Last year’s flooding caused damage to already strained affordable housing supplies in towns near the national park.
A mounting housing crisis in the ‘gateway communities’ surrounding Yellowstone National Park is being compounded by damage caused by last year’s historic flooding, which destroyed many of the region’s mobile homes.
Kayla Descroches describes the situation for Utah Public Radio, explaining that “There was already an affordable housing crisis in Yellowstone gateway communities before the floods hit.” According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, “Montana is short nearly 16,000 rental units” for its lowest-income residents.
Manufactured housing or mobile homes, one of the nation’s most robust sources of affordable housing, makes up 10 percent of Montana’s housing stock. But mobile home parks are threatened by both extreme weather and buyouts by developers who want to redevelop the land or raise the land rent to levels unaffordable by current residents.
In April, Montana passed a set of zoning reform laws that are expected to boost housing development and slow the rise in housing costs.
Read the full story: https://www.upr.org/2023-06-19/yellowstones-historic-floods-in-2022-exacerbated-an-affordable-housing-crisis
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