The Poverello Center in Missoula, Montana

The outside of the Poverello Center (thanks to missoulian.com)

The Poverello Center is located in downtown Missoula and it was one of the most welcoming shelters I visited. All of the staff there were incredibly helpful, friendly, and supportive of my endeavors. At one point, I sat down with Travis, the Director of Staff at the Poverello Center. He talked with me about the state of homelessness in Missoula, Montana, and how the Poverello Center has had trouble working with local businesses and government. Below are some excerpts from our conversation.


"In the last three years, [the Poverello Center]'s numbers have gone up in accordance with the economic downturn. With [the increase in the homeless population], we've had a new sense of controversy in the community. Downtown businesses feel like the reason why they're suffering [financially] is because of panhandling, transients, and all the negative associations with this small segment of the population that we serve. We're in a difficult position of trying to do educational outreach in the community. As we make our case for needing a new facility, this facility isn't ADA-compliant. The dorms have terrible ventilation. This is an old building [it was built in 1903 – Ed.], and because the building is so compact, it's not exactly the most dignified way to be living in a short-term shelter."


"There are some folks, whom we would call 'shelter-resistant,' and it has been difficult to do more outreach to them. We opened a drop-in center – a daytime facility – in 2008. It was in the basement of a church about a block and a half away. That was controversial because that was one of our attempts to offer a space that folks could come and just hang out and be out of the weather. I think the community wanted us to be solving these bigger systemic problems. With the drop-in center, we weren't able to show quantifiable improvements, to a certain degree. At the same time, we also have a local newspaper that likes to sensationalize the issues. All of the same stuff we do for a wide variety of people that have mental health issues, loss of job, health-care related homelessness – it's hard to make our case when the community is only focused on [the shelter-resistant]."


"Within the last couple of years, we've had new ordinances passed: the 'aggressive panhandling' ordinance and the 'pedestrian interference' ordinance, in attempts to create some legal tools for the police to penalize homelessness. Other cities have done this and haven't been effective. As we're seeing, it hasn't been effective [in Missoula]. A lot of this [anti-homelessness] actually stems back to the year 2000 when there was a 'Rainbow Gathering' in Wisdom, Montana. The Rainbow Kids are associated with going to places, especially downtown, and creating a negative environment for pro-business. It was in 2000 when the community decided to put this program together called 'Real Change, Not Spare Change,' in an attempt to educate the community about not giving money directly to people; that giving money directly to social services like us would be a more effective way of [helping homelessness]. That's been a little bit of a boost with our funding, but [Real Change...] is not really effective."


"One of the most effective things that we've looked at is providing some kind of housing, a 'Housing First' model. It lessens the economic impact. Some of the folks out on the street rack up sixty or seventy thousand dollars of emergency room visits in the period of a year. St. Patricks [a local hospital in Missoula] recently came out and said that they wrote off about three million dollars in 2009 as a charitable donation. That's about 519 people, they say – unduplicated numbers of people they serve from whom they don't expect any money back. One of the things we're trying to do with that information is leverage it; to say that if we find a way to mitigate the [financial] impact of community resources, that would be an economically smart thing to do."


"We're hoping with our new facility that we will have some sort of 'wet shelter' space for people that are currently not able to stay here because of our zero-tolerance policy [the Poverello Center's policy states that they do not currently allow anyone who is intoxicated to be on their premises – Ed.]. In the last couple of years, we've been experiencing a transition in our philosophy. Three or four years ago, staff members, if they expected someone being intoxicated while eating, they would get breathalyzed in public and be asked to leave. We're looking more at 'harm reduction' models where you establish relationships with people, and as long as [a person's] behavior is fine, then we're not going to penalize someone for being intoxicated; for being an alcoholic in the grips of a disease that's really debilitating. In the last two years, we've implemented a 'weather' policy. In the wintertime when it reaches twenty degrees or below, we relax our zero-tolerance policy and allow folks to come in and sleep on our dining room floor on mats. That's been a huge change in how we approach a problem. Up until [a couple years ago], we were just really reactionary and punitive for people being under the influence. We still have to maintain a strict zero-tolerance policy because there are so many people trying to beat their addiction, but at the same time, I think we've done a really good job on balancing compassion with safety."


