RiverStone Health Healthcare for the Homeless invites the community to join in a candlelight vigil.

Without a place to live, it’s difficult to take care of chronic diseases, such as diabetes. Infections become harder to heal and the risk of catching contagious diseases increases. The risk of violence also increases along with the harm caused by exposure to extreme cold and severe weather. In addition, behavioral health issues, such as depression and substance abuse, can also intensify when a person is homeless.

Through RiverStone Health’s Healthcare for the Homeless, more than 1,800 individuals received health services at shelters and other locations around Billings in 2018.  Those individuals made more than 13,150 visits for medical, dental, behavioral health and other services. Common medical services included treatment for hypertension, diabetes, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and heart disease.

Of the homeless individuals seen through Healthcare for the Homeless, more than 1,000 were staying at a shelter or transitional housing and 157 were living on the streets.  Another large group was temporarily “couch surfing,” or doubling up in a temporary living situation.

Although no one has an exact number of homeless individuals in Montana, a January point-in-time survey in 2019 counted 1,343 homeless people in the state. Of those, 333 said they were without shelter.

In Yellowstone County’s District 7, the January survey counted 193 as homeless, or 14 percent of the state’s total. The number of homeless included 29 who were veterans and 53 who were disabled. Of those homeless in the Billings region, 53 were without shelter, and 22 were under the age of 18. Twenty-two were considered chronically homeless, meaning they had a serious disability and had been homeless continuously for one year, or had four episodes of homelessness in the past 3 years. District 7 includes Yellowstone, Carbon, Big Horn, Stillwater and Sweet Grass counties.

The candlelight vigil offers a way to focus on the needs of homeless people living in our community as well as remember homeless people who have died.