The Montana Rescue Mission provides emergency shelter, sobriety support, food and medical care for men, women and families in Billings. Its new campus on the south side of the city includes a cafeteria, multiple lounges, outdoor spaces and a medical clinic with in-house access to public health services and providers.
MRM is one of the organizations under the management of the nonprofit Billings Leadership Foundation, whose executive director Dyann Romeijn was a tour guide Tuesday.
She led legislators through the emergency shelter floor, where she said they regularly reach capacity during the winter. MRM offers 57 beds in its emergency shelter, with ongoing efforts to add more through expansion. Romeijn said those extra beds will help add space and flexibility to some of MRM’s other services, including a developing program to accommodate people across different stages of recovery from drugs and alcohol.
A few of the current short-term residents like Christopher Badia are currently in emergency shelter and hoping to join MRM’s long term recovery program.
“You got me in my monkey suit on the way in,” he said to Romeijn when they stopped by the men’s quarters.
Badia is applying to become a line cook and had a second job interview at a Billings restaurant earlier in the day. Staff say its recovery program has more-than doubled since April to over 70 people.
Romeijn said there’s also a need to house more elders and families with children at the Rescue Mission.
“There are a lot of agencies in our community that deal with families, but they’re also at capacity, and so we’re seeing more and more families,” she said. “We’ve had up to 22 children at one time within our shelter.”
She said expansion of the emergency shelter will add 35 beds, with hopes to wrap up by winter.
