(air whooshes) (protestors shout indistinctly) - [Stan] Coming up on "Impact," Montana renters are taking a page from the labor handbook, organizing tenant unions to assert strength in numbers.

- Who's got the power?

- [Protestors] We've got the power.

- What kind of power?

- [Protestors] Union power.

- [Stan] Plus, new state laws aimed at housing affordability mandate denser development in the state's population centers.

We go to Whitefish to see why the town is struggling to get on board.

- They require things that are completely inappropriate in our community.

- In order for me to have my friends live in the place that I live in, like, change has to happen.

- From the campuses of Montana State University, Bozeman, and the University of Montana, Missoula, you're watching "Impact" from Montana PBS Reports, and those stories are straight ahead.

Stay with us.

Major funding for "Impact" comes from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

Funding also comes from viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

"Impact" is an editorially independent production of Montana PBS Reports.

Coverage decisions are made by our team of Montana-based journalists.

For feedback, questions, or ideas, email us, impact@montanapbs.org.

(air whooshes) Welcome to "Impact."

I'm Stan Parker.

Housing affordability remains one of Montana's biggest challenges.

Montana is one of the least affordable states for home buyers, and that means renting is the only affordable option for a growing slice of the population.

Montana PBS's Matt Standal has been following the rise of tenant unions, groups of renters organizing to collectively bargain for themselves and their neighbors.

Matt, you've told me that tenant union members don't just want lower rents.

What else are they organizing for?

- Yes, Stan.

You know, I've been following the tenant movement here in Bozeman for the last few years, but this summer, we saw tenant unions form in several other Montana communities and that really got my attention.

Now, tenants are asking their landlords for a seat at the table to even out what they see as a power imbalance in the landlord-tenant relationship.

And to do so, they're using labor union tactics, protesting and even threatening to strike.

- If you look back behind my stove, they've come in six times to get rid of the mold.

- [Matt] For 62-year-old Debi Eldridge, the summer of 2025 at Rose Park Plaza here in Billings was filled with a sense of frustration with her landlord.

- I would have to go outside, like, at least 10 times a day 'cause my eyes would start getting real, they'd burn and it looked like I was crying.

My nose would run.

- [Matt] Eldridge, who has mobility issues and a seizure disorder, lives in this Section 8 low-income apartment owned by Capital Realty, a company based in New York state.

- You've got to be able to breathe, I mean, you know?

- [Matt] She said a black mold problem in her apartment has made her family sick for over a year, including her adult daughter and her grandchildren, who all share the same unit.

Debi says these photos show examples of the mold, which she says was in nearly every room in her apartment and under her floor.

We reached out to Capital Realty, and they declined to comment.

- This is what they did to get into the rooms.

- [Matt] Debi says Capital Realty eventually hired professionals to clean up the mess, but those workers made a bigger mess, piling up household items and leaving her family's belongings in disarray.

- Then when we found out there was a lot more tenants that were having these problems and then the two people from the tenant union that came around was knocking on doors, they told me what they were doing and they were here to help us, and I was like, "I'm all for it," because everything I'd been going through.

- Capital Realty.

- [Protestors] Bargain now.

- [Matt] Debi signed up for the Rose Park Tenant Union, an organized group of renters from her apartment complex who formed in September of 2025.

- In order to demand that Capital Realty join us at the bargaining table, it is imperative that we remain united.

- [Matt] Sarah Graff is the tenant union president.

She said tenants here at Rose Park are not the only ones complaining of these issues.

Tenants across the United States are experiencing similar problems with Capital Realty and they're joining together.

- This is the first time that tenants have united across state lines to go against a common landlord.

There's power in numbers, and we are collecting numbers.

- [Matt] Those numbers are growing in other parts of Montana too.

Tenant unions have formed in Bozeman, Missoula, Helena, and the Flathead Valley.

- There's nowhere else in this valley that I could afford to raise my family.

