(soft ambient music) - [Joe] Coming up on this episode of "Impact", housing affordability is an issue across the state.

We'll follow one family as they navigate a difficult housing market.

- [Donovan] That there are some factors to consider that we're just not used to, not ready for, and it's leaving a lot of people in the lurch.

- [Aubrey] And we know that it is important.

- [Joe] And as more is revealed about the painful legacy of federal Indian boarding schools, we look at the efforts to give survivors a voice.

- [Janine] There was no way in which our culture could be practiced.

It was all illegal.

- [Joe] Those stories, coming up on "Impact".

- [Announcer] Production of "Impact" is made possible with support from the Otto Bremer Trust, investing in people, places, and opportunities in our region, online at OttoBremer.org, the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and viewers like you who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

- Hello, and welcome to "Impact", our new series dedicated to providing depth and context on stories important to Montana.

I'm Joe Lesar.

On this episode, we tackle two more issues in the state.

For many Montanans, the idea of owning a home feels out of reach these days.

Since the pandemic, there's been unprecedented statewide demand for housing, which has left many first-time home buyers scrambling for solutions.

Montana PBS's AJ Williams brings us a look at the housing affordability crisis through the eyes of one young family as they box up their dreams and look for a new place to call home.

- [AJ] Near the South Hills of Missoula, one young family is packing up their small apartment as the day closes in on their upcoming move.

- [Nicole] Are you helping mommy pack?

- [Donovan] We're just ready to find an area where we can obviously buy a house, get our foot in the door that way.

Shove some in the middle.

- [Nicole] What sparked a real desire to start actively pursuing purchasing a home was I found out I was pregnant with Herschel.

- [AJ] It's been a couple of years since, and they want a home for their now rapidly growing family of four.

- We all happy now?

- [AJ] Initially, they thought they were on the path to stay in the area.

Nicole and Donovan have an average household income for Missoula, which is around $70,000.

They even put in a few offers for homes in nearby Bonner, which had sticker prices of around 400,000.

However, their offers weren't competitive enough.

- This one's 175, but it's just land.

- [AJ] Like so many other first-time home buyers, Nicole and Donovan had little margin for financial setback.

- We were in, like, a really great financial situation to be buying a home.

We had a very affordable childcare option for Herschel, but then, that fell through, and we had to put Herschel into a traditional childcare model, which was substantially more expensive.

- [AJ] Unfortunately, a few more curve balls came their way.

The couple unexpectedly had to pay back their child tax credit, which drained their nest egg initially set aside for a down payment.

- We just didn't have the funds to be able to do a large sum of money up front down.

- [AJ] When Nicole and Donovan started their search over two years ago, the reality of owning a home was closer to within reach.

But since then, Montana's home prices have skyrocketed.

- Here's one.

595 for a two bedroom.

- [AJ] According to Homeward, a Missoula-based home buyer's education and resource center that has been helping the couple through the home-buying process, as of July, 2022, Missoula's median single family home price is $525,000, and the average income needed to afford that mortgage is 151,000.

But the average income of a local household isn't that, it's just 71,000, which Nicole and Donovan fall right around.

In other words, they'd need to double their income in order to afford their dream.

- We weren't able to compete, and we kind of got priced out of the Missoula area.

- [AJ] Now they're packing up their dreams and leaving the garden city.

The big day brings everything in one place, and like every move, a bit of chaos.

- Just got stuff everywhere!

- [AJ] But it's not all bad news.

The couple secured jobs and an 11 month lease for a larger rental house in the Helena area where Nicole grew up.

As for home buying, where they're headed will be no bargain either.

Both Missoula and Helena are a part of a statewide trend of rapid home price increase.

According to data from realtor.com, home prices have risen nearly 50% or more in over half of Montana's 10 most populated areas since the start of the pandemic.

Home affordability is a problem that has reached nearly every corner of the state.

Helena's median home prices have jumped over $100,000 in just two years.

Demand will likely continue to grow here, just as the rest of the state.

- [Aubrey] A big thing here is building, and we've got zoning issues, and things like that that are just real discussions that are actually happening right now.

