Front Step Community Land Trust

Front Step Community Land Trust (formerly the North Missoula Community Development Corporation) is tackling one of the largest issues facing residents: affordable housing.

This week, the commissioners spoke with Brittany Palmer, director of Front Step, to discuss what community land trusts do and how their work can help push back against the rapid economic changes facing small towns and cities.

Related links:

• Thursday, July 17: Housing Night with the Missoula Paddleheads

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda, everyone with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Commissioner Dave Strohmaier. I'm here today joined by my fellow Commissioner Juanita Vero. Commissioner Slotnick Josh Slotnick is out for the balance of this month at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, hopefully learning some tricks and tips that he can bring back here to Missoula County.

Juanita Vero: [00:00:33] No tricks, no tricks, no tricks.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:35] Nothing up his sleeve. But, uh, we will look forward to having Josh back next month at our recordings of the agenda. But today we are delighted to have with us Brittany Palmer. Brittany is the director of Front Step Community Land Trust, formerly known as the North Missoula Community Development Corporation. Welcome, Brittany.

Brittany Palmer: [00:00:56] Thanks for having me.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:00:58] And I guess just to prime the pump here. I only now learned that Ncdcc is now rebranded and renamed Front Step Community Land Trust. Tell us about the transition and what, if anything, has substantively changed? Or is it just the name?

Brittany Palmer: [00:01:14] Yeah, I think it's more our work. The change in our work preceded the need to change our name. So we've kind of been growing for the last several years. Outside of just the north Side. We have housing Project downtown, for example, on Front Street and a couple of housing developments in neighborhoods across Missoula. And so part of it is our service area has grown. And also we keep joking that right as everybody finally got NHM, CDC, the acronym correct, we like changed it up on them. But it's just easier to say, easier to remember hopefully, and just more reflective of our work being in a larger service area.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:01:51] And I guess take us back just a little bit in terms of how that larger service area came to be, Because some folks who are listening today are probably very familiar with the geographic location of the North Side. Missoula. Other folks in our listening community, North side, might not mean as much to them, certainly.

Brittany Palmer: [00:02:11] Well, our founder, Bob Oakes, got started doing some community organizing on the North side where he lived. So it's a traditionally working class neighborhood in Missoula and.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:20] North of the railroad.

Brittany Palmer: [00:02:21] Tracks.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:21] Yep. Yes. Okay.

Brittany Palmer: [00:02:23] Track's big project of our early days was organizing neighbors to get a pedestrian crossing over the railroad, which we have one now. The pedestrian bridge. And, yeah, so our work really started there in the north side. Bob was it was in the early 90s. So we incorporated in 1986. Bob, back in the day, was trying to do a lot of organizing with neighbors to make their working class neighborhood better, but was finding that a lot of folks weren't really interested in sticking around the neighborhood and viewed it as a stepping stone to get to some other place in Missoula that was maybe perceived as being a little nicer. And that's actually how we got into housing. So from there, because he was realizing, you know, it's kind of difficult to organize people who don't really want to stay. Not that renters don't have the same level of investment, but it can be easier when you have home ownership. You can have a longer view of because you have the opportunity to stay in the neighborhood if you want to. And so we got into homeownership by starting a down payment assistance program in the late 90s. And from there, we learned about the community land trust model. And I'll talk about that later, I'm sure. But it was like, oh, this is an interesting model because the subsidy passes along to each subsequent buyer. But yeah, homeownership has always been sort of central to our work, as has community organizing and really focusing on providing resources to neighbors or at least providing capacity to neighbors of working class parts of the community.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:44] But you've moved out of the North Side now.

Brittany Palmer: [00:03:46] Yep. So we're still focused on uplifting working class communities, mostly in in Missoula. So we're looking at neighborhoods like Franklin to the Fort River road and in the north side. West side still.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:59] Yeah.

Brittany Palmer: [00:04:00] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:00] Well, maybe. Can we go back to just the basic question of what is a community land trust?

Brittany Palmer: [00:04:06] Yeah, sure. So a community land trust is an organization that holds assets and land in trust on behalf of the community to preserve their affordability. So there are organizations across the country that are community land trust. There are five.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:19] And see what defines community or like how do you say this is the community or.

