Comments Re Warming Center from Dacia WrightJudi Funk
From: Dacia Wright <dacia.wright@yahoo.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 12, 2024 2:18 PM
To: Kalispell Meetings Public Comment
Subject: EXTERNAL Comments regarding Warming Center
Over the past fifteen months, I've been managing an apartment complex along the bicycle path on the
west side of town as well as the Dog Wash and Offices at Michael's Gas Station on the corner of Hwy 2 &
Meridian.
The Dog Wash is self-service and is open twenty four hours a day. It is under surveillance and has
repeatedly encountered intoxicated transients trying to stay warm. If it's nice out, they will sleep next to
the garbage cans behind the dog/car wash.
The first month I started managing the apartments I knew there would be a whole separate problem for
the tenants when I was approached by three transients in my car- they were walking through our parking
lot to get to the bike path --one of them motioned me to roll down my window and asked for money.
We've had multiple reports of them sleeping in the stairwells. There has been reports of excessive noise
between 1 and 5 am in the stairwells. I've had to call and place reports multiple times to the Police
Department. We have them sleeping in our kids playhouse leaving their beer cans, cigarette
butts, condoms and clothing for the children to see. We've had tenants back out of rental agreements
after seeing & hearing the amount of traffic walking through our complex. Another transient was passed
out next to our garbage can this spring and a tenant had to call the authorities. They hung a dead
carcass along the fence on the bike trail. A rotting willow tree behind the complex is now being used for
firewood down at the trestle. This is just a fraction of what I've witnessed.
I have family and friends that work at Albertsons and the reports they claim are that it's definitely a
problem —theft is higher then ever during the winter months when they're open, they try to come in the
store and just hangout all day so they can get warm, they stand outside and use the plug ins outside to try
and charge their phones, they wonder the parking lot asking people for money, they've been threatened
to be stabbed multiple times at the store while they're open. They lock themselves in the bathroom and
refuse to leave, they've had them pass out in the stalls and have to call the cops to get them out,
they've had many of them trespassed as well.
To say the safety of the people isn't affected by the increase in homelessness and the opening/closing of
the Warming Center is just asinine.
Sincerely,
Dacia M. Larson
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