Essay by Kathryn Socie
Mountain Life – May 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
THE AMERICAN DREAM is alive and well in Missoula, Mont., sort of. Not long after arriving here in the late 1990s, I found myself in the same conversation about real estate, hearing the same words and sharing the same sentiment. “You can’t eat the landscape,” someone would say, and everyone within earshot would laugh at the cliche, though it would usually be followed by an uncomfortable silence. Here’s what wasn’t funny then or now: In a recent Missoulian article, local realtors tallied their statistics and calculated a whopping $206,850 median price for a house, but only a median income of $43,200.