Brittany Palmer: [00:04:25] Community land trust or place based 503 organizations so they can have service areas of just a neighborhood or just a city or the county, and several operate within several counties. But we're usually like based in some sort of place. That scope can be different by organization, but the primary tool that we use, I guess, is we hold assets on behalf of the community and develop land according to community need rather than according to the highest financial gain. So we're able to hold any kind of asset on behalf of the community and preserve its affordability. So in Missoula, that's often housing because that's our primary need arguably. But we also have a commercial building. So we operate out of the Byrne Street building on the West side. A lot of people are familiar with it because of the Burn Street Bistro being there for a long time. The Western Montana Growers Co-op is also there. So yeah, this model can be used for housing, for limited equity housing co-ops, which I can talk about for commercial buildings and also for things like local farms. So Trust Montana or Statewide Community Land Trust just finished up the first community Land trust farm in the state. Yeah. So it can be used for a lot of different communities.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:37] Maybe so that everyone can wrap their minds around this a little bit more. Talk about a specific, concrete example of how this plays out in action.

Brittany Palmer: [00:05:47] Yeah. So how are projects get developed is we get Ahold of land either through purchase or through donation. And then we either act as the developer ourselves or we partner to develop on that land. So we construct things usually housing, and then we get typically grants. But you can also get, you know, philanthropic dollars to invest that initial subsidy into the project, which brings down the purchase price for buyers. A buyer then has to income qualify. And and we run that process. But we select a buyer based on their income. They purchase the home and then they lease the land underneath the home from us with a ground lease agreement.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:06:27] So front step retains ownership of the land itself.

Brittany Palmer: [00:06:31] Yep. In perpetuity. Okay. And so if you're a community land trust buyer, you purchase the building for a subsidized price. Lease the land from the Community Land Trust on a 75 year renewable ground lease. And then when and if you're ready to sell your ground lease dictates what you can sell the home for.

Juanita Vero: [00:06:49] And what are the numbers or the prices we're talking about. So people can kind of.

Brittany Palmer: [00:06:53] Yeah. So most of our homes right now. Well it depends on the bedroom size. So we're selling homes for under $200,000 that are like two and three bedroom townhomes on the river. Um, you know, super nice homes.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:07] So, so less would be how much? On top of that.

Brittany Palmer: [00:07:10] The lease is $30 a month. So that is mostly just to make sure folks are able to pay. And it helps us also, you know, if we see somebody falling behind on their ground lease fees, we can reach out and provide some assistance if they may be falling behind on other bills or their mortgage and things like that too.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:27] So the price of these homes are basically less than half of the median price of a home. Yeah. In Missoula County, if we're talking about owning the, the land and the, the, the housing unit itself, totally.

Brittany Palmer: [00:07:41] And that subsidy that we invest in the beginning of a project is passed on to the next buyer and the next buyer and the next buyer. We're really approaching this from like a generations Long view.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:52] So how long do they have to stay? So they purchased the home for 200,000. How long did they have to stay in it before they can sell it?

Brittany Palmer: [00:07:59] They can sell it right away. I mean, it's usually like you want to be able to cover your closing costs, but. So the homeowners in our program get they are able to take away 1.5% of appreciation of what we call, we call unearned appreciation. So 1.5% per year of whatever the market does plus whatever they pay off on their mortgage. So we say it's an alternative to renting, where instead of your monthly payment going to your landlord, you're building some equity. It's a limited amount of equity because that purchase price, that affordable price passes on to the next buyer and the subsidy stays with the home. But that's how we're able to do it for like generations of Missoulians.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:35] Is there a specific project in Missoula that that kind of exemplifies what you just described that folks can, I guess, uh, paint a picture for themselves in their minds of this is what happened at Burn Street or some other location?

