‘No place to go’: hotel sale displaces at least 100 guests

Edward Lauman has lived with his son Carl Lamar at The FairBridge Inn, Suites & Outlaw Convention Center for eight years.

The 60-year-old Lauman was disabled by a stroke and a broken back, yet he serves as a caregiver for his 34-year-old son, who lives with a brain injury. The pair is among at least 100 people — according to the hotel’s CEO — scrambling to find housing after the FairBridge sent a note to extended-stay hotel guests informing them they would need to find other accommodations.

“As many of you already know, the FairBridge Inn & Suites Kalispell, including the Annex, has been sold with a closing date of Feb. 12,” read a notice from the property sent to extended-stay residents Jan. 12. “…The buyers require all rooms of the hotel, including the Annex, be vacated prior to the day of closing.”

The buyers, meanwhile, have reportedly advised the sellers to give current occupants a longer timeframe to move out of the hotel saying they were previously unaware of the notice sent by FairBridge.

“We strongly encourage you to offer the residents 90 days to find alternative housing options and/or to engage with the local housing authorities to find a more suitable and appropriate solution that works for all parties,” said Ziad Elsahili, president of Fortify Holdings, in a letter to FairBridge CEO Steve Rice dated on Jan. 21.

“Nowhere in our contract does it stipulate the property must be vacated in 30 days,” the letter provided to the Inter Lake states. “...We understand that closing is contingent upon you delivering the property to Fortify completely vacant, but we never mandated this timeline you have imposed.”

Fortify, based in Portland, plans to convert the FairBridge into 250 studio apartments, according to a conditional-use permit proposal the company has submitted to the City of Kalispell. The Planning Board approved the permit request last week. It goes before City Council on Feb. 7, but such decisions are typically made on whether a proposal fits with the property, not whether people may be displaced.

Although the proposal will eventually create housing for Kalispell residents, the short-term effects will displace current residents of the extended-stay portion of the hotel.

“We just don’t have no place to go,” said Lauman, who was born and raised in Kalispell.

Kalispell’s 0% vacancy rate makes finding an alternative to the FairBridge a daunting prospect to current guests, many of whom are disabled, elderly or enrolled in various forms of government financial assistance.

In the message sent to guests, FairBridge CEO Steve Rice offered a list of alternative extended-stay hotel options in Kalispell.

“It’s a good time of year for that,” Rice told the Inter Lake. “As anybody in the hotel business knows, there’s lots of empty hotel rooms in Kalispell this time of the year.”

But many of the soon-to-be-displaced FairBridge guests say the cost and the demand are too high at other hotels and rentals.

For Lauman and his son, their best bet looks like the back seat of Lauman’s pickup truck. “That’s our bunk bed,” Lauman said. “Unless somebody opens a door somewhere.”

“FORTIFY IS a wonderful organization that’s purchasing the property,” said Rice, CEO of FairBridge. “We think that they really have a great plan, as does the Planning Board there in Kalispell, to help address the housing crisis that that market seems to be experiencing.”

But not everyone is so confident in the hotel’s buyer.

In a public comment to the Kalispell City Council, Cassidy Kipp, Deputy Director of Community Action Partnership of Northwest Montana, brought up “current concerns” with Fortify Holdings. She cited a November 2021 Tri-Cities Observer news story that reported Fortify had not yet completed any of its prior hotel conversion projects.

Fortify Project Manager Cameron Wagar said Fortify now has two move-in ready properties in Medford, Oregon, and Spokane, Washington.

Other nonprofit leaders in the valley have broader concerns that the situation at the FairBridge jeopardizes the community as a whole.

“We are already working at max capacity,” said Tonya Horn, Executive Director of the Flathead Warming Center.

Horn runs an emergency shelter with 40 beds available each night, but she said the organization turns people away “nightly” because there is no space left.

“That is just heartbreaking,” Horn said.

Adding displaced FairBridge guests into the mix will further stress the city’s other emergency services like police and ambulances, Horn predicted. The additional strain could push the city over the brink of a community emergency, she warned.

“The impact that this could mean on our community is huge,” Horn said.

“We all should stop and think about the ramifications of closing the Fairbridge Inn,” wrote Matt Evans, a former FairBridge guest, to the Inter Lake.

Some guests are hoping there’s still a possibility the Feb. 12 deadline will be extended. But Horn and others believe the solution is more complex than a temporary delay in the move-out date.

Horn wants to see a more coordinated approach to ensuring housing availability to a diverse range of people living in Kalispell, including low-income and disabled people like many of the FairBridge residents.

“The [Kalispell] City Council are very compassionate professionals,” Horn said, but she thinks there is a lot more room for cooperation among various stakeholders to open up affordable housing options in the city.

“It is too late for us to do anything but bow to the powers that be,” wrote Mike Dittrich, a FairBridge guest, to the Daily Inter Lake. “It is not too late for everyone else.”

LEAVING THE FairBridge might mean leaving town altogether for residents like Cheyanne Sciacqua.

Sciacqua, her fiancé Anthony Morris and their six-month-old son Jordan Morris plan to relocate to Missoula if they can’t find housing locally. They believe they could transfer to jobs there if they can’t secure a new place to stay in the Flathead.

“It’s a last resort,” Sciacqua said. “We’re still trying to find a place.”

Her supervisor, Mandi Pate, sought raises from her franchisee when she learned about the fate of the FairBridge.

“There’s good people there,” said Pate, who supervises multiple FairBridge residents.

But without any housing availability, a raise wouldn’t be enough to help households like Sciacqua’s.

She and Morris moved into the FairBridge in February 2020.

“It was a place to call home,” Sciacqua recalled.

What she discovered about the housing market then remains true of her housing search now. “There is nothing,” she said. “You can’t find anything.”

Sciacqua has gone through the traditional routes to securing a rental, and she reached out to several nonprofits, but each avenue she’s pursued has proven to be “another dead end.”

It’s especially stressful as a recent mother and an owner of two dogs, Sciacqua pointed out. “As a first-time parent, you try to do everything you can to provide, not only for yourself, but for them as well,” she said.

Sciacqua feels some of her neighbors in the Annex are in even more dire straits than her family. Some residents don’t have a car, like 72-year-old wheelchair user Alfreda Hamilton-Piland. Others have “no idea” where they’re going to end up, like Macy-Grey Lynn Sage, her husband, and her son, who’s almost 2 years old. Still others face additional extenuating circumstances, like Amber Westphal, whose 7-year-old son Jaeson Anderson recently underwent surgery.

When one single father read the letter sent to residents, Sciacqua said, “he was bawling his eyes out.”