Future in doubt for Kalispell shelter amid neighborhood complaints

The city of Kalispell is considering amending or revoking the permit for the area’s only low-barrier homeless shelter following a rash of complaints from area residents about how it has impacted their neighborhood. 

The Kalispell City Council has been grappling with complaints about the Flathead Warming Center on North Meridian Road over the last few weeks, and shelter officials will have the chance to respond to those concerns next month. Opponents of the shelter in its current location point to an increase in crime in the area since it opened in 2020, as well as strewn trash, drug paraphernalia and more. But proponents say the warming center shouldn’t be blamed for the Flathead Valley’s homelessness crisis, which has grown amid a loss of services and a spike in home and rent prices. 

The Flathead Warming Center opened in late 2019 as a low-barrier shelter near downtown Kalispell. (Many shelters require people staying there not to be using drugs or have a criminal background, but a low-barrier shelter does not have those requirements.) It is open nightly from October until April. When the shelter first opened it had 20 beds, but today it has 50. Executive director Tonya Horn said those beds are full almost every night, and the shelter often has to turn people away.  

But since the shelter opened at its current location in 2020, there have been a number of complaints about the facility and its impact on the surrounding area. In recent months, Kalispell City Council President Chad Graham and others have raised those issues during meetings and have accused the warming center of not helping alleviate the impacts. Graham said he’s heard from constituents who have found human waste and drug paraphernalia in their neighborhood. He also said the warming center is attracting more homeless people to the area. 

“This is not what I signed up for,” Graham said of his past support for the conditional use permit for the shelter during a recent meeting. “This was supposed to be for Kalispell locals, but it’s grown into something very different.” 

It’s not the first time the warming center has been blamed for the area’s increasing homelessness. In 2023, the Flathead County Board of Commissioners wrote an open letter to the community encouraging it to stop enabling the “homeless lifestyle” and said that people from other communities were coming to Kalispell because of the center’s services. But Horn said there is simply no evidence that homeless people are coming to Kalispell from elsewhere because of the warming center. According to a survey of those who have stayed at the shelter, Horn said, 94% of people there have either lived in the Flathead Valley for a year or more or have some connection to the area (either a job or family who live in the area). 

Horn said she believes the increase in homelessness in the area can be directly attributed to the loss of mental health services and skyrocketing home and rent prices. 

“The idea that if you don’t serve the homeless population they’ll just go away is based on the false premise that these people are not from here,” she told Montana Free Press.

Regardless of where the people are coming from, some members of the city council have said it needs to address the neighbors’ complaints, which is why it’s considering changes to the warming center’s permit. 

During a council meeting in May, City Manager Doug Russell presented stats showing that the number of calls for service in the warming center area (a half-mile radius of the address) to deal with anything from trespassing to criminal mischief has increased by 90.5% between the three years the facility has been open and the three years before it was open; citywide calls during that time have increased 51%. 

But City Councilor Ryan Hunter said it was inappropriate to blame the warming center for all of the increase in crime in the area and that closing the facility would only make the issue worse. He encouraged city officials to work with the warming center and other area non-profits to address the root causes of homelessness.

“The problems we have are much bigger than the warming center,” he said during a recent city council meeting. “It’s unrealistic to think they can solve this all by themselves.”

Warming center officials will have a chance to defend the shelter during a hearing on July 15, after which the city council will consider its next steps. 

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