Member Story: Montana makes historic investment in affordable housing

As part of our effort to document the impacts of Montana’s 2025 Legislative Session on nonprofits, MNA sat down with members to talk about three key bills that passed this session. The following is a conversation with Kaia Peterson, Executive Director of NeighborWorks Montana, about HB 924, which makes a historic investment in affordable housing.

HB 924 establishes the Montana Growth & Opportunity Trust (GO Trust), a permanent fund that channels a portion of the state’s volatile revenue, such as capital gains and investment income, into long-term investments and public programs. Revenue is split between reinvestment in affordable housing and pension stabilization, and distributions of interest earnings into state special revenue accounts for early childhood, bridge and water system improvements, and property tax relief. Notably for nonprofits, the bill creates the Montana Housing Trust to consolidate and expand housing-related programs, providing loans for the development of affordable housing. Loan repayments will remain in the trust, creating a sustainable funding source. The bill also establishes the Montana Early Childhood Account, making long-term, strategic investments in early childhood services.  

MNA supported HB 924.

NeighborWorks Montana is a statewide affordable housing organization. We are a lender with a community development financial institution designation, lending for down payment assistance and on housing preservation development projects. We also provide housing counseling and education through a network of nonprofit partners, and we support housing cooperatives and resident-owned communities.  

HB 924 is a monumental step for our state in terms of having a substantive and renewing source of funding for affordable housing. Developing affordable housing is getting more expensive, more complex, and the demand in the state only continues to grow as housing costs become further out of reach, both for renters and homeowners. HB 924 does a number of things that will be beneficial. It creates the Montana Housing Trust, which is a new source of loan capital for a wide variety of projects. It also pulls together existing programs, including the Coal Trust and the Veteran’s Home Loan Program into one administrative body, the Montana Board of Housing.  

One thing that’s really powerful about the trust is that it’s not just a one-time investment; there are funds going into that trust well into the future, and in perpetuity, essentially, from state volatile income revenue. This is really the first time that we as a state have a source of funding for affordable and attainable housing that is going to be consistently invested in year after year. Also, the intent of the trust and the way that it’s structured is that the return goes back into the fund and can be rolled over into future projects. It can be a regenerating pool and a resource that can build and grow over time.   

We’re really interested in continuing to support preserving and advancing the supply of affordable rentals, and also in advancing a variety of home ownership opportunities. We care about making sure that communities have a range of housing opportunities across the income spectrum and across diverse housing types. I would expect and envision that the trust will support a wide range of properties, including large and small rental development projects, and preservation of existing multi-family apartment buildings as well as home ownership projects including community land trusts, manufactured housing, and housing cooperatives. I think it’s going to be hard to figure out how to prioritize and allocate those dollars. That’s one of the challenges that the Board of Housing will be navigating.