The American city that became a playground for the rich

According to many residents, another factor that has fueled interest in the city of Bozeman is the “Yellowstone Effect” – people moving to Montana inspired by the hugely successful TV series “Yellowstone,” starring Kevin Costner. The series depicts the conflicts between the Dutton family, locals, and outsiders seeking to change the traditional way of life on the area’s farms.

Grandma Sara Folger sits in the kitchen of her mobile home, with the Rocky Mountains rising on the horizon, and remembers the Bozeman, Montana, she fell in love with decades ago.

Back then, says Folger, this small rural town in the western United States was filled with “hippies looking to get back to nature, college students, cowboys and ski enthusiasts.” But today, the once-quiet streets are filled with excavators, orange traffic signs and cars with out-of-state license plates.

Since the pandemic, Bozeman's population has grown by about 20%, a remarkable increase for a city that had fewer than 50 residents in 2019. This wave of arrivals was driven by a combination of factors.

For years, Montana has attracted conservatives from across America, lured by the state's tradition of strong individualism, self-reliance and lack of sales, luxury and inheritance taxes.

Their numbers increased sharply as many people began “fleeing the Covid chaos on the East Coast and West Coast,” says Mark Corner, president of the Southwest Montana Association of Realtors. As a result, housing prices exploded.

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Many local residents are being forced out of their city, while real estate developers from other states have profited millions. A recent rent strike at two mobile home parks has become a symbol of the social and economic clash between the wealthy and the low-income, highlighting a growing movement to protect the working class.
Bozeman Mayor Joey Morrison, elected at 28 on a promise to solve the housing crisis, says rapid changes have created a deep divide between local residents and those coming from other states.

“We were seeing our rents double or triple within a year or two,” he says.
"Suddenly, every coffee shop is full of people programming on computers or working for companies that have never had any connection to Montana before," he adds.

The series effect

According to many residents, another factor that has fueled interest in Bozeman is the “Yellowstone Effect” – people moving to Montana inspired by the hugely successful TV series “Yellowstone,” starring Kevin Costner. The series depicts the conflicts between the Dutton family, locals, and outsiders seeking to change the area’s traditional way of life on farms.

"Everyone in Montana believes that the series 'Yellowstone,' with its spectacular landscapes and the way it portrays life here, has influenced the housing market," says Jeff Michael, director of the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Montana.

Real estate agents saw “the value of our homes increase by 40% in just two years,” says Corner. “And prices continue to rise.”

The city center has changed radically. Small businesses have been replaced by upscale steakhouses, expensive chain stores, and shops selling custom-made cowboy hats for tourists.

The city's expanding airport regularly hosts private jets ferrying wealthy people to their residences in exclusive locations like the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, about an hour away, where celebrities like Justin Timberlake and Tom Brady own multimillion-dollar properties.

“On any typical day, there are 80 to 100 private jets on the runway at our airport, mostly carrying Yellowstone Club guests,” says Corner.

During the pandemic, local buyers were consistently losing out to cash offers from people outside Montana. So many homes were purchased without even looking closely that the state's real estate association added a new disclosure form to its contracts.

While Montanans found it nearly impossible to buy a home, many others could no longer even afford rent.

“Every real estate developer in America heard about the skyrocketing rents in Bozeman and how profitable building here was,” says Corner.

Apartment blocks and new housing estates sprang up rapidly, while rent for a one-bedroom apartment reached $2.000 a month or more, an unaffordable sum for most local residents, especially those with only one source of income. 

It was on this wave of discontent that Joey Morrison won the election in November 2023.

Today, at 30, he lives with his fiancée and two roommates. About ten years ago, he paid $333 for a room in a two-story house, while today the same room costs $900, he says.

Morrison, who grew up in eastern Montana with his nurse mother and incarcerated father, was one of the founders of Bozeman Tenants United, the organization that later helped organize the mobile home park residents' protest.

He says his election as mayor was a referendum on housing policy and the perception that local government had abandoned the average Montana citizen.

"It was an extraordinary wave of support that clearly said: We want one of us to represent us in the City Hall."

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He sees "a lot of desperation among people about the possibility of continuing to live in this country, especially in this city."

Escape from Bozeman

Many homeowners have sold their properties, taken the profits and left Montana. Those who continue to rent are working two or three jobs or sharing their homes. Many have been forced to live far from Bozeman and commute daily over mountain roads. Some couples are even postponing plans to have children.

Even the mobile home park where Sara Folger has lived for 17 years hasn't been spared. The rent for the lot where her three-bedroom, two-bathroom home sits has nearly doubled, even accounting for inflation.

“There are so many people for whom this is the last stop,” says Folger, 73, a former grants administrator at the City of Bozeman who now works part-time at the Whole Foods supermarket, opening in 2023 as the first in Montana.

"They have nowhere to go. They have no money to pay rent. There is no housing they can afford. There is nothing. Where are they going to go?" Folger adds.

She and other residents of two mobile home parks organized in May and launched Montana's first rent strike in 50 years, according to the new tenants' union.

The strike came in reaction to a nearly $100 per month increase in the rent for the plot where their homes stand.

A little later, the park was sold and is now managed by a California-based company, leaving the future of the residents and their homes uncertain.

"You can't move a mobile home that's been in the same spot for 25 years. It would fall apart," says Ben Moore, 35, a resident of Mountain Meadows.

"The only asset I have is this trailer. It's like that for a lot of people. Even if we moved it, where would we take it?" he adds.

Although some residents have accepted the management company's new terms, others say the battle is not over.

In addition to electing a new mayor, local Katie Fire Thunder, 25, was appointed to the Montana House of Representatives in December. Sam Forstag, 31, a union leader and former smokejumper, won the Democratic nomination for Montana's 1st Congressional District.

"Young people are seeing with their own eyes that our leaders are not making decisions that protect us," says Fire Thunder.

"They are making short-term decisions that benefit the wealthiest people in this state, while we all say: This is not the way Montana works," Thunder adds.

The cafe from which she speaks is located near the Montana State University campus, no more than 2.5 kilometers from the upscale JW Heist restaurant in the city center.

The night before, the restaurant's elegant bar had been filled with a medical sales representative, a real estate investor from out of state, and a father from Colorado who had come for his son's college orientation.

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Looking at the whiskey list, where the most expensive glasses cost $170, the Colorado man said: "I've seen these elsewhere for a quarter of this price."

The sales representative, sitting next to him, replied ironically: "This is Bozeman."