The recent cold snap brought several Missoula entities together to provide shelter for the homeless, however, that arrangement will change as of Friday, February 22.

Erin Pehan, Director of Housing and Community Development for Missoula, said the partnership between the city and the Salvation Army has been working well with their new warming center.

“With the arrival of the severe storm and cold front a few weeks back working with the Mountain Line transfer center as a temporary warming center,” said Pehan. “Now we’re moving into the last portion of the season and the Poverello Center has stepped up and offered to provide daytime warming services for the remainder of the winter. This will ensure that folks who find themselves with nowhere else to go will have a safe warm place to be 24 hours a day.”

Pehan said the Mountain Line Transfer Center was only meant to be used as an emergency stopgap measure during the extreme cold snap.

“The Mountain Line Transfer Center was staged really as a disaster relief response to that extreme cold front that moved in, and Mountain Line generously agreed to open the doors of that facility with just a few hours notice, and we had a really heartwarming and robust response from the volunteer community in Missoula. However, we knew that was very temporary because the facility is really quite small and the volunteer presence was not sustainable.”

As of February 22, the transfer center will no longer be used as a warming center. Those who need shelter will be welcomed to the Poverello Center after that date.

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