The growing demand shows that federal funding is not keeping pace with state and local efforts to fortify communities against flooding, wildfires and other events that have been intensified by climate change, said Kristin Smith, a researcher at Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research organization in Montana.
Nearly half of the population in the American West lives in the wildland-urban interface in some form, according to a study by Bozeman-based Headwaters Economics, and it’s the fastest growing land-use type in the country.
A new report is calling on the state to adopt new building codes that would make homes and communities more resilient to wildfires. Headwaters Economics released the report Wednesday, calling on the state to fully adopt the International Wildland-Urban Interface Code.
“I think the fundamental challenge with all of this, as with most natural hazards, is it’s very hard for us to plan ahead for things,” said Dr. Kimiko Barrett of Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based nonprofit research group that works to improve community development and land management decisions across the country. “We are by nature reactive and responsive, in contrast to being anticipatory. Even after a wildfire occurs, we have a small window to actually mobilize and enact the transformative change needed before amnesia kicks in, or bias kicks in, where you feel that [because the fire] happened, it will never happen again.”
The estimated economic benefit to Montana from the finished project is $60 million in visitor’s spending and $800,000 in new tax revenue. The economic impact numbers provided by Belle during the presentation were from an analysis performed by Bozeman-based company Headwaters Economics.
“I think the headwaters economics study on the Great American Rail-Trail is just over $13 million a year in economic impact in Wyoming, and so I think there’s some of these local tourism, chamber of commerce oriented folks who are looking at this and see the impact it might have in their own local community.”
A 2023 study from Headwaters Economics shows that qualifications from federal grant programs disproportionately hurt under-resourced rural areas.
Cooley said a study of potential statewide impacts conducted by the Bozeman-based firm Headwaters Economics showed that the alternative transportation route would bring $229 million in visitor spending, 2,500 new jobs, and $22.8 million in new tax revenue.
“We know that communities really struggle when a disaster hits, and we also know that these disasters are getting more frequent and more extreme,” said Kristin Smith, the head researcher on the Headwaters Economics study. “One of my big questions is how are we ensuring that rural and disadvantaged communities have the money, the staffing, the capacity, just the resources that they need for the future?”
The Governor’s Housing Task Force was charged with an enormous job: identify solutions to build more homes and ease Montana’s housing crisis.
Every Montanan deserves affordable, attainable housing. Legislation that considers the task force’s report can help us get there.
But if we want new housing to be safe, healthy and durable, we must also ask how can we build new housing today that is ready for the floods, wildfires and heat waves of tomorrow?
“About 60% of the funding is going to require a local match,” says Kristin Smith, applied researcher at Headwaters Economics. “Local matches are really features of federal funding, they have been for decades. But as we’re thinking about how to help communities get the resources that they need, the local match can actually be a barrier to accessing that funding.”
The analysis — by Headwaters Economics, an independent research group that focuses on community development and land management — warns that local match requirements are putting rural communities in particular at a disadvantage. Many lack the resources to both apply for grant projects and also to sustain their portion of funding through the lifetime of a project.
“Given the scale of how much needs to be done, we are just skimming the surface,” said Headwaters Economics researcher Kimiko Barrett. “Risks are increasing at a scale and magnitude that we haven’t seen historically. You’re seeing entire neighborhoods devastated.”
While the report highlights a number of growth factors, [Megan Lawson, an economist with the nonprofit research group] said it leaves out data on income and housing inequalities. She pointed to No. 2-ranking Jackson, Wyo., and Teton County, which boasts the highest per capita average income in the country, putting housing out of reach for teachers and police officers.
In her research with the non-profit Headwaters Economics, [Dr. Kristin] Smith found that more than one in five mobile homes in Montana are situated in high flood risk neighborhoods – something that the state has been waking up to.
That came as a surprise to economist Megan Lawson with Headwaters Economics in Bozeman, who examined the five-year data.
“Rents increased over that time period across the state, but incomes increased more,” Lawson said.
“For many, many years and decades, really those other costs that come to the surface following a wildfire event have been overlooked,” said Kimiko Barrett, a wildfire researcher and policy lead at Headwaters Economics in Montana.
“It’s concerning the fact that we continue to grow in high wildfire risk areas, rebuild in high wildfire risk areas, assuming that a wildfire won’t occur,” said Kimiko Barrett, a wildfire researcher with the Montana-based research group Headwaters Economics.
“That would affect more than wealthy landowners, said Megan Lawson of Headwaters Economics, a community development nonprofit in Bozeman, Mont.
“Amenity economies depend on guiding services, lodging and hospitality in general,” Ms. Lawson said. “That’s the lifeblood of the economy in several states.”
Wildfire Researcher Kimiko Barrett with Headwaters Economics says those homes were built close together and had high property values, increasing insurance claims.
She says urban areas traditionally thought of as safe from wildfires are more exposed as fires intensify.
“It’s entire neighborhoods being burned, in some cases hundreds, if not thousands, of structures being lost in one wildfire,” she said. “These trends unfortunately are going to increase because the risks are increasing across the board.”
