This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 14th, 2022.

I'm Caleb Brown.

To the extent the constraints on new housing are at the local level, there are big steps

that states can take to accommodate the kind of

growth that future residents want. Montana is among America's fast-growing

states. Kendall Cotton is president of Montana's Frontier Institute.

We spoke about how states can empower the creation of new housing.

Well, Montana is a pretty great place, but the question is how do we keep Montana feeling like Montana as we grow, right?

And from our perspective, really the crux of it is allowing for growth, for removing constraints on growth.

And right now, local governments place heavy constraints on growth

on where you can build duplexes, where you can put a town home where you can subdivide land and that is

driving up home prices in our biggest cities and our most indeban cities and it's not only driving out long-time residents who can't afford to live there anymore because

they're paying higher property taxes because of the higher values, but it's also, you know,

we're growing, there's businesses moving to Montana and that's great.

But they can't find folks who can afford to live in these cities where their businesses are.

So this is not just a housing problem, this is an economic growth problem. If we don't allow for

landowners to have the freedom to build the houses that we need, then we're going to

forfeit economic growth in the long run. So what's going to help set the stage for accommodating growth?

And to a large extent trying to respect local communities decision making or

their preferences while giving more people place it to live.

Yeah.

Well thankfully this is something that seems to be kind of an emerging consensus.

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