Just saw a piece by Christian Britschgi in Reason magazine about what’s happening in the Montana state legislature this year on housing and land use issues, subsequent to the passage of the “Montana Miracle”. That group of bills, passed the 2023 session, was then challenged in court, and the court earlier this year upheld those actions (except for one dealing with public engagement because of an explicit provision in the state’s constitution – and that district court decision may yet be appealed). The bills passed in Montana were generally pretty broad in scope, leaving a lot of the detail and discretion up to the local governments in how and what they would enact and implement.
The actions of the Montana legislature in this year’s session pretty much turns all that local discretion on its head, as detailed in the Britschgi piece and in a story on the Sightline website. A quick summary of some of those actions:
The parking reform bill, House Bill 492, prevents city zoning codes from requiring parking for child care facilities, assisted living facilities, affordable housing, and residential units under 1,200 square feet.
A second bill, S.B. 243, would prevent local governments from setting height limits of fewer than sixty feet in downtown areas, industrial areas, and commercial clusters. A developer would have every right to convert a centrally located commercial lot into a six-story apartment building. Provided the units are all under 1,200 square feet, H.B. 492 would free them from any obligation to add parking—which is often a development killer on smaller lots.
Another notable bill, S.B. 133, eliminates local governments’ ability to charge impact fees for landscaping and caps increases on impact fees to the producer price index’s increase in commodity prices.
SB 532 allows one ADU by right on parcels outside cities. (SB 528 from the prior session legalized ADUs within cities.)
There were some good and needed reform bills, such as one that would require cities to treat manufactured homes on equal footing as stick-built construction, and another that legalizes single-staircase residential buildings. But overall, it seemed to me that the Montana legislature was putting itself in the role of local councils and making detailed land use decisions. That concern was expressed clearly by the Montana APA chapter when on one of those bills, the chapter legislative update said,
We really don’t like bills that attempt to create a statewide zoning code. We are opposed, but this isn’t one of our top priorities.
Other states, most notably California, have gotten into detail of local land use regulation to the degree seen in these Montana bills. In Utah, so far, we have largely avoided such top-down strictures (not completely, e.g., internal ADUs, parking space size and numbers, and a few others). A couple of bills like those in the last session, that would have set minimum allowable lot sizes and number of units allowed on any lot statewide, did not pass. But the sentiment seems to be building somewhat to start considering more seriously such actions.
Just sayin’. If it can happen in Montana… The way to avoid such an outcome, in my mind, is for the locals to start taking actions on their own to address zoning reform. I’ve posted previously that some cities in our state are indeed starting to do so, but I think it’s going to take much more action to avoid a “statewide zoning code.”