With the median home price in Lake County perched at $530,000 in December (rocket.com), Abby Moore, a member of the Lake County Planning Department, doesn’t expect to purchase a house anytime soon – even though she would much rather be building equity for her family than paying rent.

Her sentiment was echoed during a meeting last Friday at the Lake County Courthouse in Polson.

With costs ranging from $250 to $400 per square foot for new construction, not including land, a household earning $70,000 a year can’t afford to buy new homes – or used ones either.

The gathering was the first step in the process of reviewing and rewriting the county’s subdivision regulations, launched by the planning department and IMEG Engineering Consultants and funded by a grant from the Montana Department of Commerce. The two-part project also includes an Attainable Housing Construction Study, which aims to help families like Moore’s find houses they can afford to buy.

County staff, builders, realtors and developers were among the 25 or so people who attended the meeting. After introducing themselves, the IMEG team divvied participants up into three groups and began trying to identify some of the obstacles facing builders and homebuyers.

“The best way to think about this project is getting something that is rubber-meets-the-road for Lake County,” said IMEG land-use planner Joe Dehnert.

Jess Kittle of Kittle Custom Home Design says his biggest frustrations when it comes to regulations are lack of clarity and keeping up with changes to codes and regulations.

“I've got to stay up to date, which is fine, but I'd rather not have to do long division if all we need is addition and subtraction,” he said.

Other people in the room mentioned the time it takes county or city staff to process permits and paperwork as barriers to keeping costs down.

“Working with a lot of applicants, timeline is their huge thing,” said county planner Tyler Kelsch. “They want to know when we're going to be done permitting so they can start construction.”

Affordability becomes an issue when schools, hospitals, local businesses and governments try to hire professionals.

“We started looking for workforce housing because we were getting people applying for jobs that were amazingly qualified and they couldn't find any place to live,” says county commissioner Bill Barron.

“We don't even interview out-of-state folks anymore because we know housing will be an issue,” added commissioner Gale Decker.

One proposal to bring housing costs down involves building on a 118-acre parcel the county owns on Caffrey Road, just south of the Polson Hill. Under that scenario, which is part of the Attainable Housing Study, the county would retain ownership of the land, the developer would handle infrastructure, and the owner would purchase the house.

It’s a solution that’s been utilized in the Flathead Valley as a means of lowering the cost of home ownership by eliminating the expense of buying property.

According to Barron, banks are willing to finance such projects, and the county would continue to collect taxes on the property from the homeowners.

“That's one way the county would recoup making the land available,” he said. “We’d always own it, but then we get property taxes back on it.”

Construction costs have tripled

“The land cost is such a small part of the problem,” responded Mike Maddy, a major developer in Polson. “It's just been in the last 10 years that the cost of construction has really tripled.”

In addition to the accelerating cost of land and materials, he said developers need to install curbs, roads, gutters and sidewalks before the first house is constructed; pay impact fees to local government; and often, instead of hiring one engineer, a project needs one for each entity involved. He said the additional demands of building more energy-efficient houses to meet local building codes also drive up costs.

 “In some sense, if you want to have affordable housing that's not government subsidized, you have to be able to have simple housing,” Maddy said. “You have to have a little bit less insulation, you have to have a little bit less tight houses, you have to have a little bit less space.”

Maddy also pointed out that on property that’s not annexed to the city, the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation are also players in the regulatory field, as is the Flathead Reservation Water Management Board, which permits new wells and water systems.

The consensus, at least among one group, was that there’s a high demand for affordable single-family starter homes.

”You want to build equity in your home,” Dehnert said as the meeting wrapped up. “It's just as much about growing your wealth and planning for your future as it is about living where you work.”

The two projects are slated to take 15-18 months to complete, with the rewriting of Lake County subdivision regulations occurring first. In addition to heeding public input, the rewrite will also need to accommodate any changes mandated by the 2025 Legislature.

IMEG also expects to identify two additional sites – in addition to the county’s property on Caffrey Road – that can be used to map out more affordable housing options.

IMEG and the planning department are hosting workshops Feb. 15-16 at locations around Lake County to seek input on the subdivision rewrite and housing study. For more information, reach out to joseph.m.dehnert@imegcorp.com or planning director Tifffani Murphy at tmurphy@lakemt.gov.