Even in her 80s, longtime Missoulian Ethel MacDonald traveled worldwide on solo bike tours. She once told her son John that she loved her trips, but “I’ll always come home to Missoula.”
A philanthropist and supporter of many social justice causes, MacDonald was passionate about making sure others in her community had what they needed, including an affordable home.
Before MacDonald died last October, she sold her Westside rental property at below market rate to Front Step Community Land Trust, with the proceeds going to her Ethel MacDonald Charitable Foundation. The home will remain permanently affordable as part of the community land trust, which will maintain ownership of the land to bring down the price and require future homeowners to sell at an affordable rate.
In August, she told Front Step in a recorded interview that she made the sale “for the same reason that I would want to feed a hungry family on the street. For the same reason I would want them to be safe, and to have enough clothing, to be safely warm in our cold winters. That’s the way I am. I have everything, and too many people have almost nothing.”
John MacDonald is also working with Front Step to sell his mom’s University District home to the community land trust, and he and the organization hope others will consider doing the same to increase affordable housing options in Missoula.
“It’s a novel approach to one family at a time addressing housing needs,” MacDonald told Montana Free Press. “I think it’s how she would do it.”
Ethel MacDonald moved to Missoula around 1958 and spent most of her career teaching high school English and French in Arlee before retiring in the 1990s. She bought her house in the University District in 1980 after she and her husband divorced.
John MacDonald said his mom was active with the Jeannette Rankin Peace Center and supported several causes in Missoula, including conservation, food security and affordable housing.
About seven years ago, a friend in the real estate industry connected Ethel MacDonald with a single father at risk of losing his home. MacDonald bought his mortgage and rented the house back to him at a below-market rate. When the tenant moved, he encouraged MacDonald to continue renting the house at an affordable price, John MacDonald said.
After covering taxes and other costs, Ethel MacDonald directed the rental income to her charitable foundation, which she started in 2018. MacDonald was frugal, a good investor and often donated her annual IRA disbursement to the foundation, her son said. In 2024, the Ethel MacDonald Charitable Foundation donated about $23,000 to dozens of nonprofits. Upon her death, nearly $1 million went to charities through direct donations and her foundation, John MacDonald said.
“She just lived a very simple life,” he said. “She always said, ‘I have enough, and I have everything I need, and I should give to others not as lucky as me.’”
Last year, Ethel MacDonald approached her foundation board about the future of the rental house. Karissa Trujillo, a board member and executive director of housing nonprofit Homeword, said that when they discussed whether to keep the house as a rental or to sell it, she suggested the community land trust. MacDonald met with Front Step in April and sold the home to the organization in August.
“She felt really good about the legacy she was leaving there and being able to bring some funding into the foundation but also still sell it at a rate that worked for Front Step to take the home into their portfolio and sell to someone who could afford to live there,” Trujillo said.
Community land trusts aim to provide affordable housing on land they own and lease to homeowners. Removing the land’s value lowers the home’s price, and the homeowner agrees to sell the home at a restricted price to keep it affordable.
Hannah Kosel, Front Step’s stewardship program manager, said that since MacDonald was willing to sell her property at below-market value, the organization didn’t need grant funding to help acquire the home, as they have in most other cases. Kosel said MacDonald was quick to get on board with the opportunity to keep the home affordable.
“For her to say, ‘I have the resources I need. I recognize I have some extra as well and that can go to others,’ I just thought that was a really beautiful gift of generosity and wealth redistribution in that regard,” Kosel said.
Front Step is making some upgrades to the home before seeking applications from potential buyers, Kosel said. Front Step will select an income-qualified buyer earning up to 120% of Missoula’s area median income, currently $94,560 for a two-person household or $118,200 for a four-person household. The home will have a 75-year ground lease that includes an agreement to sell to the next buyer at an affordable price. The homeowner still receives equity, but the arrangement allows households currently priced out of today’s market to buy a house, Kosel said. Unlike other affordable housing models, no additional funding is needed to subsidize each new homeowner, they said.
“Ethel’s one-time generous donation will be able to stay with this home on a long-term scale, which is a really beautiful way to keep her legacy alive,” Kosel said.
Front Step, which has grown to include more than 90 permanently affordable homes in Missoula, will likely see more individual home acquisitions in the future, Kosel said.
John MacDonald said he decided to sell his mother’s University District home to Front Step after seeing many neighboring houses replaced with those unaffordable to anyone he knows. MacDonald said he owns a home in Helena and “a cabin in the woods” and doesn’t need to sell his mother’s home at full market price.
“If I can do something to contribute, it would be great to help out,” he said.
MacDonald said he hopes other people in his position will consider selling their parents’ homes to the community land trust to help those in need.
“It’s a unique approach, but I think it would work,” he said, “I think people could see the benefit to the community and themselves.”
Kosel said it would be exciting to also bring MacDonald’s home into the community land trust because it would be the first Front Step home in the University District.
“We believe affordable housing should be in every corner of Missoula and every neighborhood,” they said. “This type of process makes it exciting to understand how to scale this program, how to bring affordability into different areas of Missoula.”
Trujillo, with Homeword and the Ethel MacDonald Charitable Foundation, said for many Missoulians, buying a home is not an option without the community land trust.
“It’s easy to get bogged down in, ‘I’m only one person, what can I do?’” she said. “But if 50 people took action in the way Ethel did. This one human made such a difference in not only her foundation and giving to nonprofits but in her gift of a home. If 50 more people did that, imagine the impact.”
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