Adrian Vaughn
P.O. Box 10882
Bozeman, Montana 59719

Office (406) 585-9509
Cell (406) 580-2929

Email: office@vonhomes.com

Attributes of the current housing market such as low mortgage rates, a large selection of available product and generous builder incentives bode exceptionally well for potential buyers who find themselves favorably positioned when it comes to making a deal on a new home.

Today’s home buyers have opportunities they haven’t seen in years. Gone are the days when dozens of bidders stood in line for a chance to purchase a home at whatever terms the seller dictated.

Housing consumers should take advantage now of the low rates, competitive prices and great buying opportunities available in the housing market today.

There are a variety of reasons that buyers are holding all the cards, including:

• Prices have leveled off, and even declined in some areas, making homes more affordable for first-time and repeat buyers.

• Houses are staying on the market longer, creating a wider variety of choice for home shoppers.

• Mortgage interest rates remain in a very favorable range, near historic lows.

• Many builders are offering discounted financing packages and value-added incentives such as a major upgrade to close the deal.

• There is a wide range of financing options available for consumers in all price ranges.

• The economy is solid, job creation is strong, and demographic trends portend strong housing demand in years to come - all of which bode well for long-term house price appreciation.

To some extent, it’s true to say that it is always a good time to buy a home, given the equity-building opportunities and tax savings that homeownership affords and the fact that it’s a more solid investment than almost anything else you can think of.

But today’s market is special, in that it’s a much more relaxed atmosphere for buyers than it was when sales were booming. That means you can find the home you want and carefully consider all its attributes before deciding to go ahead with your purchase.

This compares to the frenzied atmosphere that prevailed in many housing markets not too long ago, when buyers had to make a snap decision or risk losing their chance of having a winning bid.

Those who may be sitting on the fence waiting for the market to head lower. Those who try to time the market just right in hopes of buying at the very lowest point are likely to lose out.

First, it’s nearly impossible to predict exactly when the slowing market will start to speed back up again, and in the meantime you’re liable to lose the home of your dreams to another buyer.

Second, if mortgage rates head higher while you’re waiting, or some other aspect of your financing changes, you could easily wind up spending more than if you bought now.

If you want to have the most opportunities in your home purchase now is the best possible time to go for it. Seldom has there been a more advantageous environment for local home shoppers.

Adrian Vaughn is president of the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association, a Bozeman-based trade association representing nearly 11,000 residential home building and remodeling industry members. .

Work begins on Bozeman's first homeless shelter

published on Monday, December 17, 2007 11:48 PM MST

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

published on Saturday, April 18, 2009 10:20 PM MDT

By GAIL SCHONTZLER Chronicle Staff Writer

Paul Thomas stood in the pale winter sunlight, surveyed the destruction he had wrought and saw that it was good.

SEAN SPERRY/CHRONICLE Jim Evans project coordinator for the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association walks through a wall-less shell of the future homeless shelter, Monday after volunteers worked over the weekend to gut the building. Renovations began this weekend on the north 5th street building in an effort to transform the building into Bozeman's first homeless shelter. Everything from sheetrock to cabinets to the kitchen sink had been torn out of the little house that Thomas is transforming into Bozeman's first homeless shelter.

Work started this weekend when Thomas, members of his Beth Israel Church and volunteers from the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association began demolishing old walls, fixtures and concrete with crowbars and sledgehammers.

“No one got hurt, no one got electrocuted, no one hit a gas main,” Thomas joked Monday morning, standing outside the little house at Hemlock Street and North Fifth Avenue.

“It was fun,” Thomas said, smiling. “I think everybody enjoys demo work.”

Adrian Vaughn, head contractor for the project and acting SMBIA president, said it got noisy at times with about eight people tearing things up inside. Outside, Kelly Zolynski-Scharping was ripping up old concrete using a Bobcat with a jackhammer attachment.

“This was one week on the schedule - they got it done in two days,” said Jim Evans, project coordinator for SMBIA.

For seven years, Thomas has delivered hot breakfasts and lunches, coffee, winter clothes and survival gear to Bozeman's homeless from the HIS Soup mobile soup kitchen van.

He gets help from the Gallatin Valley Food Bank and donations from local churches, individuals and restaurants. Still, Thomas has been almost a one-man band in feeding, clothing and ministering to the homeless.

The little concrete-block house, just south of Kmart, is the answer to his longstanding prayers. It's also an answer to a widely shared community desire to “do something” in the wake of last January's discovery that a homeless man had frozen to death in a U-Haul truck in Bozeman.

Now, just a few blocks from the U-Haul lot, the little house is about to become the HIS Soup Rescue Mission and erase Bozeman's black eye as only major city in Montana without a homeless shelter.

Thomas disclosed Monday the name of the man who bought the house for the shelter - Bill Pinna, a lawyer from Raleigh, N.C. Pinna and his wife like to help with homeless projects and have a condo at Big Sky -- “not a fancy one,” Thomas said.

“He couldn't believe there wasn't a shelter in town,” Thomas said. The Pinnas talked to people at local churches and heard about Thomas. They sent him jackets for the homeless and peanut butter for the Food Bank.

