Work session on homeless shelter should focus on permit, Graham says

Kalispell City Councilor Chad Graham said Monday that he expected an upcoming work session on the Flathead Warming Center’s conditional use permit to be limited in participation and scope.

“It [is] a discussion with the City Council about the review of the conditional use permit of the Warming Center,” said Graham, who requested the measure April 1 while citing alleged neighborhood complaints about the overnight North Meridian Road shelter. “It’s a land use review.”

Graham had told his colleagues at the previous meeting that neighborhood residents, particularly business owners, regularly suffered indignities at the hands of homeless people. Those included threatening behavior, human waste and loitering, he said. 

In response, he said he wanted Council to take a second look at the low-barrier shelter’s permit. Promises made when Council agreed in 2020 to allow the shelter in the North Meridian Road corridor, zoned B-1 neighborhood business, had fallen by the wayside, Graham said. 

Graham also proposed a public hearing to follow the work session, limited to residents of that neighborhood. 

His April 8 remarks came on the heels of a statement issued by shelter leadership, who said Friday that they welcomed a discussion of homelessness with Council. 

“We look forward to this conversation in the spirit of a collaborative effort,” representatives of the nonprofit said in the statement. 

Graham told his colleagues that his call for a work session had been misunderstood. 

“It centers on homelessness but this is not a discussion about solving homelessness,” he said. “It’s a review of the conditional use permit and are we getting what we were told we were going to get when we made that decision. It’s really just that simple.”

Graham has said that he wants Council to look at five areas addressed in the shelter’s conditional use permit application materials: an increase in homelessness in the neighborhood, loitering, responsiveness and accountability on the part of the Warming Center, an increase in police calls, and that the shelter would serve the Kalispell community.

None of those are listed as conditions in the shelter’s conditional use permit, however. That document instead lays out items like occupancy restrictions and parking space requirements.

City Manager Doug Russell told Council earlier in the evening that he had set May 13 as the date for the work session on “homelessness and related impacts.”

Graham also took issue with criticism he said he received on social media in the wake of his call for a review of the shelter’s permit. 

“It’s a dismissal of the reality of the neighborhood,” he said while arguing the criticism proved another point he made on April 1: That business owners are afraid to speak out about the problems wrought by homeless people for fear of public backlash. 

“It’s a hard thing to come out and talk about, because you do go and get this connotation that you’re not a compassionate person by some out there,” said Graham, who last year led an effort to crack down on panhandling in part by slapping motorists caught giving money with a fine. “The way I’ve gone through and thought about it is they don’t get to take the moral high ground and define what ‘compassionate’ is.”

News Editor Derrick Perkins can be reached at 758-4430 or dperkins@dailyinterlake.com.