On Our Way Home: A Shared Path Toward Housing Stability in Missoula

Missoula has a new community roadmap for making houselessness rare, brief, and non-recurring. On Our Way Home: Missoula Community Houselessness Strategy 2025–2028 recognizes that meaningful progress requires a coordinated response — one built with people who have lived experience, service providers, public systems, property managers, health care partners, neighborhoods, and local leaders.

The Housing Stability Collective is proud to align our work with this shared vision. Our role is to help fill a critical gap that can emerge after a neighbor is housed: consistent, relationship-based support that helps people navigate challenges, strengthen stability, and remain housed over time.

A Strategy Built by Community

On Our Way Home was developed through a year-long community process led by Homebase in partnership with the City of Missoula and local partners. The process incorporated local data, interviews, focus groups with unhoused Missoulians, a town hall, national best practices, and a 16-member Leadership Group representing many parts of the community. Nearly one-third of the Leadership Group members had current or past lived experience of houselessness.

That process matters. People closest to houselessness bring essential expertise about what is working, where systems break down, and what support looks like in real life. The strategy is not owned by a single organization; it is designed as a community-led framework for coordinated action.

Three Priorities for Action

The strategy focuses on three system-level priorities that can strengthen Missoula''s ability to prevent and resolve houselessness:

1. Right-size beds and supportive services so that shelter, transitional options, housing, and ongoing support better match community needs.

2. Secure sustainable funding by coordinating and braiding local, state, federal, health care, philanthropic, faith-based, and private resources.

3. Build capacity among service providers so organizations can retain staff, respond effectively, and deliver the services neighbors need.

The strategy is intentionally a flexible framework rather than a fixed list of deadlines. A cross-sector coalition — including people with lived expertise — is intended to guide implementation, establish annual workplans, and report progress to the community.

Where HSC Fits

Housing is a major milestone, but it is not the end of the journey. For neighbors moving into scattered-site housing without embedded supportive services, challenges can arise quickly: understanding a lease, setting up utilities, addressing a landlord concern, connecting to health or recovery care, finding community, or navigating a benefits issue.

The Housing Stability Collective offers peer-led, relationship-based support after housing placement. Our Peer Specialist Team works alongside neighbors to provide:

• Tenancy stabilization and practical move-in support • Navigation of housing, benefits, health, behavioral health, and recovery systems • Rapid, accountable connections to community providers with available capacity • Support with barriers that may put housing at risk • Flexible contact that adapts as a neighbor''s needs and life circumstances change

This approach complements — not duplicates — Missoula''s existing providers. By strengthening coordination, building trust, and helping neighbors connect to timely support, we can help make the broader housing-stability system more responsive and effective.

A Community Commitment

On Our Way Home reflects an important truth: no single organization can solve houselessness alone. Progress depends on coordinated systems, sustained investment, shared accountability, and the leadership of people with lived experience. The strategy has been formally adopted and endorsed by 10 community agencies, including the City and County, housing and service providers, public health partners, and United Way of Missoula County.

The Housing Stability Collective is committed to being part of that work — supporting neighbors after housing, partnering across systems, and helping ensure that a housing placement can become a lasting home.

Read the full strategy: On Our Way Home: Missoula Community Houselessness Strategy 2025–2028 — www.engagemissoula.com/on-our-way-home/widgets/80558/documents