The airport – with renovation work underway – is getting a steady flow of private traffic that shuttles the wealthy to their homes at places like the exclusive Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, about an hour south, where stars like Justin Timberlake and Tom Brady own multi-million-dollar mansions.
“On any given day, there will be 80 to 100 private jets at our airport, primarily carrying Yellowstone Club guests,” says Corner.
During Covid, local buyers were systematically excluded from cash offers from outside the state. So many people buy homes without seeing them that the state Association of Realtors added a new disclosure form to its contract library. And while Montanans were finding it impossible to get on the property ladder, others still were finding it equally unfeasible to rent.
“Every developer in America has heard about the insane rental rates in Bozeman and how attractive it is to develop here,” Corner says. Apartment blocks and townhomes began to be built everywhere – rapidly – with one-bedroom rents coming in at $2000 a month or more – which no locals could afford, especially those on a single income.
It was on this wave of frustration that Mayor Morrison won in November 2023.
Now 30-year-old Mayer lives with his fiancee and two roommates. Before that, about 10 years ago, he had rented a room in a duplex for $333; The rent for the same room is now $900, he says.
Morrison, who grew up in eastern Montana with a nurse mother and an incarcerated father, was a founding member of Bozeman Tenants United, the union chapter that has since helped the mobile home park strike. He says his mayoral election was a referendum on housing policy and the perceived abandonment of the average Montanan by local government.
“It was really this huge groundswell … that was clearly saying: We want one of us to represent us at City Hall,” he says.
“There’s a lot of frustration about the ability to live in this state, especially in this city,” he says.