By Tim Peterson, Corvallis
The Bitterroot Valley has been a difficult place to eke out an existence for 10,000 years. The Salish Indians traveled a network of trails that spread out from what has become known as Traveler’s Rest to find Salmon to the west and Bison to the east. They harvested chokecherry, camas roots and the Bitterroot flower root that our extraordinary valley has been named after. They lived in villages located in areas we named Lolo, Stevensville, Corvallis and Sula.
Today we truck our foraged sustenance in along Highways 93, 12 and 90 and hunt and gather crops at the farmers markets in the center of our clustered dwellings. Salish history tells that thousands of years ago tribe’s population became too great to be sustained by hunting, fishing, and gathering foods in one central location. Tribal elders tell that the tribes dispersed to the west so that smaller groups could be more easily supported by the seasonal supply of foods.
The lack of foresight by our local elected officials has caused us to outgrow our current capacity to provide a dignified existence for many of our residents. For over 7,000 of our neighbors, friends and family members, life in the valley leaves a bitter after taste.
Housing in the valley costs 11% more than the median value in Montana and 18% more than the median value in the U.S. Meanwhile the median household income is only 83% of that in Montana and 74% of that in the U.S. The fastest growing industries are service and retail, both of which pay slightly more than minimum wage, while the median rent of $756 requires an hourly wage of at least $13.10. The Bitterroot Valley has one quarter as many apartment complexes with 5 or more units than the US average and half as many as the rest of Montana. No affordable workforce housing has been built in our valley in over a decade.
The root of the problem is working families can’t afford to live here. Part of the solution is incentivizing investment in affordable workforce housing.
Support HB 16 to establish an affordable housing loan program, SB 15 to allow certain funds to be used for affordable housing infrastructure and SB 18 to establish workforce housing tax credits.