'We're a home': Sparrow's Nest marks a decade of providing unaccompanied teens a safe haven

Taking the first step up the stairs of Sparrow’s Nest of Northwest Montana’s residential house in Kalispell is symbolic of the upward journey many homeless teens' lives will take. 

The nonprofit, which began as a grassroots effort a decade ago, seeks to provide safe housing and a supportive environment to unaccompanied, homeless teens, enabling them to focus on school and life after graduation.

From the first resident, Estevon Torres, to one of the most recent to fly the nest, Justin Groneman, Sparrow’s Nest provided stability and guidance along the way.

Torres has come a long way since leaving Sparrow’s Nest in 2017. He attended college for two years, joined the workforce and got married. Torres currently works as an educational assistant and mentor at an alternative high school in Oregon.

“I think back to my experiences, and because of that, I love working with this age group,” Torres said.

“For the first time in a really long time, I’m happy. I’m married and I’m at a job I love,” he said. “[Sparrow’s Nest is] 100% the reason I am where I am today.”

WHEN TORRES started at Sparrow’s Nest in 2016, it was difficult for him to envision making it to graduation. His father died when he was 15, and at 16, he was given the option to move with his mother, or stay in his hometown and continue attending Columbia Falls High School. Rather than be uprooted, he decided to stay and moved in with a friend’s family, which lasted about a year.

Groneman also found himself homeless under the federal definition at age 16, five days before his 17th birthday. 

“The easiest way to put it was that my living situation wasn’t very healthy to grow up in and CPS ended up catching wind of our situation and me and my siblings ended up getting placed in group homes for a few years. I was getting out of the system and emancipated myself and was looking for my own room to live,” Groneman said.

He temporarily moved in with his grandmother in her studio apartment until he was linked with Sparrow’s Nest. Graduating in 2022, Groneman enlisted in the Army and is currently based at Fort Riley in Kansas. He’s also reconnected with his father’s side of the family.

Even though Torres and Groneman had places to stay at one point, they were homeless as defined by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. The definition covers minors who lack a fixed, regular or adequate night-time residence. The term “unaccompanied” means a minor is not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian.

“That could be sleeping in cars, campers, couch surfing,” said Sparrow’s Nest Executive Director Rachelle Buckley. “We’ve even had [instances] where they’re living with their boyfriend or their girlfriend … . Some of these parents will come to us and say I don’t want my kid to have their girlfriend living with us, but the girlfriend’s got nowhere to go. Some of them are fleeing domestic violence or drug abuse. We serve kids from all walks of life.”

The Sparrow’s Nest has also served teens who aged out of the foster care system at 18, and face hardships in finding affordable housing.

“An important thing to also remember is that LGBTQ youth hold a disproportionate amount of the homeless youth in our society on a national scale,” Buckley said. “We've found that to be true within our community as well.”

While the best intentions may be there to help teens like Groneman and Torres, not all families are equipped to bring in homeless youth who have usually experienced trauma in some form. Students come from a variety of home environments and have different levels of maturity and resiliency.

Groneman said he moved into Sparrow’s Nest intent on graduating from Flathead High School, describing himself as driven when he sets his mind on something. But it wasn’t smooth sailing at first. Growing up, Groneman said he developed trust issues and social situations were a challenge for him.

“I was a little bit of a spitfire,” he said.

Staff — Buckley in particular — remained patient and ready to help.

“They actually care. They’re not just working there because it’s their job,” Groneman said. 

Living at Sparrow’s Nest was the first time he recalls having his own room. Yet, the house came to mean much more than a safe and dependable place to stay. 

Groneman said staff will push residents to reach their potential and provide the support to do so, including financially.

“They are here to help you with whatever you need to graduate. When I was thinking of going to college, they paid the application fee,” he said.

“You have to be willing to want to better yourself,” he added.

Residents are required to be enrolled in high school or working toward completing a high school equivalency test. 

Outside of school or working at a part-time job, residents may be found participating in extracurriculars, hanging out with friends, cooking, volunteering, attending therapy appointments, or going on occasional house trips, such as skiing.

“They’ll get you out doing fun things. Really, it’s built almost like a family when you’re there,” Groneman said.

“At the end of it, I ended up liking the place quite a bit. It was hard to say goodbye.”

SPARROW’S NEST serves high school students ages 14 through 19 in Bigfork, Columbia Falls, Kalispell and Whitefish school districts. Up to eight students can live in the co-ed house at a time.

On average, the home serves about 13 teens a year. 

“That turnover just happens and it’s not always a kid [who] gets kicked out. Sometimes something great happens, like we had two girls that are now living with a biological parent in Spokane,” she said.

According to the latest data from the Office of Public Instruction, 481 homeless students were attending grades kindergarten through 12th in Flathead County’s public schools during the 2021-22 school year. Of that number, 161 were high school students.

To live at the Kalispell house, potential residents go through an application and screening process starting with a referral. Staff do their best to locate parents to sign paperwork regarding the living arrangement.

“It ensures that we can do things like access their school records, medical care,” Buckley said, along with covering other legal issues.

