Month: June 2021

by Travis Mateer

One of Missoula’s “solutions” to its homeless crisis is the Transitional Safe Outdoor Space located south of Missoula off highway 93. This approach is being used in other communities, like San Francisco, at a MUCH LARGER COST than what we’re currently forking out. Here is some info about Missoula’s outdoor camp:

Hicks says to operate the space it cost a little less than $1,000 per resident per month.

Right now, they have a lease for the property for $1 a year.

They hope they can make the space permanent but transitional for those who go to the space, using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.

In San Francisco, this same approach costs around $5,000 dollars to manage, per tent, every month. That is insane. From the link:

In the six “Safe Sleeping Villages” set up by the city of San Francisco during the pandemic, the cost of maintaining a single tent-camping spot is $5,000 per month, or $61,000 per year — more than it would cost to put each of these people in a market-rate apartment.

The cost boils down to $190 per tent per night, which includes 24-hour security, bathrooms, maintenance, and three meals per day. This is cheaper than the per-day cost for the hotel program, but the hotel program is getting 100% federal reimbursement. 

What makes this cost even more problematic is the erroneous assumption officials made about reimbursement from FEMA. From the same article:

Apparently, supervisors have been operating under the assumption that this program, like the hotel program for the homeless, would get covered by FEMA reimbursement. It turns out, it will not, though Stewart-Kahn said it does qualify as a group shelter.

Hopefully Missoula officials aren’t operating on the same faulty assumptions.

While the Incident Command Team searches our valley for a second outdoor locations for a second outdoor homeless camp, I’m searching the information landscape for signs of what’s to come, like zoning changes allowing these camps to eventually transform into tiny home villages with support services.

On the surface, this isn’t inherently a bad thing, but I’m a suspicious-minded person with a long-cultivated sense of cynicism from a decade working in Missoula’s non-profit sector, so I tend to look for evidence of greed and increased government control over the lives of materially dispossessed.

Add a few other ingredients, like the research of Alison McDowell, and what could be emerging are the trends leading us to a totalitarian, technocratic dystopia.

So stay tuned…

by Travis Mateer

Thanks for tuning in to this week’s episode of Zoom Town. Next week I’ll be traveling, but we’ll get something up.

by Travis Mateer

Every once in awhile, when I read stories like this, I feel compelled to remind readers of my homeless camp cleanup bonafides because it wasn’t that long ago that I successfully collaborated with the Health Department, Clark Fork Coalition, and other groups, like an ATV group, to remove TONS of trash twice a years from the Reserve street area.

Now, five years after my absence from coordinating the Homeless Outreach Teams, we get a supposedly clueless communications person for the County pretending (because I don’t think she’s this clueless) like she doesn’t know why volunteer efforts at Reserve Street have been so limited in what they can accomplish, and who is willing to help out.

Here is County spokeswoman Alison Franz giving her uninformed opinion about why volunteers like me were inappropriately relying on non-standard assistance from the Sheriff’s Department when we really should have been doing it all ourselves back in April:

In April, we took you to a volunteer cleanup effort. On that day, the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office hauled off the trash. County spokeswoman Allison Franz tells us that’s not standard. She thinks the volunteers who clean up the trash are also responsible for hauling it out, but there’s still a level of uncertainty.

I know Alison Franz is busy redacting all those emails a curious citizen paid over $800 dollars to obtain, but I’d really appreciate it if she allocated some of her limited resources to curing herself of her professed ignorance on this matter. Maybe then us pesky volunteers can get back to cleaning up some homeless trash.

by Travis Mateer

This post will be a quickie. I wanted to highlight something Engen reportedly said about our local media landscape and the city budget that raised a BIG red flag for me. Here is our Mayor (and former Missoulian reporter) explaining why “communications” will be a budget priority for his regime:

Investing in the city itself is also a budget priority, Engen said, naming communication as an area needing improvement.

“Mainstream media has declined or eroded and isn’t a source of information for many of the folks we serve anymore,” Engen said. “There are a number of solutions out there. What we’re doing today is outmoded and doesn’t contemplate the media environment we’re in now. We need to modernize our approach to all of this.”

I’m VERY curious about the “number of solutions out there” our Mayor is contemplating. We already know that he thinks using $46,000 for a New Yorker named Spider to develop a communication plan is a good idea. What other good ideas will our Mayor direct taxpayer money to develop?

