Shelter from the Storm

Solving the housing crisis in Missoula, Montana.

by

It’s Christmas Eve, 2019, and members of the Homeless Outreach Team in Missoula, Montana, pile out of a van near the Reserve Street Bridge. They unload rucksacks filled with sandwiches, hand warmers, and water bottles. Several volunteers tag along—one with blankets and another with gift-wrapped wool socks.

The outreach team goes down a steep, icy embankment to an island in the Clark Fork River behind the Walmart Supercenter, just upstream from a sewage treatment plant that delivers an intolerable sewage stench in summer months. On the island, homeless individuals camp alone in tents, or in small clusters.

According to the outreach team, there are about 100 unsheltered people in Missoula most winters. The reasons people don’t sleep at Missoula’s main emergency shelter, the Poverello Center, are numerous. Some with alcohol or drug addictions are not permitted to stay there; others with post-traumatic stress disorder or sensory issues are so averse to the shelter environment that they opt to camp in temperatures that can dip to -20 degrees Fahrenheit. As one outreach team member frames it, “Would you want 175 roommates?”

“Everyone being able to afford their own home helps the economy,” McMilin says. “When we have recessions, it’s usually the building of homes that saves the economy.”

Not far upstream from the camps, a four-acre plot of land on Mullan Road next to the Missoula County Detention Center is one of two sites designated for what will be the Trinity Apartments. Trinity Partnership, a joint project between Homeword, BlueLine Development, and the Missoula Housing Authority, will be building a low-income, low-threshold apartment complex. BlueLine Development completed a similar project, Arroyo Village, in Denver last year.

Combined, the 202 Trinity Apartments will make a sizable dent in Missoula’s affordable housing demand.

Thirty of the Mullan Road apartments will be reserved as permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless individuals and will come with Section 8 housing vouchers. The 100 remaining Mullan Road units will be rented to people earning at or below 60 percent of the area median income. A twenty-four-hour, fully staffed on-site navigation center will offer a range of services, including health care, job training, and addiction services.

The center will also serve as an overflow shelter in the winter and as a resource to those who need assistance. Its proximity to the jail will allow people being released to receive help with finding employment and housing, and with applying for safety net programs.

Unlike the Poverello Center, the apartments on Mullan Road will be open to people struggling with addictions. “We have to let people change on their own and provide support when they want it,” says Keenan Whitt, BlueLine’s project manager.

Missoula is the second largest city in Montana, with a population of 73,340. Still, it has the state’s highest homelessness rate. In 2019, according to the city of Missoula’s reaching home coordinator, Theresa Williams, 325 people were without a permanent home in Missoula—that’s one out of every 230 Missoulians, more than double the national rate. And although Missoula’s population is 90 percent white, 15 percent of Missoula’s homeless population is Native American. Native people are also disproportionately represented in the jail.

Like other cities in the United States, Missoula’s housing costs are skyrocketing while wages remain low. With a population of roughly one million people, Montana is largely rural and agricultural, so resources for supporting low-income housing initiatives are limited.

“We’ve always figured out how to do this with every scrap we can find, instead of it being a budgeted line item,” says Heather McMilin, Homeword’s project development director. “We’re a frontier state, and we expect people to be self-sustaining. It’s absolutely pervasive in the legislature.”

Montana is one of just five states in the nation that doesn’t receive state housing funds, says Eran Pehan, director of housing and development with the city of Missoula. An affordable Housing Trust Fund exists, but it only receives federal dollars.

“Housing advocates rally for it every legislative session, but rural legislators don’t share urban concerns,” Pehan says. “But the tide is turning as rural communities like Havre face housing struggles, too.”

The 2008 recession resulted in an exodus of labor as people left Missoula to work in the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota. Many of those workers have not returned. Prior to 2008, low- and middle-income homes were being built, but now developments are largely profit-driven. Due to recent U.S. trade wars, building supply costs are skyrocketing. Land prices are soaring, too. Hemmed in by mountains, Missoula is restricted in its options for building out.

Simultaneously, a boom in tech and health companies in Missoula is also complicating the housing shortage. Although these industries offer higher-paying jobs, housing isn’t being created fast enough, and higher-income earners are competing for housing with people making much lower wages.

On Missoula’s north side, on Cooley Street, a chain-link fence surrounds a city block filled with mature trees. What looks like a park is actually the old Skyview Trailer Park. In 2018, the lot’s owner evicted the residents who lived in the thirty-four trailers there.

While some residents owned their homes, many rented for $300 a month. Most of the trailers were too costly to move. Community organizations hosted clinics to help residents navigate the rental market in Missoula and identify sources of assistance. But assistance is also in high demand, and waiting lists are long; according to Lori Davidson, executive director of the Missoula Housing Authority, the local Section 8 voucher program has a three-year waiting list.

It’s not an immediate solution, but Trinity Partnership is planning replacement homes at the old Skyview site, along with the Mullan Road apartments. Because the rents will be low, at least 200 units are needed to make the project viable.

Taken together, Trinity Apartments will provide seventy-two units on Cooley Street and 130 on Mullan Road. Trinity Partnership hopes to break ground in the fall of 2020 and complete both buildings by late 2021.

Last November, Homeword hosted an informational session at a bistro up the street from the Skyview lot to address community concerns. McMilin talked about Homeword’s commitment to revitalizing old buildings, repurposing building materials, and fighting for the right locations for the people it serves. Neighborhood residents asked about property management, traffic flow, and sidewalks. Others asked about drunk drivers, squatters, and how the apartments would benefit the public.

While Missoula is often called a blue bubble in a red state, some of these questions reflected a not-uncommon “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) mindset.

“We try to hear everyone’s views,” McMilin says. “If we can agree on 80 percent, the 20 percent we don’t agree on matters less.”

