A city’s campaign against homelessness brings stories of violence

After seeing a growing array of tents and other makeshift shelters scattered across city parks and sidewalks, officials in northwestern Montana decided it was time for a crackdown on homelessness.

In Kalispell, city leaders passed an ordinance to punish motorists who give money or goods to panhandlers. They cut off water and electricity at a city park where some took refuge. The county commissioners wrote one open letter to the community early last year, warning that providing shelter or resources to homeless people would “enable” them and attract more of them to the area.

“It is our hope that our community will be united in rejecting all things that reinforce the lifestyles of the homeless,” the commissioners wrote.

But in the year since that call to action, the purge has done little to solve a problem that is still visible — even now in the middle of the frigid depths of winter — on the streets of a city better known as gateway to scenic ski slopes and Glacier National Park.

Homeless residents said the city’s letter prompted a punishing public response, with many reporting that groups of young people were roaming homeless encampments and tormenting the people living there. Many of them are longtime locals displaced by the skyrocketing housing costs plaguing the Flathead Valley, where Kalispell is located, along with other Mountain West towns.

Christina Nelson, 57, a lifelong resident of the Kalispell area, said she became homeless after a divorce in 2021. Over the summer, she said, as she and another person lay on a bench outside the mall, a group of teenagers or young adults pulled up in a white car and started throwing eggs at them. “Go home, you lazy bastards,” she remembered them shouting.

Patty Archambault, 62, who has lived in Montana and Kalispell all her life for 12 years, became homeless about a year ago when she and her husband, both struggling with illness, fell behind on rent. Last summer, while they were living in a tent on the edge of a city park, a group of young people came up to them at night and fired paintball guns at them, leaving them with welts. “They said they didn’t like the homeless, that they wanted us out of their city,” she recalled.

Victor Parra, who has lived in the Flathead Valley for 44 years and became homeless last year, said he was woken from his tent one night by an aggressive crowd. One person hit him, he said, while another pointed out a rope that Mr. Parra wanted to tie to a tree. “We’re going to hang you,” one of the people told him. Mr Parra said he eventually got them to back off by agreeing to leave the area, and he ran out of the park.

Stories of similar confrontations were already spreading when late June brought a new level of threat. In the early morning hours, police officers found a homeless man, Scott Bryan, 60, lying behind a gas station, his head so badly battered that the bone was visible and his nasal cavity appeared to be crushed. Mr Bryan was later pronounced dead and a 19-year-old man was arrested, charged with intentional homicide.

Many in the homeless community knew Mr. Bryan personally, said Tonya Horn, director of the Flathead Warming Center, a shelter that provides overnight beds during the cold months. Homeless residents were advised to stick together, but they continued to face threats.

Police received a wide range of reports of harassment of homeless people, Police Chief Jordan Venezio said, including some cases of fireworks being shot at people. In many cases, he said, officers were unable to find suspects or get much cooperation from homeless residents in identifying them.

Ms Horn said the letter sent by county commissioners in early 2023 had set the stage for public hostility.

“The words painted a picture that the homeless are not from here, that they are not our neighbors, so we should not care for them,” Ms. Horn said. “It was dehumanizing.”

Surrounded by verdant forests and clear lakes, the Flathead Valley has long been a refuge for those who resist changes from the outside world. The region has become more politically conservative in recent decades, attracting militia groups and others seeking to establish a conservative Christian stronghold in the remote interior amid the country’s changing political and cultural landscape.

The mountainous region, dotted with huts and small farms outside the cities, offered affordable refuge and isolation. But in recent years, as the pandemic drove growing numbers of city dwellers into wide open spaces like northwestern Montana, the cost of living soared, as did homelessness.

Locals warned that Kalispell could fall victim to the problems of public drug use and crime that plagued larger cities. On Facebook, some residents gathered in community groups to share stories and videos about homelessness; some encouraged the carrying of weapons for protection.

“Sad to say, but with more people coming to the valley comes more crime and undesirable behavior from individuals,” one person wrote. “Take it everywhere.”

As in many cities, some residents warned that offering services to the homeless would attract homeless people from elsewhere.

But Ms. Horn said 90 percent of those receiving services in Kalispell had been in Montana for at least a year. If there had been a migration of homeless people into the area, Ms. Horn said, she would have been the first to speak up, because the region does not have enough resources to fully help those already there.

Randy Brodehl, a county commissioner who helped write the letter calling on community members to stop supporting the “homeless lifestyle,” said he supported the message. The increase in homelessness, he said, has led to theft, encampments and drug paraphernalia left in city parks.

“If you give someone the opportunity to live for free and let someone else pay for your expenses, people will take advantage of that,” he said.

Advocates for the unhoused said a series of problems have led to homelessness in a place where it didn’t previously occur. Housing costs skyrocketed. State budget cuts several years ago devastated case management programs for people with serious mental illness and addictions. Several hotels that were available for long-term stays, a temporary solution for people between more permanent housing slots, closed.

Travis Ahner, the top prosecutor in Flathead County, said it was clear the area needed more mental health and addiction services. He also said the cost of living has become so high that even lawyers his firm tries to hire decide not to pursue the job once they realize they can’t afford housing.

“There is no easy way out,” he said.

With the onset of a bitter winter in Montana, the situation for the homeless has been difficult at best. Some people have had to undergo amputations due to frostbite. Some sleep in cars and shelters while working in the city.

Every evening, dozens line up at the warming center, which has opened in a converted garage for car mechanics. On many evenings, people are sent out into the cold night due to capacity restrictions.

“I don’t want to be here,” Jessica Taylor, 45, said when she arrived at the shelter one evening in December. She had grown up in a wealthy family in the area and recently lost her job in retail when she suffered a long-term illness. She tried to sleep in her car and ended up at the warming center.

On her first night there, a few months ago, she got out of the car, saw the line of people waiting to get in and burst into tears. It wasn’t the kind of place people like her should ever stay, she thought. But she went inside and crawled onto one of the bunk beds.

“I cried and cried and cried and cried,” she said. The experience at the shelter, she said, made her realize that she had been too judgmental about the homeless people she had seen in the city.