Family Shelter of the Bitterroot — Support (Gary Locke)
The letter as it was sent, with a readable transcription below. The signed PDF is also linked.
Text of the letter
Family Shelter of the Bitterroot — Support Letter (Gary Locke)
April 30, 2025
To: Ravalli County Board of Health
Dear Reader,
The mission of the “FAMILY SHELTER OF THE BITTERROOT, INC.” has been to provide food, shelter and opportunity to circumstantially homeless families since we started in the old Shiloh Christian Ministries building in January 2010 when we met Harris Himes. He was a USMC Lieutenant Colonel and is an ordained Calvary Chapel pastor which makes him perfectly qualified to operate a homeless shelter with his no-nonsense management style and a heart as big as the Montana outdoors.
Since October 2011, he has offered safe and affordable shelter to an average of 50 homeless single men who would otherwise have been sleeping in local parks at night and roaming Hamilton’s Main Street hoping for a handout from some kind person. In recent years he has offered parking space for people living in RV’s that would otherwise have been parked on the side streets in any one of the towns in the valley.
The physical location being in the county, close to services available in Hamilton with only one contiguous private property reduces the likelihood of neighbor complainants. The potential for groundwater contamination from sewage effluent is minimized as there is a lot of sand and gravel for filtration between the facility and the Bitterroot River. It is also very fortunate that the only operation in that potentially affected area is a concrete and gravel company rather than a food processing plant or worse yet, a kindergarten.
It is my humble opinion that we should award Harris a commendation for using his property to help those who are the most in need, rather than try to find a technicality to make him cease and desist those efforts.
Thank you for all the good that you do for all of us Bitterrooters.
Gary Locke, Board Chair and Founder Family Shelter of the Bitterroot, Inc. P.O. Box 656 Hamilton MT 59840 501-c-3 tax deductible organization EIN 27-1700647