1srelluc
Diamond Member
Housing costs and the homeless population have soared in the Western Montana city of Missoula this year.
For the first time ever, the city's largest emergency shelter was kept open year-round rather than just during the frigid winter months.
Jill Bonny, the executive director of the nonprofit Poverello Center, which runs the city's only two emergency shelters for adults without kids, said they're already operating near capacity.
"I honestly thought maybe we'd have 50 or 60 people at night, but our average was 120 individuals through the summer," Bonny told Business Insider. She added that her shelters simply can't accommodate the number of people still sleeping outside in the city of about 79,000.
Homelessness — and shelter occupancy — has spiked in Missoula over the past several years. Between 2021 and 2023, the city's two main shelters saw a 53% increase in the number of nights of shelter provided to Missoulans experiencing homelessness. It's also a statewide issue: Montana saw a 551% increase in homelessness between 2007 and 2023 — the largest increase in the nation.
And it's directly related to the surge in housing costs in Missoula and across the state. Particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic popularized remote work, a flood of affluent transplants has overwhelmed the housing market, pushing rents and home prices way up. Missoula's struggles with rising housing costs and homelessness reflect issues plaguing much of the West and Sun Belt, where transplants have moved in droves in recent years.
The simple fact of the matter is this.....If you build shelters and feed them, they will come.
They're homeless and only staying in that town because the town caters to that lifestyle. Period.
Housing is stupid expensive there. And it's lousy with transplanted Californians and Seattleites.
I had some transplanted woman in my AO ask me to donate towards a shelter in town and I told her, hell no, if you build it they will come.
What about the ones already here she asked......I replied then they will move on because outdoor vagrancy is against the law in the town/county and it's enforced.