Like, how do we build more houses?

How do we catch up?

- [AJ] For buyers like Donovan and Nicole who have experienced difficulty when putting in offers with their VA home loan from Donovan's service in the Marines, Hutchison shares a bit of hope.

- [Aubrey] When we're seeing a lot less multiple offers, we're seeing sellers that are frankly gonna have to just be a little bit more reasonable about the condition of their home and be more willing to increase the condition in order to meet the criteria for a VA and FHA loan.

Better days are coming.

I'm excited to see what they end up finding.

- [AJ] Over in Helena, Nicole and Donovan arrive, and they step into their new home for the very first time.

- This works.

I can do this.

We're excited to have all of our stuff in one spot.

It also has a little yard, so we'll be able to take the kids out.

- [AJ] The couple hopes Donovan's new carpentry business and Nicole's job as a new lawyer at a firm will allow them to build back that nest egg faster than before.

- [Nicole] Our lease is done at the end of July, and hopefully, we would be able to purchase a home then.

That's a pretty optimistic timeline.

- [Dustin] This is Dustin with Bigfoot Management.

How can I help you?

- [AJ] The couple's new landlord, Dustin Rinker of Bigfoot Property Management, says that Nicole and Donovan were the right fit for the space, but their struggle to purchase a home makes sense from his position.

- [Dustin] The numbers that we've seen is an over 50% increase of real estate prices begets an over 50% increase in rental prices, and that's what we've seen since 2020.

- [AJ] Rinker believes that real estate prices are what primarily drives rent, and for that to change, - [Dustin] The real estate market has to lower if rental prices are gonna stabilize.

- [Donovan] I wanna sweep underneath it.

- [AJ] It back at the house, the moving process was made easier with the help of Nicole's local friends and family.

- Yeah, we'll do it all the way this way.

- [AJ] As they put together their new space, they know it's only temporary.

Soon, Donovan and Nicole will pivot back to their goal of home ownership.

- [Family Member] (gasps) Look at all those baby toys!

Or personal toys.

You're a big boy.

- [AJ] And they're eager to be in a place they can truly call their own.

- Let's put that right here, okay?

Let's take this one out.

- [AJ] Experts say that demand for housing is still going strong, and hopefully, recommendations from a newly formed governor's housing task force will help relieve the market for future home buyers to be.

For "Impact", I'm AJ Williams.

- Currently, Governor Gianforte's Housing Task Force is discussing a variety of possible state and local solutions.

The committee includes experts from across the housing industry, including the head of the University of Montana's, Bureau of Business and Economic Research, Patrick Barkey.

Montana PBS's AJ Williams sat down with Barkey to discuss some of the complex factors contributing to the housing crunch, and where we may be headed in the future.

- We first got connected because I saw your name as a part of the Governor's Housing Affordability Task Force, and I'm wondering what are those solutions that are being discussed to this, you know, supposedly solvable problem.

- Well, first off, I'm honored to be on the task force.

I think it's kind of a heavy lift to solve housing affordability issues, but it certainly has brought a lot more attention to the problem.

The problem is we're not building enough, and so I, on that commission, am favorably inclined to consider any proposal that has an impact on home building.

- In talking to people, they kind of have different explanations with the influx of people coming in from the pandemic, with remote work, with Zoom, with shows like "Yellowstone", you know, that that's kind of what's bringing all these new Montanans and more demand.

I'm wondering if you could speak to that as someone who studies this.

You know, is that something that's worth entertaining, or should we be dispelling that and kind of looking at it in a more broad sense?

- I think there's really two things to be raised, and that's the pre-pandemic, and what happened in the pandemic.

So, let's look pre-pandemic.

So, pre-pandemic, it predates "Yellowstone", it predates all these kind of faddish things.

We still had housing prices going up faster than incomes in Montana.

Americans move.

People are moving to the mountain west, no question about it.

Then we have the great recession, a period predating the pandemic of almost two decades long, when housing construction, new home construction, new rental home construction, et cetera, has not really kept up with demand, particularly in the faster growing areas.

So, after the pandemic, yes, we certainly saw all the things you mentioned.

