![]() ![]() Martinez is not the first forced to draw such conclusions. He bought an old motorhome and, when he can afford it, he will park at a campground with hot showers and electricity. So Martinez recently came up with an answer of his own. Governments, businesses and philanthropists have all failed to offer a viable answer, except for the homeless shelter. The problem for Martinez, then, is how to stay sheltered and avoid a massive commute. The figure in Livingston is $ 460, 000, up 60% since 2019. The median Bozeman house goes for $ 660, 000, up nearly 50% since 2020. Single-family homes in Big Sky sell for an average of $ 2. Madison County, which contains part of Big Sky, leads the state with 24 short-term rentals per 100 households, 10 times the statewide average.īuying a house is even further out of reach. Regardless, it’s hard to find a long-term rental because so many landlords no longer bother. Before taxes, that comes out to three weeks of work for one month’s rent. The average rental in Livingston now goes for more than $ 1, 500, while the average renter’s hourly wage is $ 12. Martinez could look for an apartment where rents are lower in Livingston, 25 miles east over the Bozeman Pass, but wages are lower, too. In Bozeman, where Martinez lives, landlords have raised the average rent to $ 2, 240 (up nearly 14% since 2020). Here’s how the problem presents itself to Martinez: In Big Sky, where he works, two-bedroom apartments rent for an average of $ 2, 258 a month (up from $ 1, 700 in 2018) and the vacancy rate sticks close to 0%. Sometimes, they’re displaced from the area altogether. Working people are left scrambling for places to live, losing their homes, moving to cheaper towns and, in many cases, undertaking grueling daily commutes from places they can afford to live to places they can’t afford not to work. ![]() In 2015, the club announced plans to build another 864 homes to meet demand.īut there’s a problem inherent in this economy’s contradictions: How do you commodify an entire region into a playground for the rich and keep workers around to make the lattes and paint the houses?Īs the outdoors economy booms, a surge in housing costs has plunged this area north of Yellowstone into an era of gentrification. ![]() The New York Times called it “the future of skiing.” For those with more exclusive tastes - including Bill Gates, Tom Brady and Justin Timberlake - the Yellowstone Club boasts the world’s only private ski resort, where membership costs hundreds of thousands of dollars plus the price of one of the club’s multi-million dollar homes. Besides the visitors who swarm to the area in summer to hike, bike, raft and fish, half a million people a year ski at the Big Sky Resort, where lift tickets cost over $ 200. 5 million each.īig Sky, which sprawls across the mountains that separate the city of Bozeman from the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park, is one of the hot spots in the wave of outdoors tourism and luxury real estate that has engulfed Montana in recent years. When the painting’s done, the houses will go on the market for $ 1. Martinez spends the day painting wood stain onto the timbers of a freshly built log mansion, and goes home to the homeless shelter in Bozeman with hands stained the color of someone’s second home. In Big Sky, the vans stop at one of the places where workers have cleared the lodgepole forest to make way for new construction. Early morning commuter traffic, construction vehicles and cement trucks jam the two lane road nearly bumper to bumper. They drive to the shop of a painting company in Belgrade, eight miles away, where Martinez climbs into one of the company vans for the hour-long drive up the mountain to the resort town of Big Sky.Īs Martinez watches hayfields swim by in the dawn, a billboard blossoms out of the half-light beyond the van windows: “Dreaming of Your Own Equestrian Property?” Another advertises “Montana Life Real Estate.” The mountain sides along the highway glitter with the plate glass and stained wood of houses that weren’t there a few years ago. to meet the person he pays to pick him up at the Bozeman homeless shelter. Archie Martinez goes to bed with stained hands and wakes up at 4: 30 a.m. ![]()
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