Consultants tell Whitefish planners the city may need roughly 2,100 more housing units by 2045; affordability will require incentives

Consultants from CZB presented to the Whitefish Planning Commission on Nov. 19, saying the city faces a multi-decade housing shortfall and that the forthcoming land use map will rely on community-defined place types and a street typology to guide where new housing could be developed.

Thomas Eddington of CZB said the Montana Department of Commerce projection shows “additional housing units needed by 2045 based on their estimate is about 2,100 units,” and that earlier, shorter-range work (a 2025 housing needs assessment) estimated roughly 1,000 units across 2024–2034. Eddington said those totals point to a planning horizon that must balance character, infrastructure and affordability.

Why it matters: The numbers matter to policy choices. CZB told commissioners that without policy tools to incent or subsidize lower-cost units, market forces are likely to produce more market-rate housing than the community’s stated workforce and affordable housing goals. “You may see a rise in market rate housing rather than affordable workforce housing unless you intervene,” Eddington said.

City staff and commissioners pressed the consultants on specific strategies. Alan, the city project manager, told the commission he has done a local inventory and believes Whitefish’s housing-unit count differs from state figures: “State says we have 5,000. We have 5,800,” he said, adding that the gap between unit production and affordability remains the central problem. Staff and consultants described a toolbox of actions — reallocated resort-tax incentives, tax abatements, targeted public-private partnerships, land banking, housing trust models and selective developer subsidies such as rent buy-downs — as potential levers to increase subsidized or deed-restricted housing.

CZB also described the community outreach that informed the maps: two in-person workshops in September with about 50 attendees each and a subsequent online engagement with roughly 150 participants. That outreach helped produce draft place-type and street-type maps — for example, identifying parts of town as urban neighborhood, mixed-use downtown, suburban neighborhood and regional corridors tied to US‑93/93‑40.

What the consultants recommended as next steps included releasing posters and sticky-note documentation online so residents can see and comment on the mapped alternatives, coordinating the land-use and housing elements closely with the transportation element, and returning with more detailed feasibility and financial scenarios showing how incentives could move the affordability needle.

The commission agreed to keep working with CZB on the draft land use plan and to post the consultants’ materials on the project website for further public review. No formal votes were taken on policy changes at the meeting; commissioners reserved detailed policy direction for later sessions and the Feb. 19 public hearing window.