Hamilton’s Linda Massa Youth Home closes

by Nathan Boddy

Youth Homes, the Montana based non-profit organization dedicated to providing care, support and shelter to teens in crisis in Montana, has one less facility in Montana following the closure of the Linda Massa Youth Home in Hamilton last month. The home, which began as the Bitterroot Youth Home, was rebranded in honor of Linda Massa whose efforts as a founding member of the youth home helped bring structure and security to over 2000 young people during its 22-year run.

Deana Wolfe, Linda Massa’s daughter, explained the reasoning behind closure of the home.

“Our referrals had gone way down,” said Wolfe, adding that by late summer the home was operating with only three youth in the eight-bed facility. 

The youth who stay in the homes are generally referred to the service from either youth court or from the Child and Family Services Division of Montana.  Funding does come from the referring service, but that is not enough to maintain the home in operation. Therefore, after each of the remaining three youth moved on in mid-September, the time had come to close the home’s door.  

Wolfe says that community support of the youth home had never wavered, but staffing the home for diminishing numbers would have been a disservice to the community whose largess helped fund an important portion of the home’s operation.

The decision to close the home was not taken lightly, Wolfe said, but she said many of the youth who had been placed recently had required a level of mental and legal resources that were hard to obtain in Hamilton.

“I’m sad about it,” said Wolfe. “It’s not like it’s suddenly not needed.”

She said that families haven’t changed, but the closure ultimately was a financial decision.

Wolfe’s mother, Linda Massa, had been a school teacher prior to beginning the hardware and building supply business which still holds the Massa name, and Wolfe said that her mother always had a soft spot for children. Massa was one of the founding board members of the youth home and very passionate about helping kids whenever able.

“At the youth home, to even have helped one child would have been worth it all,” said Wolfe. “But throughout the 22 years it was open, [the home] helped over 2000. It is just a huge honor for her name to be associated with that.”

Statewide, Youth Homes provides places for Montana youth who have experienced abuse, neglect, or family instability through a variety of housing arrangements including short term crisis shelters, therapeutic group homes and long term living. The organization also provides foster care, adoption and outpatient services which reach hundreds of Montana families yearly. The housing component, however, has experienced a dramatic change in numbers in recent years.

Amy Schaer, Executive Director at Youth Homes, said that only several years ago Montana had “one of the largest numbers of youth in the foster care system,” with over 4000 youth in the system.

“Now we have around 2,000,” she said.

A number of changes have led to the decline in numbers that Schaer and other providers have noticed, but ultimately, Schaer made it clear that the closure would not mean a disadvantage to those Bitterroot Valley youth who need placement since there are still available locations in nearby Missoula, and more importantly, the track record of what the Linda Massa Youth Home accomplished is beyond laudable.

“The Linda Massa Youth Home has had successes for 20 years,” she said. “We’ve served over 2000 kids, and we don’t want to diminish those successes. Those successes are still out there and living their lives, and so we are so grateful for the community for the work that they’ve allowed us to do there.”