Brittany Palmer: [00:08:49] Yeah, I think Bern Street is a great example. So a lot of people are familiar with Bern Street because of going to the commercial building to get brunch or whatever. But the housing development right next door is, um, 17 condos. And so those were developed in, I think that we finished around 2009 and, um, yeah, townhomes in that development are selling for around, you know, depending on the bedroom size, around $200,000, sometimes less. And yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:18] Are there certain types of units that folks are that are most in demand right now that folks are looking for?

Brittany Palmer: [00:09:25] So we have a mix in our program. We've got like single family homes, townhomes, condos. What seems to be sort of in demand is three bedrooms or more. Um, so we have a lot of families on our interest list. We have over 300 households on our interest list right now who are who would be, you know, excited to purchase a home like this.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:45] How long do. Yeah. What's that that churn look like?

Brittany Palmer: [00:09:48] Well, it depends. A it kind of depends because it has to be the right home, the right fit, the right time for everybody. And so, for example, this home that was just sold at Byrne Street, it was a three bedroom kind of rare for those to come up. That home had eight of 300 on our interest list. Eight households were it was the right time. Perfect. Yeah. Um, got financing made it all the way through. And so they're competitive. But it's also like realistic for folks who are like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to get through the interest list visit list if it's that big. But by the time you get down to like, who's really ready and it's the perfect fit for them, it's more realistic than you might think.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:24] Yeah, right.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:25] What sort of trends have you seen the last five years or so or five years? Sounds so recent. I mean, is it is can you have a trend in five years, especially post-Covid? I don't know. Well, answer that question however you want.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:36] But I mean, that's good for me because I've worked at front step for five years. I started during the pandemic. And so.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:42] Okay.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:42] What a change.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:43] In the last five years.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:45] I think we're.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:45] Seeing a lot more young people apply, and I don't know if that's a condition of, you know, the marketing that we're kind of doing.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:51] These days. What is the definition of exactly?

Juanita Vero: [00:10:53] I was like, I know what young person means.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:56] Well, for.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:10:56] Younger than us.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:57] One either.

Brittany Palmer: [00:10:58] I think we had a lot of like retirees who who were finding it a good fit to age in place. And now it's more of a mix. So sometimes, you know, folks looking to downsize or age in place. I think it's tricky to like folks who are retired aren't going to downsize into a home that's more expensive and smaller. And so we kind of fill that need. But then also, we're seeing a lot of folks who are like young families or, you know, like a single mom with a couple kids. A lot of folks who work for nonprofits, who work in education. The university. Yeah. A lot of young people that I think are having trouble accessing. You know, if you didn't get in before 2020, it's really challenging to get into the market rate housing right now.

Juanita Vero: [00:11:39] So yeah. What else are you seeing around affordability trends or housing supply trends?

Brittany Palmer: [00:11:44] Yeah, I think we learned recently from a Missoula Organization of Realtors report that it looked like the market rate home price was slowing a bit. But it's still, you know, of course, wages are the other side of the coin, and it's still challenging for folks to purchase of $550,000 home. We hope that this is we used to say that this was a community land trust. Homeownership was a stepping stone to market rate home ownership. And at this point, it's like the the leap from community land trust, home ownership to market rate is so wide that we're just getting people into stable, affordable housing. And if they want to stay there forever, that's totally cool because the next level of housing is.

Juanita Vero: [00:12:20] Such.

Brittany Palmer: [00:12:20] A big, great. Yeah, it's it's kind of tricky.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:12:23] So when you go about developing a community land trust based project, how do you determine the price of, of homes? Uh, because obviously, um, there's the just the bare bones. It costs this much to get the thing constructed. But beyond that, if it was just kind of the open market forces at work here, You end up with half $1 million median home price here in Missoula, but you're clearly way below that. So how does that all get figured out?

Brittany Palmer: [00:12:54] Yeah, we have a pretty robust pricing formula that's based off of what people can afford at different area median incomes. So when we partner to develop, that's one of the challenges for us is explaining, like we don't care what it costs to build, because ultimately we're solving for what people can afford and the gap between what it costs to build and what people can afford is the subsidy that we need. So at some point in the process, subsidy has to come from somewhere, whether it's like donated land. But oftentimes these days, donated land isn't even enough and we need additional subsidy.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:26] And where does that come from or what?

