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.
MTN reached out to Homeword with questions about the project's timeline. They provided answers after this article was originally published. Below are the answers to the questions, published in full.
1. What is the timeline for breaking ground on this project?
We expect to have a formal ground-breaking once the City has had adequate time to review and approve building permits and we close the overall financing package for the project. We made key design changes and building simplifications to bring the project back into budget. High Plains and their consultants are working rapidly to make those changes and provide the permit set to the City of Billings by mid August. We will want the City to have adequate time to review and approve the plans, this is a unique project and we need to make sure we have everything correct before we start the vertical construction portion of the project. We do expect to have our Master Site Plan resubmitted by the end of July. The City will be able issue this site permit later in August. This is the long way of saying, we will mobilize and the sitework will begin on site by the end of August, with the full construction starting in late September.
2. What deadlines is this project facing as far as financing goes?
We have our Bond Resolution being reviewed and approved by Montana Board of Housing at their Board meeting on July 20th. After that, once we close the overall financing package in late September, we just get to build these much-needed homes. After a lot of hard work, we are in a really good place with this project.
3. Did Monday's Billings City Council meeting, removing city procurement provisions, change how fast this project can move?
City Council was approving our amended contract for funding, allowing us to use an alternate procurement process for hiring our General Contractor that the State has also approved, following all Federal and State rules. We are extremely thankful to Council for approving the amended contracts, they agreed that this alternate procurement process was also a much more appropriate process in today’s market and for this type of project. This approval was essential for us being able to meet the deadlines above. If this had not been approved, it would have added three to four months to the project start and not guaranteed we could meet the project budget.