"Now with our new facility, one of the things we've been looking into is increasing our street presence and outreach. This is something that we're currently developing. We're hoping too kick this off this summer if we get all of our funding. Part of the idea is taking some of the pressure off of first-responders like police in the downtown core; also giving a phone number that businesses can call so we can initially respond and use these relationships now that we've established with a lot of the folks on the streets. Let's say that [a homeless person] is impeding a walkway because they're intoxicated and unable to move, we then can respond and try and move a person along, in a way that's going to be a little less confrontational than a police officer. A lot of the police officers in this town are really great. They have a pretty tough job to do. Once they are called in, they have to give a ticket unless they're able to get someone to change their behavior. I think we're going to be increasing our relationship with the police officers [as well] as they see us trying to help with the problem. When we do get calls and we respond, this is also our chance to help educate business owners and tourists about the services we offer. There's an idea that we enable a bunch of lazy, worthless individuals here. People [that think that] don't have direct experiences so we're hoping that those attitudes and mindsets can be changed once they know that folks that stay here are required to do a chore; that there's a thirty-day policy [where someone can only stay here for thirty days] and to get extended past that, you get extensions based on 'merits' which are evidence that people are moving towards a [personal] goal. I think when [others] understand that there is a level of accountability, some of the preconceptions and stereotypes will be changed.... It's really exciting that we'll get to have more of a presence downtown because a lot of business owners feel frustrated and they don't see [the Poverello Center] in the community. They don't see what kind of work we do in this facility, and so, they [haven't] had the opportunity to learn that. As we get out there and talk to people about what we do, I'm hoping to see a change in attitudes.... If only everyone knew about folks who support local businesses who are are staying here [at the Poverello Center]. Folks do have SNAP (?) and will have some disability and social security payments. There is money that people use to support local businesses downtown, and I don't think that kind of economic support is ever really understood."


"There's these larger national systemic problems that we're looking at... [Missoula] is a college town where rent is really, really high. You're only really supposed to spend about thirty percent of the money you bring in on housing. Hardly anyone I know only spends thirty percent on housing. A lot of people are moving around trying to find work. We're seeing a lot of guys, especially those who are used to making a living [with day labor jobs]. Montana was hit really hard when the housing bubble burst. We were a little behind other states in feeling the economic impact, but up in the Flathead, down south in the Bitter Root – a lot of the good work that was out there was housing. When that collapsed, a lot of work dried up; not to mention the amount of mills we've had close in the past three to four years. There's been pretty significant economic factors that's really led to a huge increase [in people]. In 2009, we saw our biggest numbers: we had over thirty nights where we had over a hundred people in the building. We're not supposed to go over a hundred because of fire code.... The fire chief said that, as long as we had people resting in a sitting position, that wouldn't be considered sleeping. They're saying this because the city doesn't want to be responsible for helping us get a new facility. It's easier to just let us continue doing things and scraping by versus stating that we're beyond our capacity to help and we need other people to step up now. Literally, at one point, we were questioned whether there was a hundred-person capacity or not and we had to prove it to the fire chief. He didn't want to acknowledge that that number was given to us. He wanted to ignore that. You start to see small-town politics come out when these types of situations are discussed in public forums. A lot of posturing goes on, and it's an interesting environment to be in."


"There's a lot of things we know we can do better... Right now, one of our issues is we have one case manager to see up to sixty or seventy people, which is just insane. One's caseload should be about thirty to thirty-five people. We're starting to transition to more of a 'support' staff role, and hopefully, we'll be able to take some of that burden from our case manager. We want to get at people earlier. One of the things we recognize is that thirty days isn't enough to do anything. Even if you get a job on the first day, to build up money to get into a place is ridiculous. Thirty days isn't enough to do anything. Even then, some people are here for seven-to-ten days before they even get to see a case manager, who tells them about Missoula Housing Authority which helps to subsidize housing. A whole week goes by without them knowing some of the steps they should be taking. That makes the thirty days even less effective."

(thanks to missoulanews.com)