But since the end of MERA nine months ago, helping those facing eviction has become more difficult and local organizations such as HRDC are noticing the impact.

“MERA was a relief valve for folks,” said Hannah Altman, the HRDC’s housing and youth services director, who also oversees the homelessness prevention program. “We had worked with the state to administer that program … and (now we’re returning to) a smaller homeless prevention program that helps folks that are behind in rent, but the funding is low and the requirements are so stringent.”

HRDC has continued fielding 10 or so people a week seeking eviction-related assistance, Altman said. Though it’s a decrease compared to the influx seen during the pandemic, the organization has only been able to approve one application for rental assistance since July.

On the other side of town from HRDC’s office downtown, off Tschache Lane near North 19th Avenue, Family Promise of Gallatin Valley has also seen changes. According to Carrie Gilbertson, the director of family services, the number of people the nonprofit has supported for eviction-specific assistance, be it case management or monetary assistance, has tripled in the past year.

During the 2021-22 fiscal year, Family Promise assisted 97 people. This past year, the number jumped to 315.

“We have seen an increase in the last months of people requesting assistance from us. I just don’t know if that’s directly attached to that financial assistance,” Marissa Dunn, a family support specialist at Family Promise, said referring to the ending of MERA.

“I think we could infer,” Gilberston said, echoing Dunn. “It went from 97 to 315, (we) could certainly infer that that is at least one of the factors.”

Despite government assistance programs, people still struggled with eviction during the pandemic.

A recent report from the Montana Legal Services Association found that most often evictions impact the lowest-income families in the state. The report documents the experiences of 62 individuals and families who faced eviction during the pandemic.

Of the respondents, MSLA found that the vast majority spent an unsustainable amount of their annual income on rent and that when facing an eviction over half spent 10% of their income just to pay for eviction-related costs.

The report found that 82% of respondents were spending more than 30% of their income on rent and of those, about half were spending more than 50% on rent.

For those who did face eviction, beyond financial issues, the impact can reach far into their lives, “resulting in increased cost of housing, stress and anxiety contributing to job loss, increased rates of poverty, poorer physical health, and mental health disorders,” a press release for the report said.

“One hundred percent of respondents saw increases in certain expenses during the pandemic,” Daniel Webster, an attorney for MSLA said. “Whether that (was) increase is childcare expenses, housing expenses… as you know rental prices went up, increased medical costs, loss of employment… that made it difficult.”

For many, eviction can be the start of a downward spiral, causing a swath of other issues beyond losing their home.

“Eviction is not just the condition of poverty,” Webster said, quoting sociologist Matthew Desmond, founder of Princeton’s Eviction Lab and author of Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. “It is the cause of it.”

What is clear is both HRDC and Family Promise are seeing the impacts of the sundowning of MERA and the ongoing need of the community.

But whether the number of evictions actually occurring has increased is murky because clear eviction data can be hard to find.

Part of the reason, according to Adam Chapnik, a research specialist at Princeton’s Eviction Lab, is that in Montana, it’s difficult to track the number of evictions.

“We don’t have any specific data for Montana recently, just because the court system isn’t too transparent about filing counts,” Chapnik said. “In the case of Montana, there is no public dashboard — the website to be able to search court filings is very difficult to navigate, so we can’t really figure out how many filings are eviction filings.”

Many evictions in Montana also occur without court filings.

The Eviction Lab collects nationwide eviction data and for Montana only has data available from 2000 until 2018. Based on that, in 2018 Montana saw around 2,100 evictions, a rate that has remained relatively consistent since 2010.

The Montana Legal Services Association said it has actually seen a slight decrease in cases in the past year, compared to during the pandemic. So far in 2023, they’ve handled 1,525 cases compared to 1,666 in 2022 and 1,439 in 2021, though some cases are handled over multiple years and are counted in each year they are active.

In 2018 and 2019, MSLA handled 776 and 878 cases, respectively.

However, this could be related to the increase in funding that was available to MLSA during the pandemic, allowing them to work with more cases, and doesn’t necessarily represent a decrease in demand for services, according to Emma O’Neil, a development associate at MSLA.

Still, when compared to national trends, Chapnik said that once rental assistance programs such as MERA ended, evictions generally went up, often beyond pre-pandemic levels.

“(During the pandemic) the number of eviction filings across the country dropped, so now that those programs are all over, we saw eviction filing rates return quickly to previous levels, and in about half of the cities that we track, we saw more eviction filings than before the pandemic,” he said. “As a whole, filing trends are now pretty similar to what they were before the pandemic, but in many localities, it’s still far above what it was previously.”

In Gallatin County, besides Family Promise and HRDC, other options for those that are behind in rent and may soon face an eviction are slim. The state continues to operate its housing program providing housing vouchers, but nothing really compares to what MERA provided.

And even for Family Promise and HRDC, which offer case management, budgeting and financial assistance, the requirements are stringent, and many people don’t qualify.

For Family Promise, applicants must have a child under 18 in the household and HRDC’s homelessness prevention program abides by the requirements of the Emergency Solutions Grant — which funds the program — that an applicant must earn 30% of the average median income or about $22,100 for an individual or $31,550 for a family of four.

In a two-working-parent household with two children, that equates to $7.58 an hour per parent both working full time — far below Montana’s minimum wage of $10.30.

For a single individual, that’d mean they’d only be making $10.62 an hour working full-time.

The applicant(s) also must also be able to provide proof of future financial sustainability or — that they have guaranteed income and are budgeting.

However, once eviction proceedings begin for a client, HRDC may not continue to provide financial assistance.

And as HRDC’s numbers show, the vast majority don’t qualify.

“If someone comes in and they’re months behind on rent because of a loss of wages due to a health scare or needing time to take care of aging parents or child care… and we say, ‘hey, we also need you to demonstrate that you can pay this forward,” Altman said. “It’s tough... it’s tough restrictions.”