Articles written by Eric Dietrich
Sorted by date Results 1 - 15 of 15
Montana's housing puzzle at the legislative halftime
Lawmakers have advanced several bills aimed at making at least a dent in the challenges facing renters and aspiring homebuyers. Here’s where things stand as of early March There’s broad bipartisan agreement in the Montana Capitol that rising... Full story
California and Washington top origin states for new Montana residents in 2020
California, Washington and Colorado are the top states of origin for people who moved to Montana in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to tax filing data presented to a... Full story
Feds release data on Paycheck Protection loan recipients
Tens of thousands of businesses and nonprofit organizations across Montana have benefited from the Paycheck Protection Program, a massive federal effort that has routed billions of dollars into...
Montana property taxes keep rising - Who shoulders the heaviest loads?
HELENA - Just how hard do Montana cities, counties and school districts lean on residential property taxes to fund government services? Figures presented to lawmakers last month indicate the answer va...
How, where and why Montana became the grayest state in the West
People have been parsing the human lifespan into a taxonomy of ages forever. Aristotle proposed three categories: youthful, prime of life and elderly. Two thousand years later, Shakespeare's Seven...
Student enrollment up statewide, dwindling numbers threaten to squeeze rural schools
HELENA - Like rural school administrators across Montana, Terry Public Schools Superintendent Joe Krause keeps a close eye on his enrollment numbers. The Terry District, which serves Prairie...
Montana is the oldest state in the West. Demographics tell the tale
HELENA - Montana is, in fact, a country for old men, and women too, according to demographic statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, which indicate that based on median age, Montana holds the...
UM economists try to explain why housing prices are up across Montana
HELENA - Housing costs have risen across Montana in recent decades, to the point where residents are feeling the pinch between wages and their rent or mortgage payments, say economists with the...
Does remote work bring Montana workers big-city wages? Yes – for some
On the list of ideas for tackling the twin challenges that plague Montana workers - scarce rural jobs and low wages even in cities - telework is close to the top. As better internet access connects ev...
Peer Support, Increasingly Professionalized, Helps Struggling Montanans Reclaim Their Lives
There's some hope around a folding table here, inside this smallish Main Street storefront in Ronan, the Never Alone Recovery Center. Outside, it's a sunny Tuesday evening in this 2,000-person,...
What is the Strategy?
Previously: In Part 1, the story of a mentally ill Livingston woman, "Sarah," underscored the challenges Montana's mental health system faces as community-level providers are rocked by political battl...
Chasing the Curve, Part 2 - The Budget Roller Coaster
Previously: The story of a mentally ill Livingston woman, "Sarah," underscored the challenges Montana's mental health system faces as community-level providers are rocked by political battles over pub...
What Happened to Sarah?
Sarah sat in her Livingston home with the front door locked and her eyes closed, picturing the path to Gallatin Mental Health Center in Bozeman for day treatment. It's 26 miles, across a pass, with...
Why Some Young Professionals Settle in Small-town Montana
For much of rural Montana, brain drain has been a fact of life for decades. Come high school graduation, the pattern goes, small towns see their most ambitious sons and daughters pack their bags,...
Tourism Gives Philipsburg New Life - Brought Few Families
PHILIPSBURG - As the holiday season gets its start on a clear morning in late November, Main Street here looks like something out of a Hallmark movie. A window washer cleans down storefronts along...