Brittany Palmer: [00:13:27] Yeah, usually government grants. So CDBG home okay. We're also you know, I think there's a lot of new tools that are available to us that are like low cost financing that we haven't we haven't taken advantage of yet. But it'll be interesting to see what can get built with with these new loan products and tools.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:46] And those products and tools are created by. By who? By what entity or house.

Brittany Palmer: [00:13:53] Neighborworks Montana and Missoula Economic Partnership established a fund recently. Oh, that's what it's called. I think like the Montana Housing Fund.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:02] Missoula.

Brittany Palmer: [00:14:03] I can't remember.

Brittany Palmer: [00:14:03] Yeah, or the innovation fund or something.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:06] Okay. Well, sorry.

Brittany Palmer: [00:14:07] That's okay. That's okay.

Brittany Palmer: [00:14:08] That's that's a resource that we didn't have before. And then also at this this last legislative session resulted in a new pot of money also through the Board of housing. So.

Brittany Palmer: [00:14:18] So to get.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:14:19] So to get to the, the like the $200,000 ish range for Community land trust home requires you as front step to own the land and some amount of subsidy in addition to that, to help offset whatever the gap is between what it costs to build the thing and what folks at some price point can afford.

Brittany Palmer: [00:14:42] Totally. So in this part of our work, we're saying like we're removing homes from the speculative market and holding them in trust on behalf of the community. And we would like to grow the amount of homes that are just off of the speculative market, so that there's a decent portion of the housing stock that regular old Missoulians can afford to purchase. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:15:01] Something you mentioned earlier, limited equity housing co-ops. Tell us about that.

Brittany Palmer: [00:15:06] I'd love to, because this is like one of my favorite things that we're doing. So so far we have transitioned, um, two properties to resident owned co-ops on Community Land Trust land. We're calling them limited equity housing co-ops. Other community land trust. And other states have done this. But the first one that we did here in Missoula was the first one in Montana. So it involved a lot of different people helping us out. The way that got started was we heard from a neighbor on the north side who lived next to an eight plex. That's kind of always been affordable. Well, what we call a naturally occurring affordable housing. It's an old building that a lot of cool people have lived in, and their rents have been historically just pretty low because there was a lot of deferred maintenance. And the building went up for sale in 2021 when our rental vacancy was like 0.5%. So it was likely that if that sold on the open market, the folks living there would have experienced rental increases that could have displaced them from the building or from the neighborhood or from the community altogether. And so the neighbor living next door to them reach out to us and Kaya Peterson at Neighborworks and a couple other folks and was like, we need to figure out what to do about this so we can keep these people in their homes.

Brittany Palmer: [00:16:21] That led to some conversations with the residents we all got together. We also had like attorneys there and the property management and just a lot of different partners trying to put our heads together to figure out how to solve this. And we sort of started looking at three different possibilities. One was an organization like front step, just owning and operating the buildings like a rental, but that didn't really feel like it was getting at the community ownership piece that we really like about housing. The second thing that we looked into was condo izing the building and turning it into regular community land trust condos on community land trust owned land. But the incomes at that time didn't really support the majority of folks purchasing their homes individually, even as community Land Trust subsidized homes. And so we kind of landed on this at the time, we were calling it like a community land trust co-op hybrid. But apparently, you know, we've since then started calling it limited equity housing co-op, which is what it is. But in this model, the residents own a share in a cooperative. The cooperative owns the buildings. And then we own the land underneath, which brings down the overall purchase price and also keeps the whole project affordable for generations. So the co-op can never decide to sell it on the open market to the highest bidder.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:34] How are they able to do the the necessary renovations or updates?

Brittany Palmer: [00:17:37] That's a good question.

Juanita Vero: [00:17:38] So deal with the deferred maintenance.