“He's a great guy,” Thomas said. “When they come out here, they spend the day with me.”

While Pinna worked from North Carolina to arrange the purchase and insurance, Thomas worked on getting a city permit, applied for nonprofit status, and called SWMBIA to see if local builders would be interested in helping.

“They know about building, I don't,” he said.

The timing was perfect because the builders were looking for a new community project, Vaughn said.

“We pride ourselves on building a better community,” said Shawn Cote, SWMBIA's government and community affairs director.

Builders were eager to volunteer, Vaughn said, particularly because the Chronicle's series of articles on Bozeman's homeless changed some attitudes, and because many knew about Thomas.

“His mobile soup kitchen shows he doesn't just sit around,” Cote said.

The goal is to redo the house's interior first, so people can start using it. Later, the builders will tackle the landscaping and put up a cedar fence for privacy.

“One of the key things is making the (homeless) guys feel comfortable and making the community feel comfortable,” Vaughn said.

Evans said that as they worked Sunday, Thomas was making jokes, keeping everyone in good spirits, and trying to salvage furnishings, no matter how funky or dated. Vaughn quipped that one lamp Thomas wanted to save was “so ugly, it's art.”

“He's really good at taking little things,” Evans said, “and making something bigger.”

The sun shone down on Paul Thomas, Bozeman’s patron saint of the homeless, as he stood outside the little house that’s about to open as the city’s first homeless shelter.

ERIK PETERSEN/CHRONICLE Paul Thomas, who runs the His Soup mobile soup van, talks Friday in the newly completed homeless shelter, Bozeman’s first, which is slated to open Sunday, April 26. “It’s pretty neat,” Thomas, 49, said Friday afternoon.

Wearing his trademark denim overalls, baseball cap and curly Old Testament beard, Thomas deflected any suggestion that getting the shelter finally opened was a big accomplishment.

“It’s God” that did it, said Thomas. “I’m just the middle man.”

Thomas has been feeding Bozeman’s homeless residents from his HIS Soup mobile soup kitchen since June 2000, in rain, summer’s heat and snowstorms. He has dreamed for years of having a shelter.

Now it’s a reality, and Thomas said he’s calling it Amos House, because Amos means “bearer of burdens.”

“I’m happy,” Thomas said, with how the shelter turned out.

“We wanted to make it more homey feeling, not institutional,” he said. “The location is the greatest.”

It has been two years since a homeless man froze to death in a U-Haul truck on a 10-below January night. That shocked the Bozeman community and sparked considerable soul-searching as to why this was the last major city in Montana without a homeless shelter.

It’s been 18 months since Thomas announced he planned to turn the tiny old house just south of Kmart into a rescue mission and the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association volunteered to tackle the renovation.

The house was purchased thanks to the generosity of a North Carolina lawyer, Bill Pinna, who vacationed with his family in Big Sky and was surprised there was no local homeless shelter where they could volunteer at Christmas.

It’s been 14 months since the city issued a building permit. Last Wednesday, the rescue mission passed the Gallatin City-County Health Department’s inspection. And on Friday it received a city occupancy permit.

Thomas plans to take a week to finish some “tweaks” and paperwork, and then open the doors of Amos House to the homeless bright and early on Sunday, April 26. The shelter will be open every day to offer food and shelter, not just when nights are cold, as long as he has the staff, Thomas said.

“Yeah!” Carol Townsend said of the shelter’s imminent opening.

As president and chief executive officer of Greater Gallatin United Way, Townsend has worked for years with about 20 local agencies, churches and volunteers on the homeless issue.

They have banded together in a group called Continuum of Care that meets monthly and strives to expand services to the homeless. The group includes Family Promise, a coalition of church volunteers who provide a house and services for homeless families to get back on their feet, and the Human Resource Development Council, which is seeking solutions for homeless teenagers.

Townsend cautioned that the public seems to have a misperception that the new shelter is going to “solve” Bozeman’s homeless problem.

“Most people are aglow with (the idea) that ‘Yeah! We have found the solution to the U-Haul death,’” she said. However, “Everybody can’t take a deep breath and think we have it solved, because we haven’t.

“This is going to be an important piece of the solution. It’s not the final solution.”

Rescue missions, food kitchens and other services for people in crisis are ultimately just “a Band-Aid approach,” Townsend said. It’s crucial to build up services and support that keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. Those have to start at birth, she said, “not when you’re 40 years old, you have substance-abuse issues and are mentally ill.”

Many people in Bozeman felt affected by the deaths of homeless people and have expressed excitement about Thomas’ shelter, she said. Bozeman should “thank Paul and the unsung heroes,” especially local churches.

“We should be proud we have a great safety net developing,” she said, “beyond the food banks, which have done a tremendous job, and Paul’s mission will be an asset. But those are just pieces.”

‘Beautiful’

Jim Evans used to ignore homeless people.

“I’m the kind of person who drives by the homeless, pretends they’re not there,” Evans said. “I just didn’t know what to do.”

As managing partner in his family’s Glass Doctor business and a member of the Southwest Montana Building Industry Association, Evans spent hundreds of hours volunteering with Thomas to fix up the shelter. He and his wife took on painting and other tasks.

