BOZEMAN — With a success rate of over 80%, Gallatin Valley’s Family Promise is helping families facing homelessness to build a better future for themselves.
"If you think of a mom making 22 dollars an hour, trying to pay for child support — which is more expensive than tuition at MSU — and is trying to pay for food, electric, all of that, they barely have any money left," Says Executive Director Christel Chvilicek.
Christel was born and raised in the valley and has seen firsthand the effects of a lack of affordable housing.
"I have served five of my classmates since being here at Family Promise and that is really a sobering experience. You just don't think that—that you’re going to have someone walk through your doors that you actually know. But I think that’s the reality that people don’t understand," she says.
Christel tells me that over 50% of Americans are only $400 away from experiencing homelessness themselves.
She says, "I think that what really drives it home for me is that it could be anyone. It could be your friend, your neighbor, your family member. And we really need to spread that visibility and awareness about how easy it is to experience homelessness."
Family Promise works to address families facing homelessness, or are already homeless, and this year marks 19 years of work in the Gallatin Valley. But in just the last five years, they’ve seen major growth.
"When I started, we were a team of four, we served about 24 families, and we had a budget of about $400,000," says Christel. "We are now a team of 40, we have a 3.5 million dollar budget, and we just found out we now serve 392 families."
Family Promise started by working with local churches, and housing families in a new church space every week. But they knew they could do better.
"We started looking at our model and our programming and we decided well, man, we need to figure out how we make these static site shelters instead of this rotational model," says Christel.
In the last five years, Family Promise has purchased spaces throughout the city—including the old Montana Bible College—greatly increasing the numbers they could house.
But Christel says the real secret to success is the case managers who help their clients find long-term stability, with 87% of clients never experiencing homelessness again.
"We also say that when you don’t have community, that's what causes you to lose housing. But if we can, while you're in our shelter, talk to you and build that community whether it’s a school, or a job, or spiritual, or whatever it looks like, we can help lift them up for the long term," Christel says.
