Poverello Center, Inc

"The Pov" Downtown Ryman Street Shelter
Building supportive housing has always been the central way in which the Pov has created lasting solutions to homelessness, and the Pov's Ryman Street emergency shelter provides a point of entry for its emergency housing services.
The Ryman Street shelter provides seventy emergency beds, with 24 hour access to shelter and services.
Despite capacity for only 70 overnight shelter guests, the Pov routinely sleeps up to 100 homeless individual men and women each and every night, and often in the most inclement weather conditions.
Services provided free of charge in the shelter include: breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as access to sack lunches, storage space for personal belongings, computers, phone, mail, bus passes, showers, laundry facilities, clothing, case managers, and an on-site Partnership Health medical clinic.
Intake is from 8:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. daily.
All residents must be checked in by 7:00 p.m. unless prior arrangements have been made. In order to stay at the shelter, residents must abide by basic behavioral rules, including refraining from the use of drugs and alcohol to enter into the facility.

In addition to homeless individuals, the Pov also serves homeless families. Four to six homeless families with children request emergency shelter from the Poverello Center each week. Currently the Poverello Center is the only community resource providing the homeless with families with 24 hour, 7 day a week intake, assessment, and supportive services.
During working hours, Monday through Friday, families can also be referred to the YWCA and the Salvation Army.
The Ryman Street facility is staffed by well trained, professional case workers and support staff twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
The shelter beds provide a short term, emergency housing, and an interim solution for homeless individuals who are seeking more permanent housing.

Breaking Barriers Program
The Poverello Center’s Breaking Barriers program provides individualized support services for its clients as needed, in order to create a stable environment and to keep those who were once homeless in housing. This includes access to rental assistance; help navigating the “red tape” often required to obtain public benefits like Medicaid; connections to jobs, employers or employment resources; dedicated case-managers; and customized mental health and substance treatment approaches.
Homeless clients who enter the Breaking Barriers program work closely with Ryman Street Shelter and Salcido Center case managers to determine the barriers to their becoming self sufficient and housed.

The Pov helps homeless individuals meet their vocational goals, obtain the income they need to overcome homelessness and regain their places as contributing members of their communities. We work collaboratively with community agencies and employers to ensure success. Services are highly individualized in order to define meaningful goals, develop effective strategies and action plans, utilize available resources and gain the personalized skills and tools needed to seek and maintain employment.

Anyone desiring to enter the Breaking Barriers program can schedule an intake appointment with staff at the Ryman Street Shelter or Salcido Center.

Food Insecurities Programs

The Pov operates the largest soup kitchen in the State of Montana and the only area soup kitchen serving three squares, breakfast, lunch and dinner, seven days a week. This amounts to 100,000 meals to Missoula’s hungry and homeless each and every year.

The food is nutritious, tasty, and the bulk of it is provided by donations from the community at large, as well as through collaborations with the Missoula Food Bank, the Montana Food Bank Network, Garden City Harvest, the commodities program, and local restaurants and businesses.

The Pov also participates with the Missoula Food Bank in the Grocery and Food Rescue Program, wherein food is collected from area grocery stores and restaurants and served to the impoverished and homeless, thereby salvaging hundreds of thousands of pounds of usable food from the landfill each year.
For many, the meals at the Poverello are the only hot meal they get each day. Elderly individuals on fixed incomes, our urban neighbors in low-income housing, the mentally and physically disabled, as well as families living on the fringe depend upon the Pov's Food Insecurity Programs for the nourishment they need.

Homeless Veterans Programs

Between 150,000 and 200,000 veterans of the United States Armed Forces are homeless on any given night, and one-third of homeless men are veterans, including combat veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Nearly 400,000 veterans will experience homelessness during the course of a year.

30% of the Poverello Center’s clients are veterans.

Through a longstanding partnership with the United States Veterans Administration, the Poverello Center offers outreach, case management, supportive services, and housing to homeless veterans throughout Western Montana. The Pov receives a per diem from the federal government for veterans enrolled in the Homeless Veterans Programs.

Rapid Re-Housing for Homeless Families
Homeless families throughout Montana are struggling at rates greater than ever before. Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of homelessness, often suffering educational, physical, emotional and developmental setbacks. Exposure to violence, poor living conditions, and lack of quality daycare compound these problems.

Through collaborations with other area nonprofit organization, the Poverello Center provides the only 24 hours, 7 day week intake, assessment and triage for homeless families living on the streets and/or out of their cars.

The Pov’s family support services provide a wide range of critical services including shelter placement; 24 months of service-enriched transitional housing through the Joseph Residence; and children’s programs designed to promote healthy physical, emotional, educational, and social growth.