- [Matt] Here in Bozeman, renters at King Arthur Mobile Home Park organized when they heard the property was up for sale.

Many worried new ownership would also mean new increases in rent.

- But together, we are much stronger.

- [Matt] Tenant Union President Timaree Driscoll said renters in mobile homes are especially vulnerable because many own their homes, but not the land.

- People will have to leave the state.

People will have to move in with family.

People will have to scramble.

I don't know where we could possibly go.

- Yeah, Travois Village!

- Woo!

- [Matt] Meanwhile, in Missoula, renters at Travois Village also unionized when their mobile park was sold.

The reason?

Monthly rent hikes of more than $150 when most residents here say they're struggling to get by.

- This was on top of raising our rent $200 a month last year, altogether attempting to nearly double our rent since they bought the park two years ago.

And that's not right.

- [Protestors] That's not right.

- [Matt] Organizer Ben Finegan is a central figure in Montana's tenant movement.

Finegan helped form the state's first tenant union back in Bozeman in 2022.

He's the organizer who knocked on Debi Eldridge's door.

- The biggest source of leverage that tenants have over our landlords is our rent.

- Tenants!

- Matter!

- Tenants!

- Matter!

- [Matt] Finegan is talking about what's known as a rent strike, a tactic he said no tenant union in Montana has used so far.

Instead, he says it's damage to a landlord's reputation that often gets them to negotiate.

- When tenants get together and when we unionize, we have power to really threaten that reputation, to expose when landlords are doing things that aren't right.

- [Matt] In December of 2025, Finegan decided to apply some of that leverage, traveling with members of the Rose Park Tenants Union in Billings to New York State.

- One, two, three, four.

- [Matt] Here in a strip mall parking lot, tenants from six states gathered to protest Capital Realty in the town of Spring Valley, home to its corporate headquarters.

- And Capital Realty Group is a bully.

- [Matt] The unions represented here are all part of the national Tenant Union Federation, which describes itself as a union of unions.

It aims to "organize tenants to wield power at a massive scale to," in part, "disrupt the flow of capital to those who commodify our homes."

- [Ben] We the tenants!

- [Protestors] Stand and fight!

- [Matt] Those are complex goals, but on this day, tenants demands were simple.

They wanted to meet with the president of the company, Moshe Eichler.

(sirens blare) - Mr.

Eichler!

(protestors shout indistinctly) Meet with tenants.

- [Protestors] Like you should.

- [Matt] Earlier that day, tenants from Billings confronted Eichler on his way in from the parking lot.

Tenant union President Sarah Graff said his actions spoke louder than words.

- Can you please talk with us?

He would not even look at me.

He walked kind of parallel to me to the building, where he opened the door and then turned around and slammed the door with me standing at the glass.

- And then there was a whole group of what we believe to be paid protestors.

- [Matt] Finegan told us that Capital Realty hired counter protestors to show up and wave these signs, signs he said falsely accused the tenant unions of being antisemitic and targeting Jewish landlords.

We asked Capital Realty to clarify where these counter protestors came from and if they were paid, but the company declined to answer.

- The fact that we're getting this level of reaction from them tells us that they're freaked out and they're trying everything they can to intimidate us out of fighting for really basic, dignified living situations.

- [Matt] But the protesters from Billings never got the meeting they requested.

Their day ended on a bus driving back to a hotel, done but not defeated according to Finegan.

- There have been periods where landlords have retaliated really forcefully against tenants and tried to use fear to put them off track.

And in all of these situations, tenants have chosen to keep fighting.

- We the tenants have had enough.

- Right!

- Right!

- We will no longer be bullied.

- [Protestor] That's right!

- We will stand together.

- [Protestors] That's right!

- Organizers say Montana's tenant unions have staged hundreds of actions over the past four years, like this one, where Bozeman tenants joined up with those in Billings to protest the sale of their mobile home park.

They say union membership has grown to more than 1,000 tenants statewide and the fight for tenants rights is far from over.

