IJ Puts Freeze On Montana Town’s Attempt To Shut Emergency Shelter

In recent years, IJ has challenged arbitrary zoning laws across the country. In fact, just last year we launched our Zoning Justice Project to restore traditional property rights—especially so people can use their land for alternative, affordable forms of housing. This fall, we came to the defense of a homeless shelter in Kalispell, Montana, that had broken no laws and operated responsibly but had its permit revoked in a political circus.

Montana winters pose life-threatening cold. That’s why Tonya Horn and Luke Heffernan founded the Flathead Warming Center in 2019: to provide emergency winter shelter. It offers 50 beds for overnight stays between October and April, when the average temperature at night sits below freezing. The Warming Center was a lifesaver for people like Jerome Amundson, who lost his wife and home after a trusted family member stole their life savings. He fell into a profound depression, lost his job, and wound up, to his astonishment and shame, sleeping in the woods. Unable to survive, he went to the Warming Center, where he found “acceptance,” “love,” and eventually a job.

The Warming Center’s volunteers provided life-saving shelter for hundreds of people like Jerome over four successive winters. But then the political winds changed. After the pandemic, Montana experienced the highest increase in homelessness in the country. Housing costs skyrocketed in mountain towns like Kalispell, the gateway to Glacier National Park. Kalispell decided it needed to do something about this problem—so, bizarrely, it decided the Warming Center had to go, even though it had never been cited for violating any law and was integral to keeping people off the street.

In September, the Kalispell City Council voted to revoke the Warming Center’s permit and shut it down right before the start of winter. The city blamed the Warming Center for all homelessness off its own property. And councilmembers admitted they were stripping the shelter’s property rights due to public complaints—not about the Warming Center, but about homeless people in general.

But then IJ got involved. The Warming Center needed an emergency order to reopen right as temperatures began dropping below freezing. To accomplish this, IJ’s team made a herculean effort, preparing more than 100 pages of briefing and 1,000 pages of evidence in only two weeks.

After a daylong hearing in Montana, the Warming Center got what it needed. A federal court granted a preliminary injunction reopening the Warming Center. The court agreed with IJ that property rights are not a political contest. If cities want to take them away, they cannot do it for whatever reason and using whatever process they want. This was the latest victory in IJ’s Zoning Justice Project and the second time IJ has successfully defended a homeless shelter from zoning abuse.

Now that the Warming Center is back open, its volunteers will continue to save lives from the deadly cold. And IJ will continue to seek a final judgment in the case vindicating property rights under the Constitution.

Matt Liles is an IJ attorney and Jeff Rowes is an IJ senior attorney.