Nowhere to go: Montana's affordable housing crisis

"I'm just surviving out here," he said, pulling out a half cigarette and staring at the rising Clark Fork River a few feet away from his tent.

Tennant is a 24-year-old homeless man living in a makeshift encampment of tents under the Russell Street Bridge in Missoula. He goes by "Theodore," and he's been homeless since the age of 18. He grew up in Superior, a small town an hour's drive west of Missoula.

He can talk for a long time about why he's living unhoused, but in the end, the simple answer is that he just hasn't found or been provided with any option that works for him.

Tennant spent most of the winter in Missoula's Emergency Winter Shelter on Johnson Street, which was set up during the pandemic after the city's other homeless shelter, the Poverello Center, hit capacity. 

The Emergency Winter Shelter closed this spring, as it was always set up to be only temporary for the cold months. But that left more than 100 people in Missoula with nowhere to go besides the streets.

And that's exactly where Tennant ended up.

"I slept at the Johnson Street shelter a lot this winter," he said. "It was a good place to rest. Out here, you have to constantly watch your stuff or it'll get stolen."

There are no bathroom or garbage-removal facilities under the bridge where Tennant and several others spend their nights. There's nothing to stop the sharp, cold wind that blows through and there's not much to do. 

"There's going to be 40 people with mental illness sleeping down here eventually," he predicted, when asked what will happen if the city and county can't figure out a way to open the Johnson Street shelter next year. "Maybe 70."

Homelessness, he added, is a sad state of affairs for many people.

"There's a guy in a wheelchair that just goes and sits and stares at the river every day," Tennant said. "It's messed up."

A Montana crisis

A lack of affordable housing, steadily pushing people to the brink and over the edge into homelessness, is Montana's most intractable problem.

"I think affordable and attainable housing is probably the No. 1 issue facing working families in Montana," Gov. Greg Gianforte said at a press conference in April.

An influx of wealthy newcomers since the start of the pandemic has exacerbated an already severe shortage of places for people to live. Building hasn't kept pace with population increases. Borrowing costs have skyrocketed along with interest rates. The price of labor and materials have made building new homes much more expensive. Landlords are taking advantage of those factors and raising rents, and out-of-state investors are snapping up everything from multifamily apartment buildings to mobile home courts in Montana.

Companies aren't paying wages high enough for local workers to compete for available rentals with remote workers drawing big-city paychecks. When older homes are demolished to make way for new complexes, low-income renters are evicted, left with few options in an expensive market. 

Meanwhile, a lack of mental health services has left an untold number of people on the streets dealing with undiagnosed or untreated illness. Federal statistics say about one-fifth of unsheltered people have a mental illness or are dealing with substance abuse, but surveys in other cities have found that percentage to be much higher.

In early March, Levi Anderson, the chief executive officer for the Western Montana Mental Health Center, went to Helena to advocate for a bill that would have increased the Medicaid provider rates to facilities like his that provide mental health services to people in crisis.

"One week ago today, I sent a letter to our partners across the state, notifying them that we had to close 31 community-based mental health crisis stabilization beds," Anderson told a House committee. "That represents 65% of the capacity in the entire state for that service. And that is a direct result of a lack of funding for those services."

The bill he was supporting, HB 649, was voted down in the Senate in April.

On the streets

In Missoula, the homelessness crisis and rising housing costs have been essentially the foremost talking point for much of the last decade. City council meetings, county commission meetings, community forums and letters to the editor and elected officials have been rampant with outrage, blame, suggestions and calls for action.

The number of unhoused people seeking shelter has surged every year since the start of the pandemic. The visible signs of the crisis are everywhere, from campers on streets to tents on islands in the rivers.

Recently, city and county officials held a press conference to acknowledge that they've been inundated with calls about urban campers but there's not much they are legally allowed to do about it.

Research has consistently found that unsheltered people are more likely to be victims of violent crime rather than perpetrators. Also, homeless people are almost always from the community where they are living and many are actively seeking employment and would move indoors if there were good options.

Missoula's median home sales price hit $530,000 in 2022, a 122% increase since 2015.

The Poverello Center Homeless Shelter, already the largest in the state, worked with the city and county and other partners to open and operate another large homeless shelter on Johnson Street during the pandemic. But both those sites are overflowing, and the Johnson Street shelter closed earlier this spring. The federal funds used to operate it last winter are now gone.

In the winter of 2021-22, the average number of people seeking a place to sleep in the Johnson Street shelter was 70 per night. This past winter the average was 116 per night, according to Jill Bonny, the executive director of the Poverello Center homeless shelter.

"There are more people experiencing homelessness," she said. "There was not an authorized camping site this year and that was not an option. Both those things are contributors, and I think we'll continue to see the increase as long as housing prices continue to stay high and rentals continue to be expensive."

There was only enough funding to operate Johnson Street during the winter and it was always meant to be temporary, so when it closed in the spring there was a noticeable uptick in the number of people camping in urban public areas of Missoula.

