So we opened our Season Nine here at the ‘Are We Here Yet?’ podcast with this quote from Kendall Cotton.   He is Executive Director of the Frontier Institute. We met earlier this year after Kendall was interviewed by the New York Times.  What caught my attention and compelled me to reach out to him was his thoughts on the housing crisis. 

In our discussion we focused much time on how the current housing  market is affecting Big Sky Country and especially on the solutions this rural state has brought to the table including re-thinking zoning and passing Montana House bill 819 which offers developers funding in order they may pass savings on to the future homeowner. 

Additionally, Kendall and I spoke regarding other initiatives important to the institute and to Montana’s 21st century economy including #artificial intelligence, #dataprivacy and the government and how these sectors affect each other in the rural places we call home. 

The similarities with our other rural states abound.  The bipartisanship baked into the efforts of the Frontier Institute are an example to others working on substantive solutions to our rural development challenges.