Brittany Palmer: [00:17:40] That's one of the most challenging parts about all this is you're organizing residents and getting them confident and comfortable with the management of of their homes. At the same time, you're running a complex real estate transaction. And in this model, I guess when we start talking to residents, we get a property survey done and individual inspections on units and just have like conversations with the residents to see if the inspections align with their experience of living in their homes. We try to get really good data on the needs of the buildings, and then build that into an acquisition budget so that they're able to do a bunch of the repairs right away, and then we help them also build out like a capital needs plan for 20 years. So they're budgeting for their any repairs that need to come up.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:18:27] How how does this work if a resident moves out? Because presumably maybe I'm not hearing this quite right, but it sounds like residents all own some percentage share in this. In this thing.

Brittany Palmer: [00:18:41] Yeah. So they will sell their share. Um, and we've had one turnover so far. But essentially they're selling their share. They're selling the right to occupy that unit and be their own landlord essentially. So they have a board. Um, so it's kind of self-governing with our support and technical assistance. And then they also they hire a property management company, so property management works for them. They self-governance with support.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:04] It sounds a lot like some of the trailer parks or mobile home parks. We've we've heard, uh, where the residents communities.

Brittany Palmer: [00:19:12] Yeah. Yep.

Brittany Palmer: [00:19:13] So it's really similar to rocks in, um, rocks. They own their mobile home typically. Whereas in these kinds of projects, they just own a share in the co-op that gives them the right to occupy their specific unit. Yeah. But it's really similar. That's why we work so closely with our team.

Brittany Palmer: [00:19:31] Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:19:32] So what you've described is a legacy, uh, home sort of scenario. Uh, you mentioned naturally occurring for affordable housing. I like that phrase, but would this model ever work? If you're in a situation where you're constructing a new project and a new housing unit, as opposed to what can we do to, uh, ensure affordability for this thing that has naturally occurred, uh, for a while?

Brittany Palmer: [00:20:00] We think so, and we hope so. I think the main difference is the level of subsidy needed. So with all you know, with the deferred maintenance and all that, it's sometimes easier to make the project pencil but don't.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:12] As opposed to building from scratch.

Brittany Palmer: [00:20:14] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:20:14] And I think.

Brittany Palmer: [00:20:16] There's potential that building like that that we could use this model um, for new newly constructed homes, but perhaps for higher incomes. So like the incomes that we're often solving for in these housing co-ops are like 30%, am I. That's pretty that's different from what we're typically looking at. But it's just who's been living in in their homes for decades in Missoula. And. Sure. Yeah. Without wages going up at the same pace, it's.

Brittany Palmer: [00:20:40] Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:41] Well, it sounds like a lot of what you've and maybe exclusively what front step and its predecessor, North Missoula Community Development Corporation have been involved with have been projects within the city of Missoula proper. Is front step at all looking at or currently involved in anything outside of the city limits?

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:01] We've been saying I thought I might get this question and we've been thinking about this a lot, but.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:05] This is the board of county.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:06] Commissioners. Yeah, totally.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:08] I think we would consider, like, if somebody came to us in, in the county somewhere, um, and wanted to do a co-op project, we would consider it for sure. And if not, pass it along to Trust Montana or Statewide Housing Co-op. But we're interested. I think we say right now our service area is Missoula and it's urban fringe. So area is likely to be annexed or, you know, like the Y and, um, Sxwtpqyen and.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:31] Sure.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:31] Parts like that, parts of the city like that, but it's not out of the question that we could serve the county. We're just.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:37] It's a stranger.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:37] In a place like Seeley Lake.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:39] Yeah, totally.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:40] We could potentially do this, but you would just need the the land and that magical subsidy. Yeah. Could work.

Brittany Palmer: [00:21:46] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:21:47] Um. Well, maybe. Did you already ask this? And how can county residents take part in the resources that Front Step offers?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:21:53] Yeah, that's kind of what I was getting at. But maybe there are other ways in which folks can get involved or participate beyond, uh, necessarily seen a project spring up in in Clinton or Seeley Lake.

