Family Promise: Missoula churches prepare to host homeless families

Missoula churches prepare to host homeless families
By KIM BRIGGEMAN of the Missoulian


Things are rolling faster for Family Promise of Missoula, and Michael Hoffman was happy on Friday to give them a shove.

Ignoring a broken wrist encased in an Irish green cast, the St. Joseph Elementary eighth-grader helped tote from a corner in the school entryway piles of goods donated by the students of St. Joseph and Loyola Sacred Heart High School.

Boxes of everyday essentials – toiletries, blankets, canned foods and the like – went out the door and into the waiting car of Dean Thompson.

“Things like these are nice treats for families and certainly things that they’re going to need as they move toward independence,” said Thompson, the newly appointed director of the program that has assembled local congregations to provide emergency housing and support, on a rotating basis, to homeless families.

The supplies have been piling up at St. Joe’s and Loyola for a month after Hoffman hit on the idea of gathering them as a service project.

“There was an opening for a scholarship, and I thought it was a great idea to give back to your community,” Hoffman said.

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With the encouragement of his mother, Mary, who operates a hair salon in town, Hoffman wrote a letter to Beaches Beauty Supply, successfully soliciting toiletry items.

“I sent out a few emails to all the families that are part of Missoula Catholic Schools, and it’s just been growing since then,” he said. “It didn’t take much work, but I think it was a good outcome.”

In a way, Hoffman’s project is a microcosm of the expansive Family Promise program.

A non-governmental enterprise, Missoula’s is the fourth to be established in Montana, behind Billings, Bozeman and, most recently, Helena. Its starting date has been pushed back month-by-month as organizers gather resources to get to a point they’re almost at.

The target now, handed down this week from the national Family Promise headquarters, is May 13. That’s when Missoula churches will take turns hosting and feeding houseless families in weeklong rotations. By day, the two or three families involved at any one time will be transported to St. Paul Lutheran Church on Brooks Avenue, which has offered its Day Room to the program. From there they’ll leave for school or work, or look for work and housing.

Thompson will take over as director on April 2. He comes to Family Promise with the experience of 10 years as Missoula Food Bank’s community food security liaison and the past nine months as nutrition case manager for Missoula Aging Services’ Wheels on Meals program.

In those roles, and as a case manager at WORD before that, Thompson has worked with the homeless and hungry for years.

“I’ve certainly, unfortunately, witnessed what that means here in Missoula as far as seeing the kids who are affected,” Thompson said. “But there are some great programs here that I think we can work with to link families up with social services to help their kids, to be supported in their efforts to feel part of the community, and to get families back to independence.”

It’s been a long time in the planning – well over two years – but Family Promise of Missoula has a board of directors, a website, enough housing and support congregations to get started, and almost enough money.

“We’ve got two main issues right now, one of them being fundraising,” said Terry Burke, president of the Family Promise board.

The national Family Promise urges local programs to have one-third of their annual budget in hand before they start. That means with a budget of $108,000, Missoula’s needs roughly $35,000.

“We’re at about $25,000 now, but between now and May we’re hoping for a big jump,” said Burke.

The other need is transportation.

“We’re looking for a van of some sort or a commitment from somebody,” Burke said. “We had something lined up but that sort of fell through, so we’re looking very hard for something to transport families between congregations and the day center.”

To help, or to make a tax deductible donation to help purchase beds, supplies and the like, call (406) 351-3318 or mail a check to Family Promise of Missoula, P.O. Box 5882, Missoula, MT 59806.

Many other things are falling into place. With Thompson on board, a three-day training session conducted by Donna Lawson from the national office is set for April 12-14. Lawson will train Thompson and the coordinator and volunteers from the first host site at St. Anthony Catholic Church.

Thompson will then coordinate the training and screening of families. Less than a handful of families will be in the program at any one time and only for a limited time – six months or less.

“Right now we have 10 host churches,” said spokeswoman Sister Mary Jo Quinn. “We should have 12 because each one is set up to host every three months, but there are a couple of churches that have said they’ll do it (twice) if we don’t have 12 the first round.”

Several others have committed as support congregations, to supply food and/or volunteers.

“There are all these wonderful faith organizations in Missoula,” Thompson said. “They have buildings that can house people, they have a set of volunteers who are willing to work with homeless families and to be there to provide connections to the community – perhaps a job, perhaps affordable housing.

“My job with a social work background is to try to help people link up with services that might help to support that.”

The need is certainly there.

“The last statistics we saw had 400 homeless children at least enrolled in Missoula schools,” Quinn said. “We’ll have to find the agencies that will help us find these kids.”

As recently as March 7, a member of Family Promise’s core start-up team received a call from a local agency that had two families with eight children between them and were in critical need of shelter. Other shelters had waiting lists of five weeks or more.

“Sadly we also had to turn them away as we were not yet able to take in families,” Quinn said. “The need is critical for these hidden homeless.”

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