Staff at the Poverello Center is trained to provide appropriate outreach, referrals, case management, supportive services, and housing for homeless families with children.

Healthcare
Through an on-site collaboration with the Partnership Health Center, the Poverello Center has been delivering healthcare for the homeless in downtown Missoula for ten years. Located inside the Ryman Street shelter, this medical clinic centralizes services for anyone who is homeless – there is never a charge for this care.
In 2008, the Poverello/Parnership Health Clinic provided medical and mental healthcare services hundreds of men, women and children, ranging in age from infancy to those over 85. Common diagnoses include hypertension, diabetes and asthma. Frequently, homeless patients suffer from multiple diagnoses making treatment and care significantly more challenging than for people who are not homeless.

Overall, the life expectancy for most Americans is almost 80 years – yet, for those who experience life on the streets, the probable lifespan is between 42 and 52 years. Young women, aged 18 to 34, are four-times more likely to die prematurely than their housed counterparts. We strive each day to better these devastating odds.

The Joseph Residence at Maclay Commons

The Joseph Residence has served homeless families with children since 1991.

In 2006, the Poverello Center partnered with the Missoula Housing Authority to build a new housing facility that offers safe housing and associated social services to homeless families who need it most.

Families must be considered homeless and income qualified to move into the Joseph Residence at Maclay Commons. There are eight duplex buildings which include eight 2-bedroom residences and eight 3-bedroom residences and a community center that includes classroom space, office space for 24 hour staffing, nursing station, playground, and daycare.
Families can stay for up to two years, and they benefit from intensive case management, life skills classes, vocational training, financial training, and experience a stable community while working toward independence.

“The Joe”, as it’s called, is a nationally recognized housing program that stops breaks the generational cycle of poverty and homelessness.

The Salcido Center

Currently located in the basement of the First Baptist Church at 308 West Pine, the Salcido Center is a daytime, drop-in center serving Missoula’s chronically homeless, co-occurring, individuals (a co-occurring disorder is a mental illness with accompanying substance use addictions.) The Salcido Center is an extension of the Poverello Center's Ryman Street facility, making the supportive services offered there available to homeless individuals with co-occurring disorders.
The homeless individuals served by the Salcido Center have serious mental illnesses, substance abuse disorders, co-occurring disorders or chronic physical disabilities. These individuals, who make up roughly 10 to 20% of the total homeless population, have documented histories of chronic homelessness in our community and are often unable to attain stability or self-sufficiency through other more traditional programs offered in our community. Not only do these individuals live in unacceptable conditions, they also cost the community a great deal of money because of their frequent use of numerous community resources, including hospitals, jails, and social service agencies.

These homeless individuals are often shelter resistant, serial inebriates, and without the Salcido Center, Missoula offers no alternative shelter or supportive service for these members of our community.

The Salcido Center provides a "no wrong door" approach, serving all who ask.

Collaborations with law enforcement, downtown businesses, and other community service providers allow the Poverello Center to serve this extremely vulnerable and at-risk homeless population with integrity, compassion, and respect.

Both the Pov’s Ryman Street shelter and the Salcido Center utilizes the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) model integrated into Housing First program delivery to improve the overall health of clients and to increase their residential stability. ACT is designed to provide 24/7, comprehensive, community-based treatment and support to persons with serious and persistent mental illness and co-occurring disorders.

Professionals representing a mix of disciplines provide case management; initial and ongoing assessments; referrals to psychiatric services; employment and housing assistance; family support and education; substance abuse services; and other services and supports essential to an individual’s ability to live successfully in the community. An evidence-based practice, ACT has been has been researched and evaluated and has proven cost and clinical effectiveness.

The Salcido Center (sometimes called, "The Sal") exists to build authentic relationships, and alleviate the hunger of isolation, in an atmosphere of nonviolence, and gentle personalism that nurtures the whole individual, while seeking systemic solutions that reach the roots of homelessness and poverty.

The Salcido Center is named for Forrest Clayton Salcido, a Poverello client and homeless veteran who was murdered by two high school students in 2008.

See the Monthly Class Schedule!

The Salcido Center

The Valor House

The Valor House was completed in September of 2005, in collaboration with the Missoula Housing Authority and United States Veterans Administration to serve homeless U.S. veterans. There are 17 fully furnished one-bedroom apartments and many community spaces including a community kitchen, a library, game room, a large lobby, private meeting spaces, and computer spaces.
Valor House residents have a minimum 6-month stay and when a veteran successfully “graduates” from the program, after two years, they will be eligible to receive a Section 8 rental subsidy voucher to attain permanent housing of their choice.
The Valor House is located off Mullan Road and within walking distance to many services including public transit, a supermarket, the VA outpatient medical clinic and VA vocational rehab facilities.