A Tale of Two Cities
Last week, I stepped out of the Whitefish bubble and attended a Columbia Falls growth policy meeting. On the agenda was a presentation of their Growth Policy’s community survey and preliminary discussions about the direction of their land use plan.
Walking in to the meeting, I felt that familiar tension in my gut. I was ready to hear personal attacks, vitriol, and the unique combination of anger and boredom that normally accompanies growth policy meetings in Whitefish. Whitefish meetings are somatically draining.
It wasn’t until an hour or so into the meeting that I realized I wasn’t tense. We were 20 minutes into public comment, and nobody was upset. It’s like flying to a warm-weather destination from a Montana winter; you step outside and you brace for the cold, only to realize you can relax.
This had nothing to do with peoples opinions. Columbia Falls residents and councilmembers held their opinions just as strongly and sincerely as those in Whitefish. Some of that public comment emphasized concerns that I disagree with.But throughout was a shared understanding that people in the room (staff, concil, nonprofits, and community members) were all engaging in good faith.When I made comment, I felt like both those making decisions and those in the audience saw me for my ideas and my age. In Whitefish, the overwhelming response to well thought-out policy is dismissiveness based on how long someonehas lived here.
When you have a shared understanding of trust, meetings can be much more functional. During public comment, the council was willing to take questions andanswer them in real-time. In Whitefish, that would be impossible. The second you open the floor to questions, a few individuals might take over the floor for 45 minutes, turning a dialogue into a hostage situation.
ShelterWF never set out to be controversial. Every day, we would rather build bridges and work with people we disagree with. In Whitefish, that option is almost entirely absent. When ShelterWF came on the scene in 2022 until today, we havebeen dismissed and treated with disrespect again and again. Eventually, we realized that our only way to meaningfully affect change was to highlight the abuses of power that are so common here and raise anger and public pressure. We have been quite effective over the years with this strategy, but it sucks. We are policy nerds who care about positive-sum outcomes. We spend a lot of our day in what feels like bitter, oppositional, zero-sum slapfights.
Beyond simple respect, the Columbia Falls meeting represented a city more willing to address the housing crisis, encourage affordable development, and build amore livable city. Strategies like mixed-use zoning, density, and better car-free transportation options were openly discussed as preferred without controversy. These same strategies have engendered months of bitter and bad-faith opposition here in Whitefish.
Perhaps the most content in the meeting was the feedback from the community survey. A recurring sentiment among Columbia Falls residents was a desire to avoid the fate of Whitefish. One comment read, “My biggest concern for Columbia Falls is that we will gentrify the same Whitefish has and push local businesses and residents out.” There was an understanding that Whitefish had pushed most normal people out of town.
As I was driving back, remarkably energized for the time of night, I wondered why Columbia Falls was so much better and forward thinking. The smaller, more “politically red” city is much less small-c conservative than Whitefish, much more civiland good-faith, and undoubtedly is on a much better path for housing locals than Whitefish.
Here are some of my reasons for Whitefish’s disfunction:
1. Philanthropy
Columbia Falls lacks the specific philanthropic base of Whitefish. We very literally have rich people looking down on us from a hill. They not only wield a tremendousamount of direct power and influence, but the majority of community organizations in Whitefish are directly dependent on philanthropy that has already shown their willingness to hold the town hostage if Whitefish makes land use deicions that they disagree with. The nonprofit-industrial complex here is well-funded, but there arestrings attached. This power structure prevents the city from taking positive-sum courses of action when they impact the weathy.
You don’t hear about this dynamic that much because most people are incentivized to not talk about it. Luckily, we don’t get any money from these people, so we can say whatever we want 🙂
This also means your donations to ShelterWF are very very important to us and keep the lights on.
2. Demographics
The average age in Whitefish (~45) is about a decade older than in Columbia Falls (~35). It is no surprise that unaffordable housing is much more front of mind for younger workers and families than older homeowners. It also tracks that Columbia Falls is willing to consider more forward-thinking strategies instead of every conversation devolving into how long someone has lived in the city.
3. Vested Economic Interest
The housing crisis hit Whitefish first and hardest. The amenities of Whitefish means that the gap between supply and demand in Whitefish is much greater. The situation is much more high-strung, and homeowners and investors have a much largerfinancial stake in limiting supply. This leads to a scenario where people argue vociferously—and often in bad faith—to preserve their own interests at the expense of the community.
4. A few bad actors
For decades, a small group of people in Whitefish has monopolized the planning process. They have historically responded to any opposition with mean-spirited, dismissive, and antisocial rhetoric. Whitefish is a small enough city that it only takes a few people to completely posion trust in a public process.
5. HOA Mentality
Maybe this is just a combination of those factors listed above, but the mentality of control in Whitefish is so abnormal. There is an expectation that every existing resident should get veto power over everything that is built in the entire city. In many ways, Whitefish operates like one giant HOA. There is a ton of entitlement and elitism here, and it often expresses itself through zoning and land-use discussions.
The dynamics in Whitefish are tough (and endlessly frustrating), but they aren’t permanent. We can choose to move away from zero-sum fights and toward the proactive, good-faith engagement we saw in our neighbors to the east. It starts withadmitting that our current “exclusive” path is a dead end for the people who actually make this town run.
-Keegan Siebenaler