonstrates conclusively that greenwashing with LED lights and solar panels does far less to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than reducing building sizes and sharing walls. Subak writes that tools such as
“technical improvements in building design and renewable energy … can be helpful, but they give incomplete guidance on the essential importance of smaller floor plans and lot sizes in general. More broadly, city and community governments have a role to play in expanding opportunities for smaller living spaces by changing zoning laws to allow for more compact development, multi-unit construction and single-house to multi-unit conversions.”
It’s time for city leaders to take tangible action:
Eliminate lot size minimums (acknowledging that other code provisions such as setbacks and utility easements will ensure that lots remain adequately large).
Reduce required front setbacks to 10’ and required rear setbacks to 5’.
Waive lot coverage maximums for floorplans of up to 1500 SF.
Modify our zoning code (based on the recent examples from Oregon and Minneapolis) to allow duplexes or triplexes in every neighborhood.
Are we serious about affordability and sustainability—or not? What could we possibly lose by allowing smaller lots and smaller houses?
After years of screed-ing here about Bozeman growth, development and politics, I’m excited to announce that I’m finally taking the plunge and stepping up to try to take a more active role in defining Bozeman’s growth trajectory. As of last week, I am officially a candidate for Bozeman City Commission in this November’s election.
There’s a long list of things I hope to accomplish as a member of Bozeman’s City Commission, but two, in particular, that are motivating me to run:
1. I’d like to see Bozeman become the premier biking city in the Rocky Mountain West. The car-based development pattern adopted by many American cities has led to communities millions are condemned to spend a significant portion of their waking hours stuck in traffic congestion. Almost every other day someone in Montana dies while driving. Transportation is now the #1 source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Biking, on the other hand, promotes a healthy and active population and creates a more pleasant, livable city. I want Bozeman to be a city where anyone wanting to ride their bike to work or an event feels safe doing so (which benefits drivers, as well, who encounter less traffic congestion).
2. Bozeman has an extremely scary affordable housing crisis unfolding. It takes roughly twice as much income ($103,000 per year, now) to afford a median-priced home now as it did just seven years ago. If this trend continues, it will hollow the Bozeman community out, from the outside in. I love Bozeman because of the passionate, down-to-earth community of people who live here. A crisis is emerging where young people who are passionate about things in life other than the pursuit of money are no longer able to afford to make a life here. On our current trajectory, Bozeman is on track to become another Boulder: those without a trust fund (or proceeds from selling a home in an expensive coastal city) need not apply.
More broadly, I want to see Bozeman take action on climate change (we have to act locally, especially given the abdication of responsibility at the national level), conserve open space (especially by avoiding sprawl), improve our water quality, become a more diverse and inclusive city, figure out a fairer tax system (our current system of 100% property taxes for all things is extremely regressive), develop better transit, and many more items besides.
If elected, I think I have both the policy-wonk chops and the hard-learned leadership skills necessary to be an effective advocate and decision maker to move Bozeman in this direction.
But to get there, first I have to get elected. I’m excited, nervous, but hopeful. It’s a wide-open field and I believe that I can win.
If you’re excited for me, consider making a campaign donation. Montana has some of the most progressive campaign finance laws in the United States, meaning my ability to get my message out this fall is going to be entirely dependent on attracting a large number of individual donations. Thanks!
Posted inBozeman, Politics|Comments Off on Running for Bozeman City Commission!
(Reading list adapted from howlongtoread.com)