Sometimes locating a parent to sign the paperwork is a challenge. In one situation, Buckley said it took a parent being arrested to get consent for a student who had been living at the house for six months.

“We sent the program contract to the jail that the parent was in and that’s how we were able to get consent,” she said.

Parents are usually amenable to their child(ren) living at Sparrow’s Nest, but Buckley said that occasionally a parent will push back on the label of homelessness.

“I also think if there’s other children in the home, parents get a little scared,” she said.

“There’s a fear that allowing their teen to live there will cause their younger children to be under the microscope of Child and Family Services,” Buckley said.

And leaving younger siblings is very hard for some teens looking to improve their situation.

“So it’s difficult to navigate,” Buckley added.

SPEARHEADING the grassroots effort to launch Sparrow’s Nest back in 2013 was a group of Flathead High School parents. They had learned the extent of student homelessness after Kalispell Public Schools hired a homeless liaison, and about what few options were available to teens.

Among that group was one of Sparrow’s Nest’s founders, Marcia Bumke. She had experience taking in two homeless teens who were classmates with her daughter at Flathead High School. Bumke continues to express her gratitude for past and current staff, board members and supporters in the valley who have continued the mission for the past 10 years.

“I would hope someone would step up and help my kid if they were out there alone,” she said.

Although these founding parents had no prior experience in establishing a nonprofit or licensed house at the start — what they did have was care, concern and passion to find out how to get it done.

In 2016, Sparrow’s Nest began accepting students temporarily in Whitefish after St. Peter Lutheran Church offered use of its parsonage, which was vacant at the time. When it returned to its original purpose, renovations to the current house, which was a former church building donated by Brian and Victoria Tanko in 2014, prepared to open in the 2018-19 school year.

Reaching 10 years has been an achievement, said current board chair and a Sparrow’s Nest founder, Linda Kaps, who has been with the program since those early years of planning.

“Our original goal was to have a house in each community and we’ve discovered that raising the amount of money it takes to meet licensing and follow their rules and have the 24/7 staff. It’s just prohibitively expensive, and since we’re not getting any federal money, we have to raise everything through donations and grants,” Kaps said. 

This fiscal year, Sparrow’s Nest operated on a $480,000 budget coming primarily from donations, which affords flexibility in the ages they serve and the duration students can stay. 

Sparrow’s Nest is Montana’s only licensed residential facility for homeless youth that doesn’t charge tuition.

“Every other program in our licensure charges tuition — and we’re talking in the thousands [of dollars].”

“We’re a [square] peg in a round hole,” Kaps said.

The nonprofit also doesn’t receive federal funding or grants that come with strict constraints, such as age limits or term limits.

“That’s not our model,” Kaps said. “Our model is a home. We’re a home.”

A bulk of donations come through the Whitefish Community Foundation’s Great Fish Challenge and Sparrow’s Nest’s annual sleep-out event When the Night Comes.

This year’s When the Night Comes is scheduled Dec. 1 at the Flathead County Fairgrounds from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. People are welcome to donate, register online to participate or stop by to learn more about homelessness in the Flathead Valley. 

“It's always one of those things where it's not something that you're super excited to go to,” Buckley said due to the cold weather. “But that next morning, we sit there with our coffee, and Linda and I are normally the first people up and we're huddled around the coffee pot waiting for the first cup to get poured because we're freezing. And you know, we always think like, imagine having to go take a math test right now, or imagine, you know, having to sneak into the gym early so you can take a shower, right?” 

Kaps added, “Imagine having tonsillitis or Covid and not having anywhere to go to recover.”

Both also reflected how Sparrow’s Nest changed the community’s perception of who homelessness affects and expressed gratitude to people throughout the valley who continue to support the organization’s proactive approach.

“I think the generosity of our community shows they are behind our mission and that’s pretty amazing. If we can continue to do what we do and do it well — I think there’s a really bright future ahead for Sparrow’s Nest. And I think that we're only going to continue to impact kids and have more positive outcomes.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.

    Estevon Torres
      Justin Groneman

    Current Sparrow's Nest chairwoman (former vice chair) Linda Kaps, and former board member Stacey Schultz look over the floor plans for the renovation of the organization's Kalispell shelter for homeless teens in Kalispell in this file photo. (Aaric Bryan/Daily Inter Lake FILE)    Marcia Bumke a founder of Sparrow's Nest hugs Brian Tanko after touring the Kalispell building that Tanko and his wife, Victoria, donated to the organization in this 2014 file photo. (Daily Inter Lake FILE)

    Jerramy Dear-Ruel, former executive director of the Sparrow's Nest of Northwest Montana, left, and former AmeriCorps VISTA member Jamie Pollard are pictured in the nonprofit's Kalispell house for unaccompanied, homeless high school students, which was new at the time this Monday, July 30, 2018 file photo was taken.(Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake FILE)

    Participants gather around a fire to chat during When the Night Comes, a fundraiser held by the nonprofit Sparrow's Nest of Northwest Montana which benefits homeless high school students in the Flathead Valley in this Friday, Dec. 10, 2021 file photo. Participants spent the night outdoors sleeping in cars and tents at the Flathead County Fairgrounds.(Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake )
 Casey Kreider FILE