I don’t know about you, but I’m eager to find out.

Stay tuned.

by Travis Mateer

I’ve had some conversations over the past week which have given me some new insights (and new concerns) regarding Missoula’s response to its worsening homeless (and housing) crisis.

Like most Missoulians, when I heard homelessness was going to be addressed by an INCIDENT COMMAND TEAM, I didn’t fully appreciate what that signified. I didn’t understand that ICTs emerged from the need to better coordinate responses to natural disasters, like wildfires, and mirrors the hierarchal structures of military regimentation.

With this in mind I did some research to see if other municipalities have adopted an ICT approach to treating people like a flooding deluge of water or spreading threat of fire and, sure enough, a much larger municipality in California DID adopt an ICT approach to managing homelessness during the pandemic. From the link:

On an upper floor of the San Diego Convention Center, above huge halls where several hundred people have been sheltering nightly during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a nerve center.

Staff members from various government agencies and nonprofits run the day-to-day logistics of the shelter, organized as one unit, using the Incident Command System, or ICS, a nationally standardized management hierarchy commonly used for natural disasters. 

The system helps coordinate and assist dozens of people working for nonprofits, the city and county and other agencies involved in the massive homeless shelter operating at the Convention Center since April.

What seems to make this use of an ICT structure different than normal applications of Incident Command during a natural disaster is that its leadership is a pair of city bureaucrats. Here is Deputy Fire Chief Chris Heiser explaining this new use of ICT:

“In my career with San Diego Fire-Rescue, I’ve seen the ICS system deployed successfully for many natural disaster and relief efforts, but never for a homeless shelter during a health crisis,” Heiser said. “San Diego has proven that this model can be applied and adapted for even the most unique circumstances and be successful in achieving the desired objectives.”

What makes this circumstance unusual and different from, say, a massive wildfire response is that this incident management team is not completely composed of people certified to run an ICS, Heiser said. 

Though Heiser and some other firefighters are certified to respond to the biggest disaster incidents, the city first chose its chief compliance officer, Matt Helm, to fill the incident commander role in the shelter and its library director, Misty Jones, to be the deputy incident commander, said Heiser and city spokeswoman Ashley Bailey.

While there are legitimate reasons that seem to warrant trying this approach, like the jurisdictional conflicts that arise when homeless camps spread across different patches of land, homelessness is NOT a flood or wildfire, with an easily identifiable trigger-event necessitating a response, and a clear point in time when the emergency/military structure of an Incident Command Team is no longer needed.

And THAT, I think, could be a very big problem.

In LA, Sheriff Villanueva is ALSO looking to trigger some political emergency powers to address their homeless crisis:

Sheriff Alex Villanueva held a press conference Wednesday addressing the public about the ongoing issue and possible ways to address the crisis. 

Villanueva said a letter was sent this morning to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urging them to declare a local state of emergency in order to address the homeless crisis. 

By declaring a local state of emergency, the county will be able to apply for funding from FEMA. The sheriff said resources in LA County are extremely limited. 

“It’s a national disgrace. We are the wealthiest nation in the planet and we have such an enormous problem with homelessness and it’s a local tragedy,” the sheriff stated. 

Ah, yes, there could be more opportunities to get more FUNDING if there is a more clearly defined EMERGENCY that bundles various institutional sucklers together under one quasi-militant leader.

There is much more to all this, like the refusal of the Supreme Court to hear Martin v. Boise. Here is the homeless advocate perspective on this “win” and what it means:

“Despite the doom and gloom of the appellants and those who joined them in filing amici, this ruling is a win for everyone,” said Eric Tars, Legal Director at the Law Center. “Cities can still address encampments on their streets, they just have to do it in constructive ways that reduce harm and actually help end homelessness. Public health and public safety are best maintained by making sure everyone has an adequate place to live, not by putting homeless people in jail or giving them fines and fees they can’t pay.”

Inaction from the Supreme Court, combined with an unprecedented reaction to an overly-hyped pandemic, has created a petri-dish of experimentation for local municipalities. Add a pre-pandemic housing crisis (and more reckless central-bank money printing) and, well, you have what we have happening in our streets, and our parks, and our underpasses, and our jails, and our ERs.

Stay tuned here for continued coverage of this developing story…