How Housing Can Help Break the Substance Use Cycle
On Montana’s Flathead Reservation, one man is changing lives
When people arrive at the Salish and Kootenai Housing Authority office seeking help from Daniel Tromp to find a home, he knows a lot about many of them before they ever say a word about their lives.
He has spent his life on the Flathead Reservation in western Montana and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The spectacular vistas and natural beauty of these lands belie what happens indoors for many here, where substance use, mental illness, and job loss upends lives. Tromp, who is 45, knows this because he’s seen it among his own family. He knows it could have happened to him.
But he found a way to break this cycle of substance use and now spends his days trying to help others find housing that offers the stability people need as they seek better lives.
Hopeful stories like Tromp’s are happening every day in communities across the nation but are often overshadowed by the sheer enormity of the substance use taking lives and splintering families.
Those seeking help often face barriers, such as a lack of culturally competent care that respects patients’ cultural norms and beliefs, as well as inconsistent follow-up. Native Americans and Alaska Natives also face unique burdens such as historical underfunding of the Indian Health Service and the impact of generational trauma from federal policies created to forcefully assimilate Indigenous people.
This month, the Biden administration announced that it would provide up to $1.48 billion to states and $63 million to Tribes to help address the surge in overdoses in 2024. The Pew Charitable Trusts is working at the state and federal levels to increase access to medications proved to help those with substance use disorders and to expand access to mental health treatment. Pew is also partnering with Native-led organizations to optimize funding for culturally competent programs that center traditional healing practices. The work by Pew and other organizations to increase care is essential, but in the end, all those efforts roll down to communities such as the Flathead Reservation and to people like Daniel Tromp.
Tromp has few memories of his mother before the age of 10. He and his twin sister, Rachelle, and his brother, Jason, lived with their father, who had remarried. But by their teenage years, his siblings moved in with their mother and her husband, and Daniel stayed with them during the summers, moving in more permanently when he was 16.
It was a time, Tromp recalled, of alcohol and “drugs, drugs, drugs.” The family was evicted from their home on the reservation because of his mother and stepfather’s substance use, and they spent six months living in a tent in the mountains before regaining more permanent housing.
By the time Tromp was 20, “I easily could have become a drug addict,” he recalled. “That’s what I was surrounded by.” He said he didn’t realize at first that his exposure to drugs and alcohol at an early age wasn’t normal. He would talk about what went on at home to friends, and “people would look at me like I was a weirdo. I started realizing how not normal it was.”
He found a way to put himself through college and studied business. After he landed the job at the housing authority, he took a course so he could teach credit counseling to others. Out of pure curiosity, he signed up for a workshop on generational poverty that he learned about through the housing authority. “My eyes just started opening up,” he said. “I was like, oh my God, that’s us exactly.”
By the time he was 26, his stepfather had died by suicide, and five years later, his mother died from complications of substance use. He took in his two youngest half-brothers, who were 7 and 13 at the time. The oldest lived with him until he graduated from high school, and the youngest stayed with Daniel until he was 23.
By the time Daniel was in his late 20s, he landed a job with the housing authority.
“One of his biggest strengths is his accountability,” said Jody Cahoon Perez, the authority’s executive director. “He applies the pressure on himself to get things done.”
The housing authority offers support to eligible tribal members living on the Flathead Reservation. Services range from subsidized low-income rentals units to downpayment assistance to help buying a first home, to providing free housing for those in crisis, including those who are struggling with substance use disorder or mental health conditions.
Now serving as finance manager, Tromp has held several roles throughout his tenure. One involved working with the organization’s transitional living center, which provides temporary housing to families and individuals who have emergency needs. He sees himself in the people he has helped who have struggled with job loss, substance use, or mental health.
“They had backgrounds just like me,” he said. And, he said, many are reluctant to seek care because of the stigma associated with asking for help.
As Tromp moved ahead, staying away from drugs and pursuing his career, members of his family remained trapped in substance use, and some spent time in jail. Tromp said he was fortunate because he had his dad, whom he could always count on for support, and good friends to lean on, and he was motivated to care for his younger half-brothers. His stepfather’s and mother’s deaths “changed my priorities to an extent. I knew I had to get a job, step up, and be more responsible, and it all fell into place.”
As hard as it was at that time, more challenges were to come.
One day seven years ago, Tromp’s phone rang, and local youth protection authorities were on the line asking him to take in his nieces. His younger brother could no longer care for them. After years of helping others on the reservation, it was time for him to turn again to his own family.
“I was like, ‘What? You want them to move in right now? Like right now?’” said Tromp, who laughs when recalling the memory.
His nieces, Kai-cee, who then was 7, and Kodi, who was 4, moved in with him. And at age 38, Tromp became a single dad.
“I had basically no help,” he said. But he had a vision for a better life for the girls. He made sure they got to school, got busy in activities, stayed away from drugs and alcohol—and watched him go to work every day to earn a living for them. He said he tries to be a positive role model for them.
The girls have felt the change. Last year, Kodi got an “excellent” score on a school essay about her uncle Dan, whom she called “My Hero.”
Today, Tromp sounds like a proud father when he talks about Kai-cee and Kodi. They are straight-A students and stellar athletes. And he reminds his nieces to be kind to others at school, “because you have no idea what’s going on in their home,” he said.
He also sounds like someone who knows he’s changed his own life and helped others to do it, too. “I am a firm believer that the only way that the cycle of addiction and sadness is broken is that someone in the family has to step up and break it.”
Julia Barnes is a senior associate with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ institutional communications team.
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