Surmounting Housing Affordability Challenges in Big Sky, Montana

Surmounting Housing Affordability Challenges in Big Sky, Montana

RiverView Place is the result of a public-private partnership that is helping to address housing challenges in Big Sky, Montana. The project consists of income-limited affordable housing available to Big Sky's year-round resident workforce and market rate housing serving both year-round residents and seasonal workers. Photo credit: Bright Side Photo and Video

Big Sky, Montana, is famous for its breathtaking natural beauty and its outdoor recreation industry, attracting tourists and second homeowners to this unincorporated community with a year-round population of approximately 3,000. As in many cities with seasonal and tourism-based economies, Big Sky residents face high housing costs as demand from year-round residents, seasonal workers, and second homeowners drive housing costs upward; in September 2025, the median cost of a home in Big Sky exceeded $2.5 million. One new development, RiverView Place, is the result of an innovative public-private partnership that is addressing two of Big Sky's most pressing housing needs: affordable year-round housing for the community's resident workforce and workforce housing for seasonal workers at one of the area's largest employers.

Housing Needs in Big Sky

The RiverView Place development team consisted of the Lone Mountain Land Company, one of Big Sky's largest employers, and the Big Sky Community Housing Trust, a public-private entity formed in 2016 to improve housing affordability and stability in the area. Because finding affordable housing in Big Sky is so challenging, 80 percent of the city's workforce lives outside the area, with some enduring commutes of 2 hours or more from Helena or Butte. In recent years, the Big Sky Community Housing Needs Assessments have found that the city needed to add 1,100 affordable homes to meet the area's demand for affordable housing.

The community's affordable housing needs fall into two categories: community housing, defined as housing for year-round residents, and employer or seasonal housing, which is housing designated for seasonal workers. Big Sky needs an adequate supply of both types of housing to achieve its local affordability and stability goals. The 2022 Big Sky Community Housing Needs Assessment found that over a 4-year period, 46 percent of new units built were community housing whereas 54 percent were employer units. Economic growth will add an estimated 675 to 1,275 new jobs by 2027, which will further exacerbate existing housing challenges, including low vacancy rates, high rental costs, and the loss of long-term rental units to the short-term rental market.

Housing for a Resort Community

With RiverView Place, the development team is addressing the housing needs of both the local year-round and seasonal workforce. For its part, Lone Mountain Land Company developed market-rate units using private funding. The market-rate portion of the development cost $65 million and consists of two buildings dedicated to long-term rentals for year-round residents who work in Big Sky and three buildings leased to businesses that will use the units to house their seasonal employees. Altogether, the market-rate side of the development consists of 24 apartments with 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom units along with 36 shared suites, each with either 4 or 8 bedrooms, which house seasonal workers. Lone Mountain Land Company used modular construction techniques to reduce construction time.

On another portion of the RiverView Place site, Big Sky Community Housing Trust created income-restricted affordable housing for Big Sky's year-round workforce, helping more city residents live near their places of employment. Thanks to the collaboration with Lone Mountain Land Company, the community housing trust was able to use the architectural and design plans Lone Mountain had developed for its buildings, saving those costs, reports David O'Connor, the trust's executive director. RiverView Place's affordable housing component consists of 25 units in 1-, 2-, and 3-bedroom configurations renting to households earning between 30 and 80 percent of the area median income. This section of RiverView Place cost $10.5 million to develop. Funding included $6.49 million in equity raised from the sale of low-income housing tax credits as well as local support raised from Big Sky's resort tax. The total residential capacity across all RiverView Place buildings is 387 people.

Amenities available to all RiverView residents include a fitness center, community lounge, bike storage area, and ski lockers. Residents also have easy access to the area's network of paved and unpaved bike and nature trails as well as easy pedestrian and bus access to downtown. Because many seasonal workers do not own cars, the local transit agency added a bus stop to serve RiverView residents.

Developing Affordable Housing the Big Sky Way

Two realities have shaped Big Sky's approach to affordable housing and played key roles in the development of RiverView Place: first, the importance of tourism to Big Sky's economy, and second, the fact that Big Sky is not incorporated. To ensure that the community could provide its residents with infrastructure, personnel, and other needs, including housing, the Montana State Legislature authorized the creation of the Big Sky Resort Area special taxing district. Since Big Sky voters approved the first tax under this authority in 1992, more than $70 million has been raised and invested in the Big Sky community. This income helped close the funding gap for future investments, such as the subsidized units at RiverView Place.

However, because Big Sky is not incorporated, little land is under local public ownership, meaning that Big Sky lacks the underused or surplus land that many jurisdictions often use for affordable housing development, says O'Connor. What is publicly controlled, however, is the area's water and sewer district. When voters approved a $30 million expansion of the district's capacity, that approval stipulated that 25 percent of the new capacity would be reserved for affordable workforce housing. This dynamic set the stage for a mutually beneficial deal in which Lone Mountain Land Company would gain the water connection needed to develop its portion of the 8-acre RiverView Place site, which it owned, and Big Sky Community Housing Trust would leverage water rights to develop the affordable housing component on a portion of the site. O'Connor describes this arrangement as his community's equivalent of common incentives used elsewhere to encourage affordable housing development, such as density bonuses or waiving parking requirements.

Looking Toward the Future

O'Connor credits the strong collaboration between private industry and the public sector with the partners' success in solving problems in mutually beneficial ways, setting the stage for further progress. For example, voters recently approved the use of resort tax funding to help support the creation of 389 homes in a development known as Cold Smoke. Cold Smoke will include affordable rental and for-sale homes on a 99-acre site, with the rental units projected to open in 2028 and homeownership opportunities to come online in 2029. A community land trust and deed restrictions will ensure the long-term affordability of the ownership units.

These successful developments are helping Big Sky become a thriving community where residents can work, live, and raise families. O'Connor reports that the high cost of housing has made raising children in Big Sky particularly difficult — a consequence borne out by the declining enrollment numbers in the local school. O'Connor hopes that projects such as RiverView Place and Cold Smoke can help to reverse the exodus of families from Big Sky.