{"id":769919,"date":"2026-01-08T06:50:05","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T14:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=blog&#038;p=769919"},"modified":"2026-02-26T15:17:54","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T23:17:54","slug":"montana-zoning-atlas-bipartisan-housing-reform","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/montana-zoning-atlas-bipartisan-housing-reform","title":{"rendered":"Montana Zoning Atlas: Mapping Drives Bipartisan Housing Reform"},"author":671,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[327152,271,476402,413732],"industry":[],"esri-blog-category":[478722],"esri_blog_department":[478202,492402],"class_list":["post-769919","blog","type-blog","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-affordable-housing","tag-mapping","tag-montana","tag-zoning","esri-blog-category-housing","esri_blog_department-infrastructure","esri_blog_department-urban-planning"],"acf":{"video_source":"1_r3wr6cjq","video_start":"","video_stop":"","short_description":"The Montana Zoning Atlas used GIS to visualize restrictive zoning patterns across the state, sparking bipartisan legislative reforms.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"The Frontier Institute\u2019s Montana Zoning Atlas used parcel-level maps to reveal hidden zoning barriers, unite diverse stakeholders, and drive sweeping housing reforms that now serve as a model for other states.\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Key Takeaways<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Parcel-level maps revealed how minimum lot size requirements were blocking middle-density housing development in zones that technically allowed it.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>The Montana Zoning Atlas united unlikely allies by providing a shared visual language, leading to bipartisan support for four major housing reform bills in 2023.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Senate Bill 382 restructured Montana\u2019s land use planning process, requiring cities to set housing targets and shifting public hearings to the planning phase, enabling faster housing development.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Kendall Cotton walked into Montana legislative committee meetings in early 2023, he carried two zoning maps\u2014side by side. One showed Missoula, Montana, a mountain city of 78,000 people known for outdoor recreation and its university. The other showed Los Angeles.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The maps were nearly identical. In both cities, roughly 75 percent of residential land was reserved exclusively for single-family homes, prohibiting the duplexes, triplexes, and \u201cmissing middle\u201d housing that working families could afford.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For Montana legislators, the visual clarified a fear building since the pandemic: their small, fast-growing cities were following the same restrictive zoning patterns as major metros. \u201cIf this city is zoned like LA, it\u2019s going to grow like LA,\u201d Cotton told lawmakers. \u201cI don\u2019t think a single Montanan wants that.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That comparison became a catalyst for what housing advocates call the Montana Miracle\u2014bipartisan housing reforms that passed in 2023. The laws legalize duplexes, require cities to allow accessory dwelling units (ADUs), open commercial zones to mixed-use development, and restructure how housing gets approved statewide.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cotton is president and CEO of the Frontier Institute, a free-market think tank in Helena. His team created the <a href=\"https:\/\/national-zoning-atlas.github.io\/MontanaAtlas\/web-map\/#12\/45.7711\/-108.5676\/\">Montana Zoning Atlas<\/a> to help officials and the public visualize the state\u2019s housing data. Built with geographic information system (GIS) technology, the atlas transformed abstract zoning regulations into something anyone could immediately understand. And it helped fuel remarkable reforms.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Making the Invisible Visible<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Montana had become one of the <a href=\"https:\/\/montanafreepress.org\/2025\/07\/15\/typical-montana-home-value-up-66-in-four-years\/\">hottest housing markets<\/a> in America. Remote workers discovered its snow-capped mountains and glistening rivers during the pandemic and relocated, creating unprecedented demand. Home prices in Bozeman hit a median of <a href=\"https:\/\/bozemanmagazine.com\/articles\/2025\/08\/01\/124847-halfway-through-the-year-bozeman-real-estate\">$900,000<\/a>. Long-time residents were being priced out and forced to move farther from where they worked, creating the kind of sprawl that Montanans had always associated with places like California.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">State and local leaders were spending money on subsidized housing programs, but the crisis kept getting worse. Cotton\u2019s team suspected that local zoning regulations were a major culprit, but there wasn\u2019t data to prove it. \u201cThere was a lot of skepticism around regulatory reform as a viable strategy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cotton had no formal training in GIS when his team started working on the atlas. But he knew lawmakers would respond better to maps than spreadsheets.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[769922,769921]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Power of Parcel-Level Mapping<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Montana Zoning Atlas showed most Montanans something they\u2019d never seen: a clear, color-coded picture of exactly where housing can and can\u2019t be built in their communities. The interactive map allows anyone\u2014legislators, developers, activists, or curious homeowners\u2014to zoom in on their neighborhood and understand the regulations that shape it.