We saw the image of Montana being projected to tens of millions of households around the world, really, of Montana.

Whether that's really Montana or not, it was an image of our state that people clearly wanted to see.

- In this conversation of housing affordability, it's important to talk about affordable housing, as well.

- Exclusionary zoning, just, in a nutshell, is a requirement.

Giving a developer a license to develop, if you will, if they agree to set aside a certain fraction of the units that they're building to be exclusively set aside for below market rent.

So, on paper, that makes more affordable housing.

There are people that can afford to live there that might not have been able before, but when you step back and look at that, you've effectively raised the price of development, and my concern for that kind of policy is that, by raising the price of development, how can you expect more of it?

- We're actually working with a couple for this story, a small family of four.

They're in their mid to early thirties, and, you know, double income, and they just can't make it work to stay in Missoula.

They're now heading to Helena 'cause they think it's a slightly better market, and they're hoping that that's a place that they'll be able to eventually buy.

Is the issue of relocation becoming a bigger part of the story and the issue of housing affordability?

- You know, there's a lot of other things mixed in.

I think the remote work thing is mixed into that, as well.

You know, it's all a matter of perspective, right?

One thing that stands out is how different housing markets are in different parts of the country, and for that matter, in Montana, how different they are within our state.

So, how people filter themselves out.

Well, I say thank goodness they can.

I mean, that's what we do for all of our careers, for our opportunities.

People move for a lot of reasons.

When people can't move to opportunity because something as artificial as high housing prices, that's something that deserves policy attention, in my opinion.

Housing is such a primary good.

I mean, economies that don't house their people, government systems, political systems that can't house their people have always been judged as failures, and I think, in some parts of our country, right now, we're failing.

- Do you think Montana is one of those places?

- No, I don't think so.

I think, in Montana, we have a very solvable problem.

The thing about high housing prices is that, yes, it's not just Montana.

There are primarily local issues involved, and local issues can change.

I think we need a little more innovation.

I think we need a little more pressure, quite frankly, to make it happen.

- Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today about housing affordability, and we really appreciate it.

- My pleasure.

- The Governor's Housing Task Force will continue to meet in 2023.

(soft ambient music) Truth and healing.

These ideas are now the focus of lawmakers and Native American communities as they wrestle with the government's painful legacy of forced assimilation through boarding schools.

It wasn't so long ago that indigenous children were removed from their families and stripped of their cultures, languages, and customs.

Montana PBS's Stan Parker reports on groundbreaking efforts to bring accountability and reconciliation.

- [Announcer 2] This is our day to be proud to showcase all these beautiful outfits.

- [Stan] At St. Labre Indian School, Crow and Northern Cheyenne language and culture are taught and celebrated.

These scenes are from its Native American week, back in September.

- [Velma] We have a whole week of activities where students can practice their culture.

- [Stan] With a student body that's 98% native, these activities instill in kids a sense of their roots, of pride in their heritage.

- Come on, come on, come on, come on!

- [Stan] Velma Pretty On Top-Pease is the cultural education coordinator for St. Labre and its sister schools.

- [Velma] Studies have shown that if they know their culture, are proud of their culture, they're a better student, and they're more likely to be successful as an adult.

- [Stan] But this isn't how it's always been.

- [Velma] The history of education has not been good for Indian students.

Initially, of course, the goal was colonization.

- [Deb] For over a century and a half, the federal government, including the Department of the Interior, forcibly removed indigenous children from their families and communities, and many never returned home.

This intentional targeting and removal of native children to achieve the goal of forced assimilation was both traumatic and violent.

- [Stan] For the very first time, the federal government is taking a hard look at the cruel history of Indian boarding school policies.

- Seems very clear that the harm that was done to Native American tribes was unfortunately inflicted deliberately with the goal of, not only forcing cultural assimilation, but also of achieving territorial dispossession.

- [Stan] Under Deb Haaland, the first Native American Interior Secretary, the agency is investigating this history and pushing for legislation to address the wrongs.

Lawmakers are now weighing bills to create a truth and healing commission modeled after one in Canada.

In hearings earlier this year, survivors and descendants got a groundbreaking chance to be heard.

