A Park County organization that helps people in crisis with housing, advocates, supplies and emergency funds is seeking to expand its Cody office to serve more people in the county’s largest city.

Currently, Crisis Intervention Services has to send people in need to its Powell office for a number of services. 

Executive Director Lisa Peterman asked county commissioners Tuesday to support a grant proposal for $411,862 in federal funding from a Covid relief fund to finance a renovation of the Cody office. She also has plans for a future expansion to increase emergency housing in the area.

“We’ve been trying to do this for a number of years,” she said.

“We’ll combine the entire downstairs space and renovate the kitchen and the bathrooms,” Peterman said. “There’s a number of things that we can’t do in Cody right now. We can’t do support groups in Cody because the space is not ADA compliant. And we can’t do the supervised visitation and custody exchange. We just don’t have the room for it.” 

This comes at a time when the need for the service has been increasing rapidly. Since Covid began, Peterman said bed days — number of bays a person spends at the facility — have increased year-to-year from 150 to 1,550.

She said that has been due in large part to the housing issues in Cody.

“All of the little houses that were rented are now VRBOs,” she said. 

Commissioners unanimously agreed to back the grant proposal with a letter of support and also to investigate if there would be empty space in the Park County Complex for the CIS Cody staff during renovations.