The house’s transformation is remarkable. It started out as a sad, gray cinder-block house that looked pretty down on its luck.

Today it has fresh coats of earth-colored paint, new red doors, a handsome cedar fence, a new roof, new windows, a locked storage shed, a pantry, a handicapped-access ramp and a welcome mat.

Inside, it’s clean and functional, with a stainless steel kitchen, eating area with chairs for 14, two bathrooms with showers, a laundry room and a dorm room with four sturdy metal bunk beds for eight men. Most of the homeless people Thomas serves now are men. Women will be able to eat at the shelter, take showers and take advantage of other services it offers in the future, but it doesn’t have enough room for a women’s dorm.

“The building is beautiful,” Evans said, who said he feels “joyful” that it’s done. “Really, for a volunteer project and with the funds available, I feel it went well, considering for 15 years nobody did anything.”

Volunteers who worked on the project included builders, Bobcat football players and students from Montana State University, and members of Thomas’ church, the Beth Israel Synagogue, who believe Jesus is the messiah but follow Jewish customs. Thomas cut back his mobile meal deliveries to one a day, to have more time to work on the shelter.

SWMBIA builders contributed around $75,000 in labor and materials, Evans said, from reframing the interior and repouring all the concrete to the new roof, drywall, plumbing, windows, and fence. Adrian Vaughn served as general contract at the start of the project and Dan Rosengren finished it up.

“We’re more than happy to do it,” Evans said. “It’s money well spent.

“One thing that kept me going was seeing Paul’s love for people, for the homeless,” Evans said. “I love how he calls it a rescue mission ... (He wants to) get those far from God and from the community and lead them back to life.”

Least of these

Overlooking the shelter’s dining area is a color photograph of Lonesome, a homeless man who had health problems and died alone, outside near Home Depot in the summer of 2006.

Lonesome was “just kinda was the king of the tramps,” Thomas said and smiled. “I knew him longer than anybody.”

Lonesome used to live in this very corner of town, using an old shed and a big bush as shelters, Thomas said. He started out disliking Thomas and his ministry, but eventually changed his mind, which helped HIS Soup gain acceptance from the homeless.

Amos House is stocked with dozens of Bibles, used ones donated by the Gideon Society. Thomas is very open about his Christian message n his white van parked out front looks almost like a hippie, van painted with a rainbow and the words “Yeshua, Jesus, Salvation, Bread of Life, Light of the World.”

Thomas said the rescue mission will offer chapel services and Bible study, but no one will be required to join in as a condition for getting a meal or a bed.

On the wall between the kitchen and dining area, Thomas has handwritten a line from the Bible: “Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by doing so some have unwittingly entertained angels.”

A painting near the coffee urn repeats the theme, showing Jesus as a homeless man receiving a plate of food. It’s a reminder of Jesus’ teaching, that “whatever you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done to me,” Thomas said.

He knows that some homeless folks won’t stay at the rescue mission. For one thing, it will have rules. And some guys feel claustrophobic in a shelter and would rather camp outside all winter. At the shelter, he said, “You can’t wake up and have a beer.”

No tobacco, drugs or alcohol will be allowed inside. People will be allowed to stay for up to 14 days, possibly longer if they’re actively job-hunting and willing to submit to breathalyzer and drug tests. Anyone who gets in a fistfight can be banned permanently.

Thomas also has a strict schedule worked out: Breakfast will be served from 6:30 to 7:30 a.m., open to anyone who shows up. Men can shower from 8 to 10 a.m., women from 1:30 to 11:30 a.m. The shelter will be closed for cleaning, except on very cold days, from 11:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., to meet health rules and prevent bed bug problems.

Chapel services will be at 5 p.m., and dinner will be served from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Check-in for those staying the night will be at 7:30 p.m. Bible study will be at 8 p.m. and lights out is at 10 p.m. Wakeup call is at 5:45 a.m.

Rick Jones, who has been helping Thomas with the soup van, serving 25 to 40 people a day, will be the shelter’s night manager.

Thomas is hopeful this is just the start. Someday he’d like to expand the shelter. And he’d like to offer more than food and a bed, and start programs to help people get back on their feet.

Already a chiropractor has offered to come in and help guests, and nursing students are interested in providing wellness checkups.

If people in the community want to help, that’s great, Thomas said, but people should refrain from dumping old furniture, beds or other items at the house. It’s too small and it has already cost hundreds of dollars to haul unusable junk to the dump.

Thomas has never held any fundraisers or solicited donations. Once, as he was struggling to figure out how to pay for the kitchen equipment, he got a $10,000 check from a donor who preferred to stay anonymous.

“We pray for what we need,” Thomas said, “and God provides.”

Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com or 582-2633.

The public is invited to visit Amos House, just south of Kmart at North Fifth Avenue and Hemlock Street, today from noon to 4 p.m.

Paul Thomas, the shelter’s founder, will cook up a few hundred hamburgers and hot dogs.

“We want to thank everybody,” Thomas said. “We’ve had good support from everyone.”

Information about Thomas’ HIS Soup Rescue Mission can be found online at www.hissoup.org.