Commerce Team Receives National Award for Statewide Rental Cost Survey
On Oct. 6, the Montana Board of Housing received national recognition for its Fair Market Rent Reevaluation Survey — the first geographically large, statewide survey of its kind. Staff from the MBOH, which is administratively attached to the Montana Department of Commerce, accepted the award from the National Council of State Housing Agencies at its annual conference in New Orleans.
The MBOH was selected from among five state housing finance agencies for this award in the new “Rental Housing: Supporting Property Management and Renter Needs” category. MBOH Executive Director Cheryl Cohen, Section 8 Program Manager Kelly Shields, Operations Manager Joe DeFilippis and Research Economist Ben Gill accepted the award.
Cohen said, “For several years, Montana’s Housing Choice Voucher payment standards lagged far behind market rate rents, creating housing instability for thousands of Montanans who were being priced out of the private sector. The FMR Reevaluation Survey results clearly demonstrated that HUD needed to update its FMRs for Montana. Our team is proud to say that we were able to assist Montanans who needed the increase to help pay rent the most.”
The process began in May 2024, when Montana’s Behavioral Health System for Future Generations Commission proposed a near-term initiative to request funding for a statewide Fair Market Rent Reevaluation Study. The goal of the study was to adjust Montana’s Fair Market Rents, upon which federal rental assistance Voucher Payment Standards are based. These vouchers help extremely-low and very-low income families secure safe, decent and affordable housing in the private market.
When the study was proposed, Commerce’s statewide Public Housing Authority had 3,754 active and pending households on its Housing Choice Voucher waiting list, of whom nearly 60% indicated at least one member of their household was experiencing a disability. In total, nearly 28,000 Montana renters were severely housing-cost burdened. Because HUD’s Fair Market Rent methodology failed to reflect actual market rents for standard quality rental homes in Montana, the statewide Fair Market Rent Reevaluation Survey was launched to understand the real amount of assistance very low-income Montanans need.
In July 2024, Gov. Greg Gianforte approved the recommendation to fund the study, authorizing up to $1 million for the project. This one-time funding enabled Commerce to work in partnership with the Montana chapter of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials HUD Fair Market Rent Solutions Workgroup. After surveys went out to more than 100,000 renters across the state, yielding almost 4,000 responses, nearly 70% of the original $1 million was unspent and retained for other behavioral health initiatives.
The survey responses and FMR reevaluation request were submitted to HUD on Jan. 8, 2025. In a cover letter, the FMR reevaluation team noted that for 2025, the survey showed actual fair market rent costs in Montana were $375 more than HUD’s FMRs for the state and $634 more than its FMRs for the U.S. These results called into question HUD’s use of the lower standard for state minimum rents, with both FMRs failing to reflect the reality of rental costs in Montana.
The MBOH’s recognition for its Fair Market Rent Reevaluation Survey is well-deserved. The National Council of State Housing Authorities confers its Program Excellence Awards on state housing finance authorities that demonstrate exemplary efforts, encourage innovation, identify industry best practices and facilitate information sharing among HFAs. Its Rental Housing category winners respond to important housing needs in their state, demonstrate measurable benefits to their customers that outweigh costs and achieve their strategic objectives.
On March 28, 2025, HUD updated the Federal Register with new FMR amounts. The average increase across the state averaged 14%. In some rural areas, the increase was more than 30%. With these updated numbers, housing assistance in Montana can rise to meet the needs of real Montanans. Since resuming Housing Choice Voucher issuance to Montanans struggling to maintain housing stability on July 1, Commerce has issued 550 vouchers and is on track to issue over 700 vouchers by year-end.
For more information on the Montana Board of Housing and Commerce’s affordable housing programs, visit commerce.mt.gov/housing.
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