We reached out to the landlords and property management companies featured in this story, including Capital Realty in New York and Oakland Properties in Billings, which manages the King Arthur Mobile Home Park in Bozeman.

Both those companies declined to appear on camera.

We did talk to mobile home park owner Gary Oakland via phone, and he told us his family has managed King Arthur Park for over 40 years.

He says selling the park is just part of his retirement plan and that tenants are not welcome at the bargaining table.

- [Gary] We have nothing to hide here.

This is just business as usual.

- This is not mom and pop landlords.

- [Matt] The president of the Montana Landlord's Association also declined to be interviewed on camera.

John Sinrud represents more than 1,500 Montana landlords, which he says are mostly mom and pop operations.

He told us he believes union members are agitators and their efforts are misguided.

- Our homes.

- [Protestors] Our homes.

- Our money.

- [Matt] And while the relationship between tenant unions and their landlords is anything but stable, union members have had measurable success in changing local policy in one Montana city.

- We as a community need to protect the most vulnerable people of our community from corporations who are trying to take over this town.

- [Matt] Here in Bozeman, union members helped convince the city commission to crack down on short-term rentals, a so-called Airbnb ban, in 2023.

And two years later, they helped pass what's called Tenants' Right to Counsel, meaning Bozeman will be the first city in Montana to pay attorneys to represent tenants in disputes with their landlords.

- And this is really to help neutralize and sort of even out the playing field when you are in these situations where there's a power imbalance.

- [Matt] However, renters here in Billings have fewer protections, and Debi Eldridge says her options are especially limited.

- You take the place that you can get or you're gonna be homeless.

- [Matt] She said her rent would more than triple if she moved out of Rose Park and into market rate housing.

Debi said without the tenant union's help, she'd have almost no way to hold her landlord accountable.

Tenants say Capital Realty has made some improvements to the complex since their union formed, but the company's president still has not agreed to a meeting.

- We're hoping to get where we need to get to where we can be treated like we should be treated.

I mean, we should feel safe in our home.

We should be able to be comfortable and not worry about things.

- [Matt] For "Impact," I'm Matt Standal in Billings.

- Tenant union organizers say their end goal is to fight for collectively bargained leases for renters across Montana.

They say tenants should have as much say in what goes into their lease as their landlords do, and that should be codified in law.

Another thread in the housing affordability story has been bipartisan action in Helena that some have called the "Montana Miracle."

Over the past two legislative sessions, lawmakers have sought to lower housing costs by passing sweeping reforms aimed at increasing supply.

Many of those laws limit what regulations local governments can impose on development.

Across the state, local officials and residents are weighing what these reforms could mean for their cities.

Montana PBS's Hannah Kearse went to Whitefish to take a closer look at how that community is responding to the changes.

- Three months after Rhonda Fitzgerald first laid eyes on Whitefish, Montana, in the late 1970s, she and her family knew they found their forever home.

- We had a young family and we were looking for a great little ski town.

We looked all over the west.

- [Hannah] Fitzgerald runs a small historic inn in downtown Whitefish.

It's easy to imagine what fine living around the 1920s was like standing in the Douglas fir trimmed rooms of the Garden Wall Inn.

Every detail pays tribute to the era and the region's past.

- And this is what the great Northern Railroad commissioned for the china used in Glacier Park in the 19-teens, '20s, and '30s.

- [Hannah] Outside of her business, Fitzgerald is an established decision-maker in Whitefish.

She founded the Downtown Business Association, the heart of Whitefish.

And when the city proposed parking meters downtown, Fitzgerald fought against them and the city listened.

Now Fitzgerald says new housing reforms threaten her town.

But not everyone in her community sees these reforms as a threat.

- I'm unbelievably proud of the fact that we have a vital downtown.

That's from a lot of really hard work and persistence.

You just have to constantly stay on it or people will unintentionally cause it to fail.

- [Hannah] Covered sidewalks line Whitefish's downtown center.

