Montrose Center
Rainbow colored windows on the building's exterior, 2016
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| Established | 1978 |
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| Location | 401 Branard Street Houston, Texas, U.S. |
| Coordinates | 29°44′11″N 95°23′04″W / 29.736522°N 95.384539°WCoordinates: 29°44′11″N 95°23′04″W / 29.736522°N 95.384539°W |
| Director | Dr. Ann Robison |
| Website | www |
The Montrose Center, formerly known as the Montrose Counseling Center (MCC), is an organization that provides mental and behavioral health services for the LGBT community in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It is a member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.
The Montrose Counseling Center opened in 1978, after the widely successful Town Hall Meeting I at the Astrodome. It began by offering primarily behavioral counseling and therapy for LGBT people.
The Center faced many financial burdens in its formative years, particularly because of the high cost of providing health insurance for its employees living with HIV/AIDS. Then, in 1983, the Montrose Activity Center, another LGBT-oriented community center, gave the Montrose Counseling Center $15,000 to keep operating. The Montrose Counseling Center still struggled financially until 1990, when the Ryan White CARE Act was passed, and the Center received funding through the act, allowing it to expand its services. It was the first behavioral health center to receive funding under the Ryan White CARE Act.
In the 1990s the Center became one of the first places in Houston to offer temporary housing to gay men and transgender people. In 2013, the center changed their name from the Montrose Counseling Center to the Montrose Center, because they felt that they offered many more services than just counseling, and did not want people to feel as though they could only come to the center for mental health problems. Around the same time, the windows of the Montrose Center were painted in rainbow colors to represent that it served the LGBT community.
In 2016 the Montrose Center was a target for protest by the Westboro Baptist Church. The group stated that they were protesting the Montrose Center because "[it] is an oozing, purulent sore of sodomite contagion: pushing proud sin and the proliferation of incurable disease". The Montrose Center urged people not to counter-protest the group, but to instead ignore them. Director Ann Robison also said she almost considered the group's visit "a badge of honor", and nearly felt proud that the group realized that the Montrose Center existed and was working for the LGBT community.
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