BOZEMAN - “I know and I’ve heard that there’s a lot of people in Bozeman that don’t want this place here, I would say, just give people a chance,” Bruce Darland said.
Darland has lived in the HRDC’s Housing First Village for a little more than three weeks, his first stable home in quite some time. As a member of the Bozeman community, without housing, Darland is still getting used to coming home to four walls. Ample storage gives him the ability to keep his belongings tucked away, a stovetop allows Darland to have homemade meals, and a space to call his own lets him rest easy.
“So while being diagnosed with PTSD, it was hard for me to live in a place, even a shelter…when they mentioned these little houses, I jumped on it,” Darland said.
Darland says that his stress has been decreased by nearly 100 percent after moving into one of the ‘Tiny Homes’ at the HRDC.
“A place of hopelessness. Something like this, where you give housing first gives them a warm place, a dry place, and a place where they can store their belongings and take a shower to prepare themselves for a job: with dignity,” Campbell-Pearson said.
Connie Campbell-Pearson is the Deacon at St. James Episcopal Church in Bozeman and has been involved with the HRDC Housing First Village since its inception. Campbell-Pearson noticed a need for shelter and housing for the displaced community in Bozeman.
“ I just said there’s got to be something we can do as a church, and someone sent me a picture of a little 98 sq. ft house on a little trailer…and I said, ‘we can do this, I could do that,’” Campbell-Pearson said.
From the City of Bozeman to MSU, to the HRDC, Campbell-Pearson followed the project every step of the way.
“A place of hopelessness. Something like this, where you give housing first gives them a warm place, a dry place, and a place where they can store their belongings and take a shower to prepare themselves for a job: with dignity,” Campbell-Pearson said.
The size of the house means little, but the meaning these homes have is everything, Campbell-Pearson said. Seven more homes will be added to the community, in partnership with Habitat for Humanity.
“It’s providing the stability that I needed in order to take medications and stay presentable in public to where you can go out and do work. When people know when you're not homeless, people treat you different—which is a little sad at times,” Darland said.
A Target Registry has been created to assist those living in these homes.
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