- While I might have received an education or a white man's education, in the process, I lost my own language, my own culture, my traditions, and today, I cannot speak my language.

- I remember being scrubbed regularly with dirty brown soap, and my skin becoming dry and chapped.

I remember that they used a stiff brush, and that soap was made with lye.

He touched me like no child should ever be touched.

- And yet, relatively little is known about the tens of thousands of children who suffered at these institutions.

What were their names?

What did they experience?

How many of them died?

Where were they buried?

- [Stan] This is more than just a storytelling project.

Advocates want this commission to have teeth, subpoena power to demand documents from churches and other entities that ran schools.

- We need these records now, it's critically important, before we lose these stories and our elders.

They deserve to know where their relatives are, what happened to their family members.

- [Stan] That subpoena power is a point of concern for some lawmakers.

- When someone serves that subpoena, the person is going to assume that the process is adversarial.

They're gonna show up with lawyers, they're gonna be very defensive.

I don't think that's the kind of atmosphere we're trying to lay here.

- [Stan] Montana's senators have both voiced their support.

- There is no doubt that the impacts of what happened are real, and that we need to do something about it.

- It's not something that we should take lightly or halfheartedly, but it's something that we need to put our effort behind so that the truth and the stories can be uncovered.

- [Stan] Janine Pease, the former president of Little Big Horn College on the Crow Reservation, has studied these stories and remotely testified in support of creating the commission.

- I have pursued, over the last five years, the stories of women and children from my nation.

- [Stan] Montana was home to 16 of the roughly 400 schools named in the interior department's Initial findings.

Some, like St. Labre, were run by churches.

Others, like the School at Crow Agency, by the government.

- [Janine] One of our tribal historians, Dr. Joseph Medicine Crow, called the boarding school at Crow Agency the mean school.

It was a very harsh disciplinary institution where the children were dressed in military uniforms, marched from their dorm to the cafeteria to their classroom.

So it's really an obliteration of who the native person was.

- [Stan] And this policy of assimilation didn't end at the schoolyard gates.

- [Janine] There was no way in which our culture could be practiced.

It was all illegal on the reservation.

So, what culture and history there was talked about or practiced had to go underground.

- [Stan] Severing these customs is one way this policy has created generational impacts.

Restoring them is now a focus for government leaders.

- To begin the process of healing from the harm and the violence caused by Indian assimilation policy, the Department of the Interior should affirm an explicit and expressed policy of cultural revitalization.

- [Stan] Native culture and language programs like those at St. Labre can now be found across the state and the country, but there's no guarantee that it's not too little, too late.

- Well, we're very, very close to having our language extinguished forever.

After all, it's been 200 years of assimilation, and it's been really powerful.

In order to bring languages back, culture and history with it, is going to take an enormous effort.

- [Stan] The educators involved in this work say they'd welcome more resources.

Here's Curtis Yarlott, St. Labre's Executive Director.

- There were resources expended to attempt to exterminate these languages.

There was a conscious, deliberate, organized effort to eradicate these languages, and so, in terms of the whole healing and reconciliation, I think it's important to expend resources to try to make sure that these languages do continue in the future.

- [Stan] So when he thinks about what's happening in St. Labre today, - [Curtis] It's a good start.

We're not there yet.

(singing in foreign language) - [Stan] For "Impact", I'm Stan Parker.

- Here in Montana, Knowledge of native cultures isn't just happening at reservation schools.

The 1972 state constitution commits the entire education system to preserving the cultural integrity of American Indians, a promise embodied by the 1999 Indian Education for All law.

Stan Parker continues the conversation with Mike Jetty, an Indian education specialist with the Montana Office of Public Instruction.

- First off, I wonder if you could just kind of give a quick explanation of what Indian Education for All is.

- Sure.

Well, Indian Education for All is in our state constitution.

Montana is the only state that has it written into our state constitution.

It will teach about American Indians, and then that was reaffirmed in 1999 with the passage of the law, now referred to as Indian Education for All.

And so, schools all across Montana are supposed to incorporate the distinct and unique cultural heritage of American Indians into their curriculum, historic and contemporary portrayals.