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The atlas revealed patterns statistics alone couldn\u2019t capture. Bozeman was hit hardest, where <a href=\"https:\/\/www.route-fifty.com\/infrastructure\/2024\/09\/can-bozeman-provide-affordable-housing-and-preserve-its-small-town-past\/399413\/\">55 percent of residents are renters<\/a>\u2014many spending over 30 percent of their monthly income on housing costs. The city appeared to allow duplexes and triplexes in certain zones, but parcel-level analysis told a different story. Factoring in minimum lot size requirements, the Frontier Institute found areas where lot size requirements exceeded the space that already exists.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The team coined a term for this: \u201cde facto single-family zoning.\u201d Even in zones technically allowing duplexes, the underlying regulations made them impossible to build.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">City-specific profiles also enabled powerful comparisons. Helena, Montana\u2019s capital, had voluntarily eliminated minimum lot sizes in 2019, and remained significantly more affordable than Bozeman and Missoula. These comparisons proved valuable for Montana\u2019s part-time legislature of farmers and ranchers, many from counties without any zoning at all.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Within weeks of the atlas\u2019s publication, Montana\u2019s five youngest state lawmakers wrote an op-ed calling for reform. When Governor Greg Gianforte convened a <a href=\"https:\/\/deq.mt.gov\/about\/Housing-Task-Force\">housing task force<\/a>, the group incorporated visualizations from the atlas into <a href=\"https:\/\/deq.mt.gov\/files\/About\/Housing\/HTF_PhaseI_Final_10142022.pdf\">official reports<\/a>, which formed the basis for the 2023 legislative reforms.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[769933,769931,769932,769930]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>An Unlikely Coalition Spurs Unprecedented Progress<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When Governor Gianforte held a press conference to promote the housing reforms, those standing beside him told a unique story: a developer, Cotton, and two city councilors from opposite sides of the political aisle.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The diversity was deliberate. When the Frontier Institute rolled out the atlas, they highlighted different perspectives\u2014climate advocates concerned about sprawl, developers sharing their challenges, homeowners and renters, and the Frontier Institute\u2019s own property rights message.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThere are a lot of different ways to address this issue, and we\u2019re not saying any one is right or wrong,\u201d Cotton said. \u201cAt least we can all agree that there\u2019s a big problem here and we need to address it.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The objective data gave disparate groups a common language. Transportation advocates, renter advocacy organizations, and free-market policy groups\u2014people who typically don\u2019t work together\u2014found themselves united by what the maps revealed.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That coalition powered an extraordinary legislative session. In 2023, Montana passed four major housing reform bills with broad bipartisan support. Senate Bill 323 legalized duplexes in cities over 5,000, and prohibited penalizing duplex construction compared to single-family homes. Senate Bill 528 required cities to allow ADUs and eliminated barriers like owner-occupancy requirements and parking mandates. Senate Bill 245 restored property owners\u2019 rights to build mixed-use and multifamily developments in commercial zones.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The most transformative legislation was Senate Bill 382, which restructured Montana\u2019s land use planning process. The bill had been in development for years by planners and local governments. \u201cOur zoning atlas pushed this conversation forward with lawmakers and actually crystallized the housing issue,\u201d Cotton said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cities must now set specific targets for housing production for the next 20 years, and their zoning maps must accommodate that growth. Most significantly, the bill moves public hearings to the planning phase. Once growth plans and zoning maps are established, individual housing projects that receive administrative approval skip discretionary public hearings, resulting in faster construction.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bill passed nearly unanimously.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The impact is already visible. Missoula, the city that Cotton had compared to Los Angeles, has updated its zoning map under the new process. Real estate listings now advertise land with the selling point that it can be developed with middle-density housing, not just single-family homes.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Cotton expects housing production to accelerate significantly once all cities finalize their new land use plans by May 2026.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"gallery","gallery_images":[769927,769925,769926,769924,769923]},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Setting an Example for Mapping Housing Data<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What surprised Cotton most throughout the project was the difficulty in accessing zoning data. He expected standardized information on city or county websites. Instead, he made phone calls and received faxed PDFs of zoning maps. Some cities didn\u2019t have GIS files at all\u2014the Frontier Institute had to create digital maps from paper maps for several municipalities.