Since it opened in November 2021 Bozeman’s tiny home village has provided housing for more than a dozen people experiencing chronic homelessness.
Data from the first six months of living there show the permanent supportive housing development has helped residents reduce the amount of ER visits and detention center stays.
A 2017 Cost of Homelessness Study tracking 8 homeless individuals estimated that each person accrued on average about $28,000 a year in emergency room visits, detention center costs and social services.
Most of the 13 original tiny home village residents were frequent users of those systems.
In the first six months since the tiny home development opened the 13 residents' ER visits decreased from 115 to 30, according to data from the nonprofit Human Resource Development Council.
“We’re also seeing decreases in utilization of the detention center, and those were the goals - were to decrease usage of emergency department, detention center and the homelessness system,” said Tracy Menuez, Associate Director & Community Development Director for HRDC.
Gallatin detention center incarcerations — which include bookings, but not overnight stays — went from 14 to 11.
Greg Overman, who oversees day-to-day operations at the tiny home village, says another impact of the tiny home community to highlight is that there have been zero exits back into homelessness.
“Moving into a home sounds like this great thing right and that’s the goal, but for them that’s unfamiliar and there can be scary parts to permanence, right?" Overman said. "There can be scary parts to being in one place to having to see the same neighbors everyday."
Since the first 13 residents moved in about a year ago, one person has secured their own housing.
HRDC plans to continue tracking resident outcomes in a data sharing agreement between Bozeman Health and the Gallatin County Detention Center, which is being funded in part by the Montana Healthcare Foundation.
