by Travis Mateer
The picture you are looking at is the very first “H.O.T. call” I received after launching the Homeless Outreach Team program in 2011 for the Poverello Center. The idea was to offer the Missoula community an alternative to 911 for NUISANCE issues related to chronic homelessness. Here’s how the program was recently described by The Pulp (emphasis mine):
The organization’s Homeless Outreach Team — which has grown from one to five people since 2011 — builds relationships with people living on the street and provides food, gear, support and connection to services. The team also works with businesses to help them understand the issues and better interact with unhoused people.
About five years ago, the team found a man who broke his hip by the river and got him to medical treatment, Border Patton said.
“They’re kind of the only ones going out to these camps and making sure folks are OK,” she said. “Just checking in with them, having relationships has been really good.”
Yes, that ONE person the program began with was me, and the work I did to establish the credibility of this new program was monumental, especially with law enforcement. This difficult work is one reason I find the politicizing of the program I started so disgusting.
The national media has been getting more and more interested in what Missoula is doing about homelessness. For example, last September it was the Wall Street Journal examining our little mountain town.
And now Bloomberg is getting in on the action, but are they reporting ACCURATELY about what’s happening in Missoula? Let’s take a look and see.
From the link:
The city of Missoula says it is trying to balance public safety, health and conservation concerns with scarce resources. But some advocates say the law is so broad that it’s still effectively a ban.
“All they’re trying to do is find a way to get back to punishing people,” said William Knight, decriminalization director at the National Homelessness Law Center. “If all of these restrictions are so broad that they are creating, essentially a de facto categorical ban, then it’s no different than what Grants Pass was doing.”
Hey William, I think there’s a word for what you’re shoveling to the Bloomberg readership and that word is BULLSHIT!
How do I know that William Knight is peddling bullshit about our local officials just wanting to “get back to punishing people”? Well, I’m basing this assertion on the description of a term used recently by the director of Parks and Red, Donna Gaukler, as she was describing the challenges of cleaning up after urban crisis campers. The term I got clarification on earlier this week is NEEDLE TRAP and you won’t believe the explanation I received explaining why needle traps are NOT booby traps.
Here’s the email from Becky Goodrich that exemplifies how excuses are still being made for homeless camper behavior that I think sounds pretty dangerous and aggressive:
Here’s more from the Bloomberg article that requires unpacking from a knowledgeable former insider like myself (emphasis mine):
The new law is an 180-degree pivot from where the city was in 2022. Wanting to respond compassionately to visible homelessness while maintaining public order, officials initiated a different sort of response: They set up a homeless encampment that was overtly sanctioned by the city and could be regulated.
Many campers saw the city-sanctioned site as a potential solution. But the city shut down the experiment after just 10 months over concerns about safety, sanitation, overcrowding and fire. People displaced from the site ended up camping in more visible parts of town.
“You guys keep telling us where we can’t be, but you’re not telling us where we can go,” said Tully Sanem, a member of the Unhoused Neighbors Union, which formed last summer to give unhoused residents a voice in local debate.
When I see Tully’s name pop up again lamenting about having no where to go I think about how two years ago he was spending money to build his little shanty because, like other crisis campers, he was under the impression he could do whatever he wanted at the “Authorized Camping Site”.
Here’s a quote I selected when I wrote about this shit-show two years ago. The emphasis is still mine:
The destruction of the structures presented a significant financial loss to campers like Sanem, who invested almost $800 into pallets, nails and tools to build a sturdy apparatus.
“I wanted a structure because I don’t want to be huddling up in five blankets when it’s 15 degrees outside,” he said. “I go out, and I work, and I contribute, and I engage in commerce and I help so many people out. I should not have to live in squalor.”
Beyond the immediate security a structure provided to Sanem, he wanted to use the stability of the building to build a foundation for a better life.
“That’s what you need, a foundation,” he said.
He hoped to build up the structure and use it as a base of operations to potentially start a small business or nonprofit building crafts with the other residents of the Authorized Camping Site.
“I wanted to make it a home because everybody wants a home,” he said.
The situation is especially frustrating, Sanem noted, because he checked with authorities at the camp before moving in about six weeks ago.
“We all had the understanding we could do whatever we wanted to do,” he said.
Sorry, Tully, but you are wrong about being able to build favela-style living structures because this isn’t Brazil. Yet.
Another contributing factor to the Authorized Camping Site closing down two years ago was the fallout after Griffin Smith, a reporter, was “invited” to the site by a camper and just happened to capture the security staff wearing masks.
I got suckered by this reporting because of limited information, but after quite a few insightful conversations with the head of Rogers International, David Pritchard, I have a VERY different impression of what went down two years ago, and why. If Griffen Smith would like to interview me about it, he has my number.
To help set the record straight I’ll be doing a live interview with Monica Perez tomorrow, starting at 9am Pacific Standard Time. Monica’s audience will get treated to an insider perspective exposing the Homeless Industrial Complex in Missoula and why the “suite of homeless services” reported by Bloomberg are destined to fail (emphasis mine):
Since 2021, the city has deployed a new suite of homeless services using pandemic-era relief funds. It opened a new shelter, expanded an existing temporary outdoor safe space, mobilized a new street outreach team and created the city-run authorized camping site. It added 165 emergency shelter beds since 2020, according to homelessness services providers, including opening a year-round low-barrier shelter, which doesn’t require eligibility applications or sobriety for entry.
But there isn’t the housing or the services to match the need, advocates say, especially when large congregate shelters are not the best fit for everyone, and high rents expand the ranks of households on the brink. “Shelter is not the answer to solving homelessness,” said Carlson.
I reached out to the author of this article, Patrick Spauster, about this “new street outreach team”, but so far haven’t heard anything back. If I do, I’ll make sure to report on what I find out.
Later today my article on this topic will post at Western Montana News, so stay tuned for more insights only a former insider can provide.
If you appreciate learning more than what national media can ascertain about homelessness in Missoula, then please consider donating to Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF). I just checked my account and was VERY happy to see a new $300 dollar anonymous donation come in. Thank you anonymous donor!
And, as always, thank you for reading!