Missoula mayor Andrea Davis talks Israel/Hamas ceasefire resolution, combatting homelessness and more
Plus: Punk band Bull Market's unexpected optimism, and filmmaker Kimberly Reed talks Zooey Zephyr
Welcome to Big Sky Chat House— a newsletter of candid conversations with movers and shakers in Montana.
If you found this email in your Promotions folder, please move it to your Primary inbox. That will make it easier to find down the road, and teach Gmail to send it to other subscribers’ Primary inboxes as well.
After a long—and occasionally heated—campaign, Missoula elected Andrea Davis as the city’s new mayor last November. The former Executive Director of the non-profit organization Homeword—and before that, Director of Planning and Development at the Missoula Housing Authority—Davis made affordable housing a central pillar of her campaign. The message seemed to resonate with voters, who elected her on a roughly 60/40 split. (Incidentally, her opponent, City Council member Mike Nugent, received an “unprecedented” $125,000 donation from the National Association of Realtors that received substantial criticism during the campaign.)
Davis began her term just a couple of weeks after the election, and I was curious to ask her about her approach to housing and homelessness, now that she’s begun her new position. Furthermore, shortly before we spoke, Missoula City Council voted to table a resolution that would have formally called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and our conversation touches on the resolution, as well as her take on what a second Trump Administration could mean for the Garden City, low-hanging goals she plans to bring to her administration and more.
Max: Before we get into some heavier questions, I was wondering whether you’re having any luck finding opportunities for downtime?
Mayor Andrea Davis: My downtime, well, let me just say, it doesn't exist. I'm an avid skier, but we just don't have the epic snow year tugging me up to Snowbowl. I did get up there last Sunday, and it was amazing. Third Nutcracker was really great. I'm sneaking in hikes, too.
[But] I’m working on the weekends: there are events, and I need to catch up on work. I don't mean to be a workaholic. I think it's just kind of necessary.
The first event I spoke at in early December was with Mountain Bike Missoula. They originally had asked Congressman Pat Williams to speak, and he was unable to make it. He was going to speak on his work creating the Rattlesnake Wilderness in the 1970’s and 80’s, as a United States Congressmen.
So I stood in for him. What an awesome opportunity. You're helping to increase the stoke factor for the community, and at an event where we're celebrating why Missoula is so unique, and the attributes of getting out on two wheels, and how we partner as a local government and a non-profit, and state and federal lands, and how all these things have to come together to create these opportunities for recreation and health and kids’ opportunities. It was awesome.
Right on. Switching gears: a few weeks ago, city council tabled a resolution that would have called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. I was curious for your perspective on the issue.
This is a really difficult, challenging situation for local government. [Last] Monday night, we heard from another whole group of folks that were incredibly disappointed that city council did not take a stand. You're almost damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Of course you want to show this unified support for what's happening there, yet I can really recognize some of the points that were made [in opposition to the resolution]: is that where we're going to spend our time and energy when the amount of work on our plates is vast?
At the risk of putting too fine a point on it, do you think tabling the ceasefire was the right move?
I would say yes, I think it was. I support the Council’s decision to table the ceasefire because of the division is it causing in our community, and [in] recognition that local government doesn’t have direct ability to cause a ceasefire in an enormously complex situation.
Rabbi Kula, during public comment, described the tabling as “Tai Ku,” a term from the Jewish faith for putting a decision on the shelf. Perhaps it gets revisited, and people are brought together over this rather than pulled apart.
Housing was obviously a major issue during the campaign. What action items feel possible right now?
The primary piece the city is undertaking right now is code reform. It's a long process. The city has intentionally started out with a longer process than maybe other communities would, so there could be greater community engagement.
The city was already underway with this when the state legislature passed Senate Bill 382, the Montana Land Use Planning Act, in 2023. That's a very large initiative. Missoula was well-positioned to be able to work on that because we already had these significant code updates [planned], along with a reexamination of our growth policy.
Does the city's existing plan generally run in tandem with the new state policies, or do they butt heads?
I would say more in tandem. I think Missoula's in a great position to be able to implement the legislative changes because we were already on this path.
A recent report shows that Montana has experienced one of the highest spikes of homelessness in the country. Obviously this is not an issue exclusive to Missoula, but I’m curious for your take on that dynamic.
In 2023, we have more people that are living with homelessness than in any other time in United States history, at least since we've been tracking it.
We know that supply is clearly an issue. But I believe it's not the only thing that will guarantee truly affordable homes for people. How do we make sure that we're finding those opportunities? [Opportunities] like the city just did in partnership with Homeword, the Missoula Housing Authority and Blue Line Development? That's the project I completed before taking office, the Trinity Apartments project.