The Cooley Street building will consist of two- and three-bedroom apartments reserved for families living below 70 percent of the area median income, or $43,980 for a family of four. Because of federal funding, development rents are capped according to the cost of living in each county. Owners are obligated to keep rents affordable for a minimum of forty-six years, but both Homeword and BlueLine are committed to keeping their properties affordable in perpetuity.

Although the ideas for the two sites developed separately, the partnership came together when each of the three organizations involved realized they could pool resources.

“I don’t think any one of us could have done it ourselves,” says Davidson, of the Missoula Housing Authority, noting that BlueLine “brings the expertise of having done this in another place” while Homeword has “developed projects all around the state.”

Local government has thrown its support behind the project. The City of Missoula is issuing a bond for Trinity and waiving the $700,000 in fees the bond would typically carry. Pehan, who has been working toward this kind of project for more than five years, says waiving the fees requires no taxpayer dollars. 

“As we do innovative projects, we’re discovering these new financing tools,” she says.

The project is the result of years of planning and coordination between the city, county, and outside organizations. Missoula County invested the four acres of land, at no taxpayer cost. Acquired through a bond in 1996, the land had been intended for jail expansion and administration, but the current sheriff and county commissioners are dedicated to reducing the jail’s population. Trinity Apartments helps with this goal.

“The county needed to have some teeth in the game,” says Whitt.

In 2012, the city and county released a “Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness.” It commits to a “housing first” model that advocates for permanent supportive housing for all. “Our goal is to have more people entering housing than becoming homeless.” Pehan says. “And if someone falls into homelessness, we want it to be rare and one-time-only.”

In 2019, the city also released a housing policy called “A Place to Call Home: Meeting Missoula’s Housing Needs.” It calls for spurring the market by reducing barriers to development, and investing in affordable housing for people at all income levels.

By looking at the number of people on the Missoula Housing Authority’s housing voucher waiting list, officials estimate a need for 1,600 affordable housing units. It plans to create 590 units of affordable housing in five years. So far, between Trinity and a few other projects in progress, 420 units will be built in the next three years.

Another report, the 2016 “Jail Diversion Master Plan,” reinforces the need for more permanent supportive housing. The plan pivots away from jail expansion and calls instead for reducing recidivism by connecting more people to supportive and rehabilitative resources. More than half of the city’s homeless population has previously been incarcerated. Many were reincarcerated for failing to meet a parole requirement, not because they committed a new offense.

When homeless, some people reoffend during winter months because the jail provides warmth and food. Others are jailed for reasons that are solely connected to living outside, like urination, trespassing, and camping. Amy Allison Thompson, executive director of the Poverello Center, says she urges landlords to consider that these offenses occurred as a result of living outside, asking, “Can you please look past these recent infractions and let them get housed?”

Jesse MacKenna has lived at the Poverello for a year. She is seventy-one and in the shelter’s crowded quarters she’s more vulnerable to illnesses like COVID-19. MacKenna was evicted just as she completed her six-year parole. She had left the state in her thirties after being charged with a felony for forging checks to buy alcohol. When she came back decades later, she turned herself in and was convicted, which has made it difficult for her to obtain housing or employment.

MacKenna’s experiences are not isolated, and the discrimination she’s faced is legal.

Under the Fair Housing Act, criminal records, credit scores, income, homeless status, and rental history do not qualify as protected categories or classes. Even when people in protected classes experience housing discrimination, they often lack the time or resources to pursue legal action. “We’re all stereotyped as drug addicts or alcoholics,” MacKenna says. “We just want our lives back.”

Some states and municipalities have passed laws prohibiting landlords from discriminating against individuals with criminal records; others prohibit form-of-income discrimination to ensure protection for individuals with Section 8 vouchers. Neither is true for Missoula, nor the state of Montana.

 “We lack a lot of protections that other states have,” Pehan acknowledges. 

The National Alliance to End Homelessness reports that permanent supportive housing has caused U.S. homelessness to decline by 20 percent across the United States in the last thirteen years. Some cities are building housing as community infrastructure.

“Everyone being able to afford their own home helps the economy,” McMilin says. “When we have recessions, it’s usually the building of homes that saves the economy.”

Trinity Partnership and the efforts by local officials in Missoula could serve as a model for future projects—and for other cities.

“A lot of the effort in the community’s ten-year plan to end homelessness is the re-patronization of resources,” says Andrea Davis, Homeword’s executive director. “Before, people were siloed and didn’t want to give up what they had fought to build.”

The work is only just beginning. Housing solutions will require community engagement and a willingness to re-examine values. Locating permanent supportive housing near the jail, for example, was easier than if Trinity Partnership had tried to locate it in a neighborhood of single-family homes.

“The public are always a little wary when you start talking about putting homeless people next door,” Whitt says.

Thompson is frustrated by the myths that shelter guests are lazy. Some 40 percent of Poverello guests are employed, as are a few people living in the Reserve Street Bridge encampment. People who are not working, she says, usually have a disability or other barriers. “The folks we’re serving are hustling. They’re really trying to make ends meet.”

Getting landlords and employers to take a chance on people trying to climb out of homelessness will require continued education. Meanwhile, Missoula is looking to other cities for additional ideas for how to meet low-income housing goals. Minneapolis, for example, has eliminated single-family home zoning.

“We need to grow out and up responsibly,” McMilin says. “We’ve tried to hold on to four of our own walls, but right now some building options are more attractive than they were in the past.”

In a state like Montana, where people are drawn to open spaces, this could be a tough sell. But the city’s population is projected to keep growing. 

“Neighborhoods will have to change to be inclusive if we want to grow in a way that doesn’t leave anyone behind,” Pehan says. “We have to continue to have difficult conversations about who we want to be.”