And when the clouds lift above Big Mountain, crossing the street is met with views of ski runs.

But it also has some of the state's highest housing costs and the city of a little more than 8,000 people is quickly growing in the state's fastest growing county.

Those numbers mean Whitefish hits the threshold for having to comply with a suite of housing reforms coming down from the state.

Some are calling those reforms the Montana Miracle because the state legislature accomplished bipartisan laws aimed at addressing the state's housing crisis.

But Fitzgerald says many of these state mandates go against the community planning in Whitefish that she's been a part of for over 30 years.

- And many of the mandates are things that are really antithesis to the nature of our town.

For instance, our main street is a historic main street and they require 60-foot-tall buildings, and a 60-foot building just doesn't belong in a small town.

So that's a huge problem, and that's just an example of many of the things they've mandated.

- [Hannah] But for another Whitefish local, Mallory Phillips says this kind of zoning reform is exactly what the state needs to do to improve its affordable housing crisis.

- If Whitefish was showing up and really, like, trying to get creative in how we solve this housing crisis, like, maybe I could entertain, like, why local control being taken away feels traumatic, but to me, like, Whitefish feels like a big HOA.

That's the problem I have with it, is that it's all about controlling every little thing that happens.

- [Hannah] Phillips co-founded Shelter WF and Livable Flathead, both nonprofits focused on affordable housing in the area.

Phillips says her perspective on housing in her hometown changed in 2022 when the city denied a development at the base of Big Mountain called Mountain Gateway.

The city yielded to the argument that the development would increase traffic and ruin the small town way of life.

But Phillips says those concerns didn't come up when plans for an apartment complex about half the size came to a working class neighborhood on the same side of town.

- That became really apparent, is, like, who has influence on what and, like, when it's in a neighborhood that is less affluent, what gets built and what doesn't get built in areas near wealth.

But I think that as Whitefish gets wealthier, we're gonna see that kind of thing happen more and more.

- [Hannah] Phillips grew up in Whitefish, as did her mother Velvet.

In the '90s, Velvet was a single mother waitressing at the Buffalo Cafe and paying rent in downtown Whitefish.

- Before we got married, we lived just right on Second Street.

It was a three-bedroom, one bath for $700.

When we bought this property in 2001, it was $69,000 for an acre and a half.

- With the trailer on it?

- With the trailer.

- [Hannah] According to the city's Housing Needs Assessment, monthly rents for a three-bedroom home in Whitefish today are four to five times higher.

In 2016, the median home sale price in Whitefish was a little over $300,000.

Now it's in the ballpark of a million dollars.

Rapid jumps in home values are happening throughout the Flathead Valley and in other parts of the state.

But affordable housing isn't a new topic for this resort town.

- I was on the city council 20 years ago and we were dealing with affordable housing 20 years ago because we'd grown, we almost doubled in size from 2003 to 2007.

And so we were in shock, and it seems like we're always playing catch up instead of looking ahead and planning ahead.

- [Hannah] But the state is now forcing Whitefish to plan ahead.

It's a requirement of the Montana Land Use Planning Act, or MLUPA, that came out of the 2023 legislative session.

Montana League of Towns and Cities Executive Director Kelly Lynch says MLUPA came out of frustrations over an outdated process.

- So the idea was how can we just basically make planning more worth it?

And you're spending all your resources reviewing projects on a site by site basis, going through the public hearing process, dealing with it constantly.

You're never able to turn your attention kind of the big planning issues.

The way we did MLUPA was to turn that on its head so that all of your work will be done upfront and then there'll be very little work at the site-specific stage.

- [Hannah] Only 10 Montana cities meet the state's population criteria to mandate this process, and Lewistown chose to do it.

MLUPA requires proactively planning housing for the next 20 years, and that's a first for Whitefish.

Its old growth policy plainly says the city "will not use population and housing projections to dictate how many homes to plan for."

The Montana Chamber of Commerce says Whitefish will need to build around 2,000 homes in that timeframe, but to grow more affordably, MLUPA also requires picking at least five of 14 specific zoning reforms.

