How Hope Rescue Mission (HRM) is helping those without a home during the ‘stay-at-home’ order.
Bloomberg Cities recently asked the question, “How do you comply with a ‘stay-at-home’ order if you don’t have a home?” The article listed the five top ways that cities can help those experiencing homelessness during these unprecedented times. Hope Rescue Mission is working together with its partners to tackle this list of five action points in order to HELP PEOPLE…RESTORE HOPE …CHANGE LIVES…
Halt Evictions
HRM is partnered through the COAD Task Force (Community Organizers Active in Disaster) so that our 549-HOPE Coordinators and the City Landlord Liaisons may talk to property management companies and private landlords in order to help those who are or will be at risk. There are some who we can help directly and some that we are able to mediate payments for so they can stay in their existing housing. The City of Missoula has asked for a halt on evictions with not much response, so working together collaboratively has had significant success in preventing homelessness. 549-Hope Coordinators are genuine assets to our At-Risk COAD group as they receive training on working together with landlords.
Adapting shelters, acquiring new space, and creating isolation capacity
Together with Reaching Home – a program with the goal of ending homelessness in 10 years – and the Coad Task force, we are seeking solutions. We are asking the City of Missoula and the area’s churches to help us secure spaces for shelter and discussing how we might help those in isolation stay safe.
Upgrading hygiene and sanitation, and medical support
Hope Rescue Mission is working with the City of Missoula and Missoula County to provide hand washing stations, dumpsters, and portable toilet facilities in areas where the unsheltered are staying. HRM is leading the effort in coordinating with churches to collect more hygiene kits and other essentials. In conjunction with COAD we have streamlined services through our Hope Outreach.
Increasing meal services
HRM has partnered with Feed the Need Food Truck to serve 90 hot meals a week to those who are unsheltered and 50 non-perishable sack lunches in downtown Missoula.
Stepping up outreach
Hope Rescue Mission is now visiting the Reserve Street camps area five days a week along with our church and organization partners. COT (Coordinated Outreach Team), comprised of HRM and the Poverello’s Outreach Teams, is now serving those who are unsheltered downtown and in the Broadway Island area due to COVID-19. The HRM Outreach Team has doubled in size through church volunteers who pour into those who are unsheltered. The 549-HOPE call center plays a huge role in all of these efforts.
In these uncertain times, how wonderful it is to be able to rest in the promises of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! The HRM staff, partners and volunteers continue to Help People…Restore Hope…Change Lives while, at the same time, taking recommended precautions. We press on, not with a spirit of fear, but, with confidence that God is in control. We are in exciting times and there is opportunity all around us to demonstrate the love that God so freely lavishes on us!
Learn how you can help us make a difference.
Text GIVEHOPE to 26989, to make a donation.