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For other communities considering similar projects, Cotton\u2019s advice is straightforward: don\u2019t reinvent the wheel. \u201cReach out to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.zoningatlas.org\/\">National Zoning Atlas<\/a> and lean on their methodology and resources,\u201d he said. The standardized approach means even those without GIS backgrounds can contribute.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Frontier Institute\u2019s data is all open source. Spreadsheets of zoning regulations and shapefiles are available for download on their website. \u201cWe want to collaborate with anybody and everybody who wants to help expand this project,\u201d Cotton said. He envisions researchers, or even state and local governments themselves, building on the foundation they created.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"<h3 style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>The Next Frontier<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As Montana cities finalize new land use plans, Cotton sees a broader opportunity to make zoning atlases a permanent public service rather than one-time research projects.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI\u2019ve encouraged our state folks to consider having a state of Montana-hosted zoning atlas and curating that data,\u201d he said. Such a resource would let developers quickly understand different jurisdictions and let residents verify rules for themselves rather than relying solely on local planners or officials.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Frontier Institute is shifting its focus to a broader property rights conversation. \u201cWe\u2019re starting to zoom out and look at where local land use regulation is preventing home-based businesses from being started in residential neighborhoods,\u201d Cotton said.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Montana\u2019s housing reforms stand as proof of what\u2019s possible when complex regulations are made easily understandable. A small team with limited resources created maps that influenced laws, unlocked thousands of housing units; and demonstrated that when people can clearly see the problem, reform becomes inevitable.<\/p>\r\n&nbsp;\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Learn how to use GIS to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/content\/dam\/esrisites\/en-us\/media\/brochures\/housing-policy.pdf\">develop an effective housing strategy<\/a>.<\/p>"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":769928,"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"<h3>Montana\u2019s Accessible Land Records<\/h3>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before the Frontier Institute could reveal Montana\u2019s hidden zoning barriers, they needed reliable land data. That foundation came from Montana Cadastral, the state\u2019s public mapping platform that has democratized access to property information.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/svc.mt.gov\/msl\/cadastral\/?page=Map\">Montana Cadastral<\/a> provides searchable parcel-level data across the state\u2014information about parcel boundaries, ownership, and tax assessments that once required in-person visits to county offices.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Building this system took substantial effort. Montana spent five years converting 900,000 parcels from paper to digital format, finishing in 2003. What they created became the first statewide cadastral system in the nation.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Montana had digitized its land records, but zoning regulations proved more complicated. When the Frontier Institute began mapping zoning laws, some cities sent faxed PDF records. Others had no digital files, and the team had to digitize paper maps. Montana Cadastral\u2019s standardized parcel data provided the geographic backbone for overlaying zoning regulations.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Montana\u2019s investment in accessible land records reflects a truth about data infrastructure: transparency compounds. Access to basic property information helps answer bigger questions. Developers can evaluate opportunities more efficiently. Advocacy groups can identify patterns. Residents can verify what\u2019s allowed on their land.<\/p>\r\n<p style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/en-us\/lg\/industry\/government\/stories\/making-land-records-accessible-montanas-gis-cadastral-change\">Montana Cadastral story<\/a> illustrates how foundational data supports innovation. The Frontier Institute\u2019s zoning maps wouldn\u2019t have existed without this groundwork\u2014and Montana\u2019s housing reforms might never have materialized.<\/p>","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"youtube","youtube_video_url":"https:\/\/youtu.be\/zEzxvLYlteQ?si=1usLzwqlMLA94VbO"}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.9 (Yoast SEO v25.9) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Montana Zoning Atlas: Mapping Drives Bipartisan Housing Reform<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Montana Zoning Atlas used GIS to visualize restrictive zoning patterns across the state, sparking bipartisan legislative reforms.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/blog\/montana-zoning-atlas-bipartisan-housing-reform\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" 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