“I would urge the committee to focus on removing excessive zoning regulations that limit property owners’ ability to use their own property, and allow them to decide what makes the most sense for them — whether that’s a single-family home, a townhome, or an apartment.”
The following is a copy of the public comment provided to the Local Government Interim Committee for consideration at their September 25, 2025 meeting.
September 25, 2025
RE: Local Government Interim Committee
Dear Chairman and Members of the Committee,
Thank you for taking the time to study housing density. Over the last five years, Frontier Institute has extensively researched Montana’s housing crisis. What we’ve found is that one of the biggest drivers of skyrocketing costs is overly strict zoning laws. Too often these rules go far beyond legitimate health and safety concerns, trampling property rights and penalizing — or outright prohibiting — some of the most affordable types of homes.
That’s why we’ve championed reforms to strengthen property rights and restore Montanans’ ability to choose the type of home that works best for them. Often that means reforming zoning laws to allow more infill in cities. But there’s another aspect to this that I want to address today.
In the effort to give Montanans more flexibility to use their property, the solution cannot and should not be to go from government mandating expensive single-family homes to government mandating densely populated apartments. That is just trading one form of top-down government control for another.
We should not be forcing density –– plain and simple. Yes, we should be allowing it, but that is a big difference. Policies like minimum density rules, square-footage caps, and conditional incentive programs trample on the property rights of Montanans just as much as the old zoning policies that restricted the housing supply. These approaches undermine the progress you’ve made to strengthen property rights, and I would ask the committee to steer clear of policies that manipulate Montanans towards predetermined outcomes.
Instead, I would urge the committee to focus on removing excessive zoning regulations that limit property owners’ ability to use their own property, and allow them to decide what makes the most sense for them — whether that’s a single-family home, a townhome, or an apartment.
Thank you for your time,
Tanner Avery
Policy Director
Frontier Institute