"We know that there's a need for ongoing shelter capacity in our community all year round," Bonny said. "The Pov on its own does not have the financial resources to make that possible. It needs to be a community-wide conversation."

And the unhoused people who are visible are only a small fraction of the people struggling to find a safe place to sleep.

"We have no idea the amount of urban camping that is happening now," Bonny said. "I think there are many people that are camping in places where we have no idea. The ones you're seeing as you drive by or on the trail, there's a lot of other people we can't see. People staying in cars and parking lots. A lot of people experiencing homelessness are not visible."

Efforts to address the issue

Lots of effort and lots of money have been expended in dealing with the problem in Missoula. 

The single largest affordable housing complex in Montana history, the Villagio, is set to open on the Northside neighborhood soon, with income-restricted apartments big enough for families.

Another 202-unit affordable housing complex on two different sites, called Trinity Apartments, is also opening with 30 units of dedicated permanent supportive housing units. That means people who have been living on the streets can move in and have access to services meant to help guide them on a path toward permanent housing.

A new Temporary Safe Outdoor Space, with 30 hard-sided, wired shelter structures, opened earlier this year.

There are many other, older affordable housing projects in Missoula, but those are all full and have waiting lists.

But all of those solutions combined haven't ended homelessness or provided options to a growing number of people who are facing life on the streets due to rising rents. 

Last November, a crisis services levy was on the ballot that would have boosted programs to provide mental health and housing services in town. Voters in the city were in favor of the property tax increase, but voters in Missoula County didn't buy in and the measure failed.

Montana efforts

The crisis of affordable housing and homelessness isn't limited to Missoula.

At the Legislature this year, lawmakers from all over the state, including from small rural towns, said they're seeing an uptick in people finding no options for housing.

Housing was one of the hot-button topics at the Capitol during the session, but there's no agreement on whether the state's housing crisis was addressed in a meaningful way.

Gov. Gianforte, at a press event to celebrate "red-tape relief efforts," congratulated the Legislature and his administration on what he characterized as more than 100 bills that will "reform, roll back and repeal burdensome regulations."

Gianforte also believes that housing was addressed.

"I was pleased that we brought together a bipartisan group of legislators and stakeholders last year in our Housing Task Force," he said.

Gianforte also said that he's pushed for a bill that will fund infrastructure for affordable housing. House Bill 819, which would commit hundreds of millions of dollars to sewer and water extensions across the state to lessen the cost of housing construction, is awaiting Gianforte's signature.

"I know a number of these housing reform bills are on their way to me," Gianforte said. "I look forward to considering them."

Some bills that actually stripped away protections for renters got support in the Legislature.

One bill, HB 282, is awaiting the governor's signature and would give landlords more powers to terminate leases faster and recover rents from tenants. During a House of Representatives vote on the bill earlier this spring, nearly two dozen Montana lawmakers stood up to acknowledge that they are themselves landlords and may have a financial interest at state. None abstained from voting on the bill and it passed the House 60-40.

Many other bills addressed zoning codes in Montana to encourage developers to build more housing units in more areas of the state. For example, HB 323 will require all large cities and towns in Montana to allow duplexes in all city zones. Supporters argued it will allow developers to increase density.

Kyle Schmauch, the communications and policy manager for the Montana Senate Republicans, called the collection of zoning reform bills "the most significant pro-housing reform we have seen at the Montana Legislature in a very long time."

But Democrats in the Legislature were frustrated that most bills addressing housing were more of a free-market approach that will ensure more housing eventually gets built rather than immediate monetary relief for people who are struggling right now.

In a call with media in April, Democratic leadership voiced frustration with what they believe is a lack of action on housing, particularly in the short term.

“We are fast approaching the end of this session and we still have no meaningful solution to the housing crisis in Montana,” said Senate Minority Leader Pat Flowers of Belgrade, citing several bills brought by Democrats that were voted down by Republicans. “I think this will be the utter failure of the session.”

Flowers noted that some mid- and long-term housing solutions have progressed, but believes opportunities with the current budget surplus to immediately address housing and bring costs down or to help renters have been squandered.

House Minority Leader Kim Abbott of Helena agreed.

“There’s no credible plan to tackle the housing crisis in this building,” she said at the time.

Democratic Rep. Alice Buckley of Bozeman did applaud efforts at regulatory reforms to push more inclusive policies that “ensure more mixed-use and multi-family development.”

No immediate help

But all that's of little solace right now to people like Theodore Tennant, who will probably spend most of the summer sleeping in a tent under the Russell Street Bridge in Missoula. As he wanders around town during the day, he'll spot lots of new high-end condo and apartment buildings being built.

Perhaps he'll be selected to live in the permanent supportive housing at the Trinity Apartments. Right now, though, he doesn't have a clear path ahead and said he hasn't really talked with any service providers or housing specialists.

"I'm just gonna keep bouncin' around," he said.

Lee Montana Bureau reporter Tom Kuglin contributed to this story.

Up next in this series: A look at private equity's role in raising lot rents in Montana's mobile home courts.