Homelessness summit pitched by Kalispell City Council appears stalled

More than a year has passed since Kalispell City Council floated the idea of organizing a summit for Flathead County’s three municipalities to address homelessness. But it has quietly fizzled in the intervening months.  

Councilor Ryan Hunter still believes convening with leaders from Whitefish and Columbia Falls is a good idea, but said that progress stalled after Mayor Mark Johnson pledged to organize it.   

The idea for a summit arose in October 2023 when Councilor Chad Graham floated the idea of inviting leadership from the neighboring municipalities to a conference aimed at addressing homelessness in Flathead County.  

That year participants in the annual Point-in-Time survey, led by the federal Department for Housing and Urban Development, found 263 homeless individuals living in the region. That figure dropped to 199 homeless people in the 2024 survey, though local service organizations say shelters in Northwest Montana are nearly always at capacity.  

A month later, in November 2023, Kalispell Mayor Mark Johnson pledged to speak with his counterparts in the other municipalities after City Manager Doug Russell expressed hesitancy in organizing a summit without a clear agenda. 

Officials in Columbia Falls and Whitefish at the time indicated willingness to participate.  

But, over a year later, the idea seems to have died on the vine. After Johnson said he would come up with an agenda, “nothing happened,” Hunter told the Inter Lake in a recent interview. “We don’t seem to take too seriously actually proactively addressing this issue.” 

Johnson did not respond to several requests for comment, both via email and in person at City Council meetings. Councilors Jed Fisher, Sid Daoud and Kari Gabriel also did not respond to requests for comment.  

Graham expressed during Council meetings last year and again in a recent interview that the other municipalities should first provide services for homeless individuals in their own communities before a summit can convene. Kalispell, the seat of Flathead County, is home to the Flathead Warming Center and Samaritan House as well as Ray of Hope, a Christian ministry that offers shelter space, and Sparrow’s Nest, which serves homeless high school students.   

Graham said there is a lot of lip service in the valley about advocating for the impoverished, “but that kind of stops at the city limits of other cities.” 

“I’m tired of Kalispell being a doormat for the rest of the community when it comes to this issue,” he said. 

But Columbia Falls Mayor Don Barnhart said he was unsure of the need for a shelter in his community.  

“We don’t really see homeless [people],” Barnhart said of Columbia Falls.  

Whitefish Mayor John Muhlfeld did not respond to requests for comment. 

And Flathead County commissioners have urged municipalities to block new shelters from opening. In January 2023, commissioners released a letter imploring city councils “to not permit or expand warming shelters that bring more of these homeless individuals to our community.”  

When Graham launched an effort earlier this year to revoke the Flathead Warming Center’s conditional use permit and force it to close, communications officials for the county applauded the move on social media.  

To Hunter, the conference is one of several opportunities to address homelessness that the city has abandoned.   

“There have been concrete suggestions about how to more proactively address this crisis in our community and there has not been a serious commitment to follow up on those suggestions and make them happen,” Hunter said.  

Flathead Warming Center Director Tonya Horn proposed the idea of forming an advisory board to address homelessness after the murder of a homeless man in June 2023. Authorities say Scott Bryan, 60, was killed in the parking lot of a Kalispell gas station and charged Kaleb Fleck with deliberate homicide in connection with Bryan’s death. 

The advisory board was intended to form a space for businesses and homeless individuals to share their perspectives. Over late summer of 2023, Tonya said Johnson met individually with several homeless people, listening to their experiences with an eye to forming the advisory board. But since then, progress seemed to have halted.    

“Ideas are thrown out and never pursued,” Hunter said.  

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and junderhill@dailyinterlake.com.