BILLINGS— Billings City Council member Tony O’Donnell has apologized for a comment he made in the July 6 city council meeting.
The council had been discussing LB Lofts, low-income housing that is slated to go in the Billings Heights next year.
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“It says the target populations for this project are Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander… then it says black, African-Americans and Asian households,” said O’Donnell in the July 6 meeting. “This strikes me on the face of it to be ghettoization of a project that all of the people who fit that category are going to be directed into one development, which is going to change the character of that development.”
In response, the city has received emails from members of the public upset at O'Donnell's words, while an outcry has continued on several local social media groups.
Related: Billings Heights affordable housing construction expected to start this summer
O’Donnell apologized in the following city council meeting on Monday, saying he would, “meet and discuss this with anyone”.
He told MTN in a Wednesday interview that he has since met with the chairman of the board of commissioners for HomeFront. HomeFront is one of the organizations leading the LB Lofts project.
“We had a wonderful conversation. She realized that I was just unfamiliar with the language,” said O’Donnell. “As a Realtor, she was explaining a lot of that federal language that's in ordinary contracts that I was totally unfamiliar with.”
O’Donnell told MTN he is no longer confused with the project’s language and supports the project.
“It sounded to me like they were targeted to live there. They were targeting certain races to live in this one place,” O’Donnell told MTN in an interview. “That's why I used the term ghettoization. I thought that was hateful and wrong. It turns out that that was federal language. It wasn't the intent at all. There is nothing racist about the program at all.”
Related: Billings group utilizing old Williston man camps to increase affordable housing options
LB Lofts is a $33 million project led by Billings and Montana organizations HomeFront and Homeword.
The City Council voted Monday to allow unsealed bids for the project, allowing construction to move more quickly. Much of the project is funded through federal dollars, which the project could lose if that money is not spent by September 2027.
The project will reuse existing pods from a man camp in Williston, North Dakota. The pods will be stacked together to create apartment housing units.
Construction is slated to begin this summer.
“The idea of using those to put them together like building blocks... that seems like a heck of a great idea," said O'Donnell.
The pods are being stored at Montana Outdoor Storage.
