Helena Grant Funds Permanent Home for Our Place Recovery Drop-In Center

A $134,600 city of Helena grant will convert the back warehouse of Good Samaritan Ministries' building into the permanent home of Our Place, the organization's walk-in recovery and homelessness drop-in center, ending more than a year of displacement that repeatedly disrupted services for the program's most vulnerable clients.

Phase one of the renovation is already underway, carving out an initial area inside the warehouse so that Our Place's 20 to 30 daily visitors can begin using the space while the full build-out continues. The center will sit directly behind Good Samaritan's thrift store, placing clothing, toiletries, and other daily necessities within the same building as case management, peer support, and recovery group services.

The program's path to this point has been defined by forced moves. Our Place opened in December 2019 at 631 N. Last Chance Gulch, offering internet access, support groups, and drop-in services for people experiencing homelessness or recovering from substance use disorders. On January 1, 2025, new building owners declined to continue the arrangement, and the program was forced to close that location. Helena Area Habitat for Humanity stepped in with a six-month lease at its former ReStore building at 1531 National Ave., but that was always a temporary fix.

Services Manager Mikayla Kapphan said the stop-and-start cycle took a toll on clients and staff alike. "We really needed something permanent, something stable that we could know our clients were going to have somewhere to go," she said.

Mission and strategy manager Eric Kroeger called the grant-funded move a turning point after what he described as a period of "instable flux." "We're just very blessed to have this coming to us now, when we've got this solid plan to move forward," Kroeger said. "It's going to be huge." Beyond the logistics, Kroeger said the goal of the consolidated space is something harder to quantify: "Them feeling welcome, feeling like they belong somewhere, that they even feel like a human person."

With the thrift store directly accessible from the same building, clients will no longer need to travel between separate locations for basics and services. City officials framed the $134,600 grant as an investment in both public safety and human services, aimed at reducing street-level homelessness and improving care continuity for people cycling in and out of crisis. Good Samaritan Ministries has operated social services in Helena since the 1980s and has directed more than $25 million in assistance to Lewis and Clark County residents over that period.