Private jet traffic swells in Bozeman as locals face housing squeeze

Mobile home tenants stage Montana’s first rent strike in 50 years

Bozeman’s post-pandemic transformation has left working-class residents struggling to afford housing in a city where private jets now crowd the airport tarmac and $170 pours of whiskey are served at downtown bars, according to residents, real estate officials and local elected leaders.

The city’s population has grown by about 20% since 2019, when it had fewer than 50,000 people. The influx has been driven by out-of-state buyers — many paying cash and purchasing homes sight-unseen — attracted by Montana’s lack of sales, luxury and inheritance taxes and what Mark Corner, president of Southwest Montana Realtors, described as conservatives “fleeing the Covid mess on the East Coast and West Coast.” Home values jumped 40% in two years, Corner said, and one-bedroom apartments now rent for $2,000 a month or more.

Sara Folger, a 73-year-old former Bozeman city grants administrator who now works part-time at Montana’s first Whole Foods, which opened in 2023, has lived in the Mountain Meadows mobile home park for 17 years. Her lot rent has nearly doubled since she moved in, even accounting for inflation. She said many of her neighbors see the trailer park as their last affordable option.

“There are so many people here for whom this is their last stop,” Folger said. “They have no place to go. They don’t have the money to pay the rent. There’s no housing for them that they can afford. There’s nothing. Where are they going to go?”

In May, residents of two Bozeman mobile home parks unionized and staged Montana’s first rent strike in 50 years, according to the local tenant union that helped them organize. The strike was a response to an almost $100 increase in monthly lot rent. The park was later sold and is now managed by a California company, leaving residents uncertain about their future.

Ben Moore, 35, a Mountain Meadows resident who moved to the park with his father in high school, said the mobile homes themselves are effectively impossible to move. “You can’t move a mobile home that’s been sitting for 25 years. It will disintegrate,” Moore said. “The only equity I have is in this trailer. It’s the same for a lot of people.”

Bozeman Mayor Joey Morrison, now 30, was elected in November 2023 on a platform focused on affordable housing. He said the change has created sharp divisions between locals and newcomers. “We were watching our rent double or triple in the span of a year or two,” Morrison said. “Suddenly, every coffee shop is full of people coding on their computer or working for an organization that has never stepped foot in the state of Montana.” Morrison, who grew up in eastern Montana, lives with his fiancée and two roommates.

A wave of younger progressive politicians has emerged in response. Katie Fire Thunder, 25, was appointed to the Montana House of Representatives in December. Sam Forstag, a 31-year-old former smokejumper and union leader, won the Democratic nomination for Montana’s 1st congressional district in June, defeating a more establishment candidate.

“Young people have seen, right in front of our very eyes, the way that our leaders currently are not making decisions that are protecting us,” Fire Thunder said. “They are making reactionary, short-term decisions that are benefiting the wealthiest in this state.”

Welcoming the transplants, many locals said, was the “Yellowstone Effect” — the hit television drama starring Kevin Costner — which boosted the state’s profile as a destination for the wealthy. Jeff Michael, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Montana, said the show’s dramatic scenery and montages of Montana life likely had “an impact on the housing market.”

Mark Corner, president of Southwest Montana Realtors, described the steady stream of private traffic at the Bozeman airport, which is undergoing a renovation. “Any given day out at our airport, there will be 80 to 100 private jets on the tarmac, primarily Yellowstone Club guests,” Corner said. The Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, about an hour south of Bozeman, is an exclusive private ski and golf community where celebrities including Justin Timberlake and Tom Brady own homes.

Despite some residents agreeing to new terms with the mobile home park’s management, others said the fight is not over. Morrison described “a lot of hopelessness out there for the ability to stay in this state.” Many homeowners have sold up and left, he said; renters who stay are working two to three jobs or living with roommates. Some are putting off having children, he added.