- That's awesome.

Why is this work important?

- I think we're helping to, you know, shape another narrative, a different perspective, a more inclusive perspective, I think.

You know, you were just talking about boarding schools.

We just sponsored a webinar series all around boarding schools, and different tribal educators and leaders talked about boarding schools from their experience, and, you know, either their personal experience, or their tribal experience, and I think that's all part of that healing process.

You know, sharing those stories and where we've been, where we're at today, and how we can all move forward together, and, you know, heal up, I think.

Not just native communities, but non-native communities, and I think that's the power of Indian Ed for All.

It's all about relationships and making those connections, you know?

Like, we're just one Montana family, and how can we relate to each other in that way, so.

- Specifically, what is your role in Indian Education for All?

- [Mike] Sure, well, I'm a member of the Spirit Lake Dakota Nation, and a Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe descendant, and I've been working with Indian education for 31 years now, and 21 at OPI.

And so, we've got a team of folks that work there, but then we also have staff that work on Indian student achievement issues.

So, we have those kind of two pillars of Indian education, and then we get to, you know, work with teachers all across the state to develop curriculum and do professional development, so that's what we do.

Like, one cool thing, any new teacher getting certified in the state of Montana has to take an Indian Education for All class online before they get their teaching certificate, and then we weave Indian Education for All throughout all of our standards, social studies, math, language arts, and so, we really try to indigenize our curriculum, kind of weave it in in a seamless manner.

And so, it doesn't have to be a either or, it's a both and more.

That's kind of how we approach this work.

- Earlier in the program, we talked about boarding schools and that painful history.

Indigenous knowledge and customs were outlawed and tried to be stamped out, and then now, 1999, it became enshrined in law that this is now required.

Can you talk about that pendulum swinging the other way?

- Oh, yeah.

Well, the old notion from the boarding school era from Pratt was, you know, kill the Indian and save the man, and that was done through education, and so, you know, education was used, almost as like, a weapon of mass destruction, regarding Indian cultures and languages, and, you know, just wiping 'em out, when you put it in its historical context of some of the folks doing that work, working from what they thought were well intentions, but from a notion of cultural and spiritual and racial superiority, you know, and just helping.

You know, they had this group called The Friends of the Indian that, you know, their mission was to civilize, but through education, but all the damage that was done to native cultures, and, you know, historical trauma that tribes are still working through.

Yeah, it's kind of neat, though, to see how we've come full circle now, that we have schools that reaffirm culture, and we have language teachers in classrooms.

And so, education is a way to reaffirm, and promote, and reinvigorate culture and identity and language, and that's really cool to see happening in Indian country.

We also talk about moving beyond blame, shame, and guilt, too.

And that's not the purpose of Indian Ed for All, it's just, I think, a more inclusive look, accurate, honest, and how do we all move forward together.

- [Stan] What else is happening in Indian Education for All these days?

- [Mike] Our new state standards for social studies, I think, are powerful.

Like some of the new work we're working on.

Every third grader now has to learn the names of the tribes and tribal languages.

That's in one of our standards.

Identify the seals of tribal nations, understand tribal sovereignty, and interactions between local, state, and federal, and so, we get to develop curriculum to help teachers do that, and then professional development to go along with it.

- Well, I think that's everything that I wanted to get through.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

- I just wanted to give a shout out to all those Indian educators who have been, you know, dedicated their life to this, and I think that's the part of it, too, is this collective team of people that have been working on this for a very, very long time, and it's an honor to be a part of that process.

- Jetty says the Indian Education for All resources are available to the public.

They can be found on the Office of Public Instructions website.

Well, that's our program for this evening.

For the entire "Impact" team, I'm Joe Lesar, and we thank you for joining us.

(gentle enigmatic music) - [Announcer] Production of "Impact" is made possible with support from the Otto Bremer Trust, investing in people, places, and opportunities in our region, online at ottobremer.org, the Greater Montana Foundation, encouraging communication on issues, trends, and values of importance to Montanans, and viewers like you, who are friends of Montana PBS.

Thank you.

(uplifting piano playing)