Brittany Palmer: [00:22:06] Yeah. Well, one thing I think is probably relevant is we run a coalition called Pro Housing Missoula that we started as an opportunity to help advocate for the city's zoning code reform. And so we've got a coalition of individuals and businesses and organizational representatives that have been meeting for the last 2 to 3 years since this project has been started. And I think there's a relationship right between the kinds of development that happens within the city and the kinds of development that happens in the county. And so that's one that's one thing that we're that I think is related. I guess if folks are interested, they could always come to a Missoula meeting. But it is something that we're doing in the city limits that I think will will affect the county. And basically our goal with that is as affordable housing practitioners, we don't think the best use of our subsidy is subsidizing housing for people earning 200% of the area median income, necessarily, if we can, we want to focus our limited subsidy on folks earning 80% or one, 20%, you know, that kind of wage. And so we know that the market has a role, even though we would love for all housing.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:17] What is.

Brittany Palmer: [00:23:17] That kind of I mean.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:18] That does bring up a good question for me. So. Well, it brings up a question. I don't know if it's a good question for me or.

Brittany Palmer: [00:23:25] Not, but.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:26] In terms of am I? So is that part of the screening criteria by which someone becomes eligible to participate in the in a land trust.

Brittany Palmer: [00:23:38] Yeah it does. And it's.

Brittany Palmer: [00:23:38] Often.

Juanita Vero: [00:23:39] The the area of am I though too. Is it Missoula County? Is it western Montana?

Brittany Palmer: [00:23:43] I think it is Missoula County. yeah. And it is also often dictated by what kinds of subsidy we bring into projects. So if we use affordable housing, trust fund money at the city, that is limited to 120%. If there's MRA money, Missoula Redevelopment Agency money that's limited to, I think 140% Ami and federal dollars are limited to 80% Ami. So we could go up beyond that and serve higher incomes. However, we also at the same time think that there should be more housing types of more kinds and many other neighborhoods. And so that's pro housing, Missoula's sort of advocacy angle. Yeah. Just kind of like we need all of it.

Brittany Palmer: [00:24:24] All.

Juanita Vero: [00:24:24] The entire spectrum.

Brittany Palmer: [00:24:25] Yeah, yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:25] But but you are looking at how do we align folks wages and ability to pay with, uh, housing that that is available to fit that as opposed to someone who's rolling in dough, who just wants to get.

Brittany Palmer: [00:24:39] A yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:40] A super cheap place to live and could could afford something, uh, on the open.

Brittany Palmer: [00:24:45] Yeah, totally. I mean, we say even for folks who it seems like attaining market rate homeownership might be a stretch. We say, like, if you can get market rate homeownership, you should do that. This is really for folks who have no way of getting market rate homeownership.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:24:59] Yeah, that's a great point. nMCDC, as I recalled it back in the day when it was still called that, which I guess was only a month ago...id a lot of other things.

Brittany Palmer: [00:25:11] Mhm.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:12] Uh, you were involved in the, uh, homestead up uh, in the North Hills here and, and other programs. Is that still can or any, any of those programs still continuing with front step.

Brittany Palmer: [00:25:24] Yeah, we still do a whole lot. So we kind of have our program areas broken into three things. So we do home ownership, which you talked about mostly. And then we also do policy advocacy. So pro housing Missoula falls in that bucket. And then community and in our community bucket of our work, we still do things like neighborhood organizing, helping neighbors have the capacity to do like local infrastructure projects in their neighborhood. And then also we organize Missoula outdoor cinema, which is also grown this year. That's just not.

Juanita Vero: [00:25:55] What kind of what kind of local infrastructure project are you talking about?

Brittany Palmer: [00:25:59] So if neighbors want things like a message board in their neighborhood, which we hear a lot about, or want to make improvements like through public art or plantings, that's the kind of stuff we can lend staff time to and just help them keep those kind of projects moving along. We also had heard from several different neighborhoods that they were interested in, sort of like a neighborhood preparedness workshop or some sort of convening. And this was after that big windstorm. So we Organized a series of neighborhood preparedness workshops where folks could get together and, like, teach each other how to reach out to their neighbors. Some folks created like little zines that they could distribute on their block. Just saying, like, I'm interested in pet sitting, or I have this skill or that skill just to get folks in community with each other that, yeah, that's the kind of work. And then, yeah, Missoula Cinema this year is expanding as well. So instead of only doing it on the north side, we have two days on the north side, two days this summer in Franklin to the four and one at the fairgrounds. And those are new for us. So we're excited.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:06] You should know about the fairgrounds.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:11] I know, I'm embarrassed. Okay. Okay. Yes.

