A Montana town is waging war on its unhoused citizens. One shelter is fighting back

[swag]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/kalispell-montana-homelessness

Excerpt:

. . . In early 2023, Flathead county’s three commissioners wrote a notorious letter that accused those service providers of creating more homelessness. It mentioned, but did not name, a “low-barrier shelter” that had opened recently – a clear reference to the warming center.

The commissioners argued that homelessness was a problem rooted in liberal coastal cities, and its spread the result of travellers from San Francisco or Seattle seeking to export their “homeless lifestyle”. One Flathead county commissioner, Brad Abell, suggested in an interview that the root cause of homelessness was the breakdown of the American family. “And that began with Black families,” he said. “It started with the Black population of the United States.”

The warming center and its allies say such arguments are both offensive and deliberate misinformation. Worse, they believe the startlingly strong rhetoric, coming from elected officials, has given license to acts of violence against unhoused individuals.

Six months after the commissioners’ letter was published, teenagers with neo-Nazi associations were filmed beating a 60-year-old unhoused man to death in a parking lot behind a gas station. At least seven other unhoused men in Kalispell claim to have been jumped, beaten or, in one case, run over around the same time.

The hostility has continued. Many unhoused citizens report being taunted and targeted with paintball guns, firecrackers and cinder blocks thrown at their tents. Some described in interviews how they had taken to carrying knives, machetes, axes and the occasional pistol to protect themselves. They also try to stick together rather than risk being picked off one by one.

. . . more

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/27/kalispell-montana-homelessness

[Eko]

1. Kick

[2naSalit]

2. Been going on for a few years...

The problem is investors buying up all the housing, raising property taxes and pricing homeowners out of their homes they've been in for a long time.

Flathead County, where Kalispel is, is also home to that fuckwad, ryan zinke and many skinhead types. Of course they're shooting homeless people with paintballs and nobody does anything about it. Just over the mountain from ruby ridge btw.

[Skittles]

3. I bet these assholes call themselves CHRISTIANS

of course they do