This story may not be republished without the express permission of In These Times, where it was originally published. The reporting was supported by the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting. Ramenda Cyrus contributed fact-checking.
Archie Martinez goes to bed with stained hands and wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to meet the person he pays to pick him up at the Bozeman homeless shelter. They drive to the shop of a painting company in Belgrade, eight miles away, where Martinez climbs into one of the company vans for the hour-long drive up the mountain to the resort town of Big Sky.
As Martinez watches hayfields swim by in the dawn, a billboard blossoms out of the half-light beyond the van windows: “Dreaming of Your Own Equestrian Property?” Another advertises “Montana Life Real Estate.” The mountain sides along the highway glitter with the plate glass and stained wood of houses that weren’t there a few years ago. Early morning commuter traffic, construction vehicles and cement trucks jam the two lane road nearly bumper to bumper.
In Big Sky, the vans stop at one of the places where workers have cleared the lodgepole forest to make way for new construction. Martinez spends the day painting wood stain onto the timbers of a freshly built log mansion, and goes home to the homeless shelter in Bozeman with hands stained the color of someone’s second home. When the painting’s done, the houses will go on the market for $1.5 million each.
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