We partnered with the county, which donated five acres of land for this half of the project; it's built on two separate sites. Half of it is over at the corner of Mullen and Broadway. There's 130 apartments over there, and 30 of those are permanent supportive housing [known as Blue Heron Place]. Those are small apartments with rental assistance that are meant for people who are chronically homeless.
“Chronically homeless” means living on the streets for a few years dealing with co-occurring illnesses, like mental and behavioral health challenges or substance use challenges. And these are also folks that are the hardest to house. These are folks that are never going to get a Section 8 [voucher] anymore.
The idea here is that people can come as they are. And there are wraparound services to help people be successful, once they're stably housed: opportunities not only for physical healthcare but also behavioral healthcare and support that enables people to live healthier lives.
I have heard from colleagues and peers, including the municipal court judges, that once Blue Heron opened, some of the folks in our community that had frequent interactions with law enforcement, or were showing up in municipal court or the emergency room, have decreased [those interactions] as a result.
The other thing to note is that happened at the same time that we opened the Johnson Street Emergency shelter last summer. There was a lot of conflict in our community, as you know, because we had people camping in places that we hadn't normally seen.
[In 2022 and 2023], the Ninth Circuit court ruled that municipalities can't criminalize homelessness. The city is not doing that. We're not ticketing people for being homeless. You cannot ask people to move from public right-of-ways if there is not enough shelter space. You can't move encampments if there's not enough shelter space, except under the time-manner-place provision.
I think where we're at as a community is that we need short-term solutions for some of the more challenging circumstances. We continue to see urban camping and the challenges associated with that.
Obviously we have people who are living with homelessness across all sorts of different demographics. We have families that are able to get stable housing through the YWCA Meadowlark program, for example. There's the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space that is a project of the Hope Rescue Mission.
That program does come with requirements. Folks have to be on the path to sobriety; they have to be able to demonstrate that they're looking for a home [and] that they are looking for employment. They're finding success with that program: almost half of the people who have lived at the Temporary Safe Outdoor Space have actually found permanent housing.
A lot of where the consternation and challenge comes [is with] people who are not that stable; folks who are managing more significant mental and behavioral health challenges and/or substance addiction. That's really the minority percentage of folks that are living with homelessness in our community, but where the majority of our attention goes.
The city and the county utilized the last of our federal dollars to keep the Johnson Street facility open 24 hours a day for one year, in partnership with the Poverello Center. We have Black Knight Security there as well on site and inside the building. And that's working pretty well so far. I will tell you that nobody died when it was 30 degrees below.
Right after I was elected, but before I took office, the city council were going to bring a draft camping ordinance to the floor to discuss. And I asked them to just take a break on that so we could coordinate a larger working group. They agreed. And so that's what we're doing now. At the end of February, the city council will be holding a working session including myself and a municipal court judge, and eleven other people [in addition to City Council], folks who represent the unhoused tenant tenants, advocates, business representatives, neighborhood representatives, service representatives.
Switching gears: have you had much communication with the governor since becoming mayor, and if so, what that dynamic has been like?
I have not had a chance yet. He has started a property tax task force, and City Councilor Sandra Vasecka is on that.
Are there examples of low-hanging fruit, sort of quick and accessible ways to make impactful change in local government?
We're working to [provide] city council with more information at their fingertips so they're not digging through things when their constituents ask about complicated issues, so we're going to bring together information on an intraweb for council.
And as far as the budget process, we're going to flip it on its head and have department presentations to council and have public feedback on the different aspects of the budget before I finalize a mayor's executive budget. Normally the mayor's executive budget would be at the front end and people would work to fit into that.
Before we wrap up: looking into the hypothetical magic ball, what do you think a second Trump term would mean for a place like Missoula?
Before we started recording, we were talking about the division in our community and how unfortunately that makes the work that we need to get done harder. I have seen his administration foster division. I believe it's a political strategy.
So I think that we could probably count on that. It’s unfortunate because more than ever we need to come together on some of the biggest issues. We just talked about homelessness; at the end of the day, local government is being asked to do something we cannot do on our own.
We're going to do the best we can with our local partners and the limited amount of resources that we have. But it will never be enough to truly address [the] major systemic issues that require the effort of the federal government and our state government working with local governments and the private sector to pull off really big things together.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
One more thing (or two)…
I loved chatting with Phil Griffin, guitarist/vocalist of the stellar Montana punk band Bull Market, for The Pulp. Bull Market’s music can veer heavy, but Griffin proved very amiable, and keen to chat about his past life as a paralegal and the joys of owning a flip phone. You can read the story here.
I also recently spoke to the filmmaker Kimberly Reed for Montana Free Press about Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr, her short film that follows the Missoula state representative in the weeks following her censure last year. You can read the interview here.
Thanks so much for being here. You can always reach me via email, the comment section below, or on the Elon Machine, @SavageLevenson.