Brittany Palmer: [00:27:13] Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:14] Burning questions. So. And then this is I have no answer here, and it's not rhetorical. I would just love to know your thoughts on this. And it's a big one. So in some cases this naturally occurring affordable housing might be associated with an image of a neighborhood that lacks infrastructure. There's other factors involved why a property a housing unit might currently still be affordable. What are your thoughts on how we can make those infrastructure upgrades to actually improve the quality? Quality of life, social determinants of health that that flow from, uh, at least one aspect of that, uh, quality infrastructure. How do you do that without the dreaded gentrification that sometimes gets pointed at as if if you do these things, it's just going to cause this neighborhood to, uh, become more attractive for folks, uh, who are looking for market rate housing or property to speculate in.

Brittany Palmer: [00:28:18] I mean, I think that gentrification can be combated with community ownership. So if we have more homes in community hands like the River Rocks Co-op. On River road, for example, those folks are making not quite infrastructure upgrades, but they're making upgrades to their homes that will preserve that housing stock for many more decades than if it were on the the path that it was before it came into community ownership.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:44] Because what happens? It would just be the building where the units would be raised and something new would bright, shiny, beautiful thing goes in there that no one can afford. And so this way it's no longer it's not a dilapidated building.

Brittany Palmer: [00:28:58] Yeah.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:58] It will continue to.

Brittany Palmer: [00:29:00] Yeah. Well and I think like in these neighborhoods that especially the working class neighborhoods of Missoula, that's where the higher rates of redevelopment is happening. And we know we need more housing again, more housing of of all varying types in all neighborhoods. We need that. But at the same time, I think a big part of our work is preservation of existing housing for existing residents. And so, yeah, I don't know, like these residents, for Residents, for example, haven't made infrastructure updates like to the well that they're on, for example. But I think with more homes and community ownership, there's there's a bigger chance because they're living in their homes and managing the property rather than an off site landlord with a property management company doing the same thing or attempting to do the same thing.

Brittany Palmer: [00:29:48] Right.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:48] Yeah. Thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:29:49] Well, I guess before we close, we would like to ask folks, what, um, do you have a nugget of wisdom to share with us? Or a good book, a poem, a podcast? Yeah. Piece of music. Song.

Brittany Palmer: [00:30:01] I think something that that has been really influential to our team and our staff is the book The Affordable City by Shane Phillips. And this kind of gets at what I think is so important to solving the housing crisis, which is we kind of need all of it, and no one solution is going to do it for us. But in his book, he talks about needing supply. So more housing in more neighborhoods. Subsidy. So more dollars to bring down the price of market rate homes into affordability for regular people. And then stability, which is like renters rights. And so that's how we've been thinking of our work in housing, and how I hope that a lot of us in this community can start to think about it.

Juanita Vero: [00:30:46] Oh it's beautiful.

Brittany Palmer: [00:30:47] Thank you.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:30:48] Anything that we forgot to ask that you are that you would like to.

Brittany Palmer: [00:30:52] The housing organizations in Missoula are having a housing night at the Paddle Heads.

Brittany Palmer: [00:30:56] Game on the 17th.

Juanita Vero: [00:30:58] So July 17th?

Brittany Palmer: [00:31:00] Yep.

Brittany Palmer: [00:31:00] If folks want to join us, I think there's a special link to purchase tickets. And a bunch of us will be there, um, enjoying the game and also maybe talking a little bit about housing.

Brittany Palmer: [00:31:11] Excellent. Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:13] Well, thanks so much for joining us, Brittany. This has been fascinating. And, uh, you all do great work for our community.

Brittany Palmer: [00:31:20] Thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:21] Wonderful. Thanks, Brittany.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:23] We'll see you all next time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:25] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot. If you'd rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:33] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:31:39] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television. Better known as MCAT, and our staff in the Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:51] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:59] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to missoula.com/updates.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:32:06] Thanks for listening.