Missoula renter faces forced month-to-month lease; ‘yearslong’ waitlist for housing vouchers

Kat Hawkins spent one night in a homeless shelter in her past, and she vows to never do it again.

“I’ll do anything to not become homeless again,” she said.

That’s why Hawkins is so alarmed that her property management company in Missoula has refused to give her a yearlong lease on her current apartment and instead is only offering her a month-to-month lease.

She lives at the Playfair Park Townhomes at 1500 McDonald Avenue in Missoula, which are managed by Caras Property Management.

Hawkins believes that it’s an ominous sign that she could be evicted soon. Her current lease expires on July 1. She’s had a one-year lease for three years in a row while living at the property.

“This leaves us vulnerable to the 30-Day No Cause Evictions being handed out so frequently now all over our state,” Hawkins said. “Because they don’t need a valid reason to evict, they can do so any time they want.”

Hawkins asked her management company what has changed so that she cannot be given a one-year lease.

“I said ‘please give me a one-year lease’ because a month-to-month is so insecure,” she recalled.

She was not given a reason, other than Caras Property Management is “not entertaining a 12-month lease at this time.”

She believes the property management company is in the beginning stages of evicting people so units can be renovated. Then, of course, rent increases would follow.

The property management company told her she was given the new terms of her month-to-month lease on April 12 to review it ahead of time and “ask any questions, etc.”

The representative for Caras Property Management did not provide any additional comment to the Missoulian.

Hawkins, 66, uses a low-income Section 8 Housing Choice voucher through the Human Resource Council that subsidizes part of her rent.

She worries that if she’s forced to look for another place to live, she’ll be discriminated against by landlords who don’t want to rent to a voucher-holder.

“A lot of landlords don’t want to deal with the inspection that comes with renting to someone with a Section 8 voucher,” she explained. “Also, if a landlord hears the word ‘homeless’ they don’t want anything to do with that person.”

She’s starting a new job in May, so her goal is to not have to use the voucher anyway.

“Pretty soon I would like to be ineligible for the voucher because I’ll be earning enough,” she said. “That way it can go to someone else.”

At a recent housing presentation, Jim McGrath of the Missoula Housing Authority said there’s a yearslong wait list for people to get low-income housing vouchers in Missoula.

“There’s a set number of them that we have,” he explained. “But it’s a great program. It’s a very critical program to help people.”

McGrath said that the federal government sets what’s called a “fair market rent,” which sets the maximum price of a rental unit that a voucher-holder can rent. The problem, he noted, is that since the pandemic began rents in Missoula have skyrocketed way beyond what the government considers fair.

“This is an unbelievably serious turn of events,” he said. “This is the first time that’s ever happened. To take that critical resource that helps our working families and other populations actually living in Missoula, for that to not be able to work because of those market conditions is very serious.”

The Missoula Housing Authority asked for and was granted a waiver to allow people to use vouchers on homes that are renting for above the fair market rent. However, McGrath said that’s still sometimes not enough.

“We’re still underwater because we’re now seeing rents get above that,” he said. “There’s been real growth in rent prices in the last three or four months.”

He noted that there’s about 1,500 people on a waitlist for Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers in Missoula. That’s actually a drop below the high of well over 1,600 in 2020. But that’s not necessarily good news because it doesn’t indicate lower need for vouchers. In fact, there were a number of applicants who had vouchers but were not able to use them because of sky-high rents and low vacancy. So, those people came off the waitlist but did not find housing, he said.

“So that waitlist number may go down but that doesn’t mean that need was served for that person,” McGrath said.

For Kat Hawkins, the only goal is to not become homeless again. She’s been there before, and knows that crashing on couches or at homeless shelters is the worst-case scenario.

“I’ve been homeless at different points in my life,” she said. “I don’t want to be homeless again. For what? It sounds like they’re getting rid of us and who cares? And they’re gonna put, you know, a new coat of paint on and then up the rent like 300%?”