- There isn't any one zoning reform that anyone can point to that's the deal breaker for allowing for affordable housing.

And so we put in that list in MLUPA, you do have to choose five of 'em.

We didn't wanna say, "It has to be parking reforms.

It has to be duplexes in single-family."

- [Hannah] In Whitefish, updating its 20-year-old land use plan was a contentious process.

- The Montana Land Use Planning Act, for instance, is designed really for communities much, much larger than Whitefish and they require things that are completely inappropriate in our community.

- They don't want to actually, like, reflect on how these laws, you know, Montana Land Use and Planning Act, could actually enable more affordable housing.

But when you look at other places that are doing this, like Columbia Falls, Kalispell, Missoula, like, they're all taking it and they're, like, oftentimes going further than the law requires.

- [Hannah] And the city's long range planner Alan Tiefenbach says he's stuck in the middle of it all.

- It's trying to respect what people love about Whitefish, 'cause it's a beautiful community, and at the same time, to figure out there is gonna be some growth that's gonna occur.

You know, how much growth is gonna occur has been part of the linchpin of this conversation.

Everybody believes that there needs to be more housing to serve the local workforce.

The only controversies I've heard about that is where should that housing go?

- If you get infill housing in your heritage neighborhoods, there's no guarantee that that's gonna be affordable.

- [Hannah] And Montana State Senator Ellie Boldman weighed in on Whitefish's land use plan, saying in a letter that the city is circumventing the housing reform bill she sponsored in 2025 requiring cities of a certain population to allow 60-foot-tall buildings in commercial zones.

City leaders gave some ground, but struck a defiant tone.

- You know, at some point, we're gonna have to decide what hill are we gonna die on?

And I'm willing to die on this hill and get sued by the state over this if we decide that we're gonna not allow this to go on in our historic downtown.

- [Hannah] The city council says it will vote on its new land use plan soon, but the impacts of these reforms will take some time to see.

Meanwhile, the state's housing crisis remains a multifaceted problem.

- I believe Whitefish needs more middle-income housing, right?

Missing middle, they call it.

So townhouses, quads.

The issue is building apartments, four-bed apartments aren't getting cheaper.

And I guess the crux of the problem, again, comes down to whether we can build ourselves out of this problem.

I guess what I look at is I've worked for resort communities.

So I'm not aware of any of these communities that have been able to build enough housing to make it cheap enough to live there.

- [Hannah] But for some in the community, these reforms favor unwanted growth and development.

- What people want is to buy a small house like in the neighborhood.

So what we need to do is find ways to have more of that.

But the density that people are talking about, those are not small ownership homes.

They don't fit in the neighborhoods and they aren't what we have a need for.

- [Hannah] Most Whitefish residents agree workforce housing is a crucial need in their city, but the classic single-family homes are unaffordable to many in the community.

And for some, that means larger and taller change is needed.

- Coming to accept that things are gonna change has been really empowering because then I can start to look at, like, how do I want it to change?

Like, before, I was like, "It can't change.

I don't want change."

It made me really, really angry that it was gonna change.

And now I've gotten to a place where I'm like, "In order for me to have my friends live in the place that I live in, like, change has to happen."

- [Hannah] For "Impact," I'm Hannah Kearse.

- The planning processes outlined in the new Montana Land Use Planning Act are required for cities who are home to at least 5,000 residents, but only in counties that contain more than 70,000 residents, and any local government may do so voluntarily.

For those going through the process, new planning and zoning regulations are due in May 2026.

That's all we have for this episode of "Impact."

You can find all our previous shows on our website or on the PBS app for your phone or smart TV.

If you have feedback, questions, or story ideas, send us an email, impact@montanapbs.org.

I'm Stan Parker, and from all of us here at Montana PBS, thank you for watching.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) Major funding for "Impact" comes from the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans.

Funding also comes from viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(bright music)