What are the challenges that face Montana’s rural communities struggling to survive and thrive? And, more importantly, are there solutions that can be found by looking at a variety of those communities? Those were the questions facing a group of Montana journalists who met in Missoula October 5 and 6. Roughly two dozen journalists from Missoula, Great Falls, Libby, Seeley Swan, Ronan, Anaconda, Bozeman, Choteau, Cut Bank, Montana PBS and Boulder gathered for an initial meeting on a project to focus on economic issues in Mon- tana’s rural communities.
As part of “Solutions Journalism Network,” the group will be looking into the categories that figure into community economic sustainability. Admittedly, it is a very big assignment, and pinning down the issues may lead to more questions than answers. But the goal of the group is to investigate what has and has not worked in communities across Montana and beyond and share their findings.
Discussing their experiences with economic survival in their own small rural communities, the journalists found many areas of common concern. Lack of affordable housing was a major topic expressed by many of the journalists.
In the bedroom communities around Bozeman and Missoula, the boom of the larger community has affected housing availability and costs, some said. In those small communities, where wages are often lower than in the neighboring big city, affording a home is increasingly a challenge for lower/middle-class people, speakers said.
In some places, lack of available land to build on, such as ownership by large ranches or public agencies or geographic constraints such as mountains and rivers, are part of the problem, they said.
What, if anything, can the rural communities do to anticipate and manage the growth coming out of the cities? That is only one of the many questions about affordable housing the group plans to look into. Job disparity and lack of skilled workers is another area the group hopes to consider. According to federal statistics compiled by Headwaters Economics, five Montana counties accounted for 75 percent of the state’s job growth between 2000 and 2015, and four counties accounted for half of the jobs.
Fewer jobs offer a lifetime of employment than in the past, and people are less willing to move for a job, sometimes because the household needs two workers to pay the way, said the group. Related questions that arose:
• Is there a way to get higher-quality, better-paid jobs, and if so, what?
• Is telecommuting a solution to lift the economy in any rural Montana communities, and if so, where and under what circumstances?
• Does a growing drug problem cut into the available workforce?
• With many communities seeing the bulk of the population under age 18 or over age 50, how does a community attract and keep prime producing employees?
• And how does that relate to a lack of affordable housing? Many other areas – health care, the cultural change to shopping online, the impact of formal economic development agencies, the historic reputation of a community – were also explored by the group of journalists.
Plans call for a series of articles early next year on what the group discovers.
