California: Official Scapegoat of Montana?

By PJ DelHomme, 11-26-05

When things go wrong in Montana, chances are it’s some Californian’s fault—at least that’s what many of us in Montana assume. When property values get too expensive for average folks, it’s got to be because of all those people moving here from California. When places like Reserve Street bring in the big box stores and accompanying cookie-cutter subdivisions, it’s those Californians.

Problem is, most of the transplants moving to Western Montana aren’t from California. According to a report published in 2003 by Montana Business Quarterly, most transplants come over from Washington with California coming in second. Here’s another kicker from the report. In 2001 there were 3,700 Californians moving to Montana and 2,900 Montanans moving to California.

The report goes on to state that “…for those moving from one house to another [in Montana], we see that slightly more than half, or 195,434 persons, moved from one county in Montana to another.� For Missoula County, between 1995 and 2000, only around 16 percent of the people moving here were from out of state. In other words, folks from Montana are moving around Montana.

It seems as though Montana has chosen California as the sacrificial lamb to curse as it grows for better or for worse. Sometimes, though, the name-calling gets downright nasty.

“The rock-throwing at California seems to be unfortunately serious and misguided,� says Pat Williams, a Butte native and former Congressman who is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Rocky Mountain West. “There are a hell of a lot more ranchers and farmers living in California than in Montana.�

In the past, census data has proven that Californians do love their mountains. Take Colorado for example. Between 1995 and 2000, over 110,000 Californians moved to Colorado. That’s roughly 10 percent of Montana’s entire population. With this migration to Colorado’s hills, terms like Californication have evolved to deal with what happens to places like Colorado. Californication isn’t just the appearance of over-priced art galleries featuring images of the West before everyone moved here. It’s uncontrolled and unregulated development. It’s Reserve Street and the subdivisions that infest it.

“Missoula hasn’t done much planning,� says Tim Davis of the Smart Growth Coalition in Helena. He says Helena has done a somewhat better job at planning by adopting a growth policy with subdivision regulations like setting homes back from rivers, which maintains a quality of life and reduces impacts to homes from flooding. Planning, Davis says, is about, “saying we’re going to grow, so how are we going to grow.�

So, if Californians aren’t the majority of people moving here, and they’re not responsible for the uncontrolled growth, why do they still get under Montanans saddles?

Perhaps part of the growing resentment of those moving here has to do with the gulf between the haves and have nots. The MBC report notes there is a definite out-migration of younger people, while wealthier older people (like baby-boomers) are moving in.

The report’s author, economist Paul Polzin of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, writes, “When looking for the impact of newcomers, don’t think in terms of net migration. Rather, think in terms of replacement. The people moving out are different from the people moving in, and this fact changes the composition of the population.�

From personal experience, people moving here fall into two camps: those that can afford a nice house on a hill far, far away, and those that can barely afford enough for Ramen noodles, but have a ski pass.

Could it be that those of us who live here are a tad bit annoyed that we make a living by building summer homes for those who live elsewhere? Maybe we can only roll our eyes when we wait on a table with a tab amounting to two months rent. Who knows? Before this gets into a bourgeoisie versus proletariat class struggle, I might have a solution.

I had a conversation recently with a local mechanic who commutes from the Ninemile to Missoula everyday, about 20 miles. While he reminisced about the way things used to be here 30 years ago, I asked him, as a transplant from Alabama myself, what’s it going to take for everyone to leave? Weather was his answer. Apparently, Missoula can have some really nasty winter weather—and I’m not talking just fog. He recalled the good ole days when Missoula actually had a winter with extended sub-zero temps and weeklong snowstorms. I haven’t seen anything like that so far, but if the fog stays around long enough it may have all of us running for the plains soon enough. [End of article]