Preliminary Historical Note

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

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