Provo’s homeless organize, pack City Council meetings to demand help

Provo • Across the street from City Hall on a recent Tuesday evening, about a dozen unhoused people living in Provo gathered beneath a park pavilion, where homeless advocate Bonnie Shiffler-Olsen helped stack water bottles and boxes of Little Caesars pizzas.

The plan was dinner, then public comment.

Attendees like Jerry Nilsson Jr. and Michael Carpenter decried between bites of pepperoni pizza city rules and a lack of services they say make it hard for people experiencing homelessness to live in Utah’s so-called “Happy Valley.”

“We have to stay on the go a lot,” Carpenter said, or risk arrest and citation for being caught sleeping in public with comforts like a sleeping bag or tent.

That means people are sleep-deprived, said Shiffler-Olsen, and desperate. That’s why the unhoused have packed into the City Council’s chambers for at least two recent meetings, six years after council leaders in 2017 passed an ordinance that banned camping in the city that has no homeless shelters.

Since that ordinance passed, the number of unhoused people accessing shelter and housing services has continued to increase across the state, as well as in Utah and Summit counties, known as the “mountainland” region in the state Department of Workforce Services’ most recent report on homelessness.

In fiscal 2022, 1,257 people accessed shelter in the mountainland region, according to the report. That’s up from 832 the year before and 475 in fiscal 2020.

The city did provide warming centers last winter, and there are a number of nonprofits — including the Food and Care Coalition, and Community Action Services and Food Bank — offering services and resources, such as housing, eviction assistance, overnight shelter and health care. But advocates and the unhoused say there aren’t enough to meet demand, especially for shelter.

Brent Crane, director of the Food and Care Coalition, told The Salt Lake Tribune that his group provided more than 100,000 meals last year to people experiencing homelessness — the second-highest number of meals the group has provided since it was founded in 1988.

“When it comes to a meal, we can always provide enough meals,” he said, “When it comes to housing, I only have 110 units of housing.”

15 minutes to change a life

After the pizza potluck, City Council leaders began their meeting just after 5:30 p.m that day with the standard prayer and Pledge of Allegiance. The room was unusually full — standing room-only — as officials planned to swear-in a class of new firefighters. Carpenter, Nilsson, Shiffler-Olsen and about a half-dozen others experiencing homelessness, or advocating for those who are, filled nearly two rows of chairs on the south side of the room.

“We love seeing so many people,” said council chairperson Katrice MacKay as the meeting began, adding that it doesn’t happen very often.

The group of unhoused waited more than 30 minutes for public comment — listening to celebrations for employee of the month, an award for “distinguished budget” and “best partnership,” the firefighter pinning ceremony and a quarterly report on the city’s budget. Then it was time to speak.

First up was Elise Bauer, a graduate from Southern Utah University, who has been homeless off-and-on throughout her childhood and early 20s.

“I believe there are so many people who are so good … and the way that we treat them, telling them to leave our city, telling them that they can’t car camp, I think something needs to be done,” she said.

Bauer said if the city can’t open a shelter, it should at least regularly provide cooling and warming centers to get people out of the elements.

She finished her remarks just before the two-minute timer sounded, and the group of unhoused clapped — earning a reminder of decorum from public officials.

After the meeting, Bauer told The Tribune more about her life story — getting her bachelor’s degree, her time as a wildland firefighter, how people treated her much differently when she was in her uniform versus when they found her living in her car, and her experience volunteering with the unhoused now that she has more than she once did.

“I think 15 minutes of compassion can change people’s lives,” she said.

What about the 15 minutes of public comment?

“It could,” she said. “I really think it could.”

MacKay, with the Provo City Council, said in a statement that she is grateful for everyone who has spoken up about homelessness at recent meetings.

“Homelessness is a complex challenge that requires input and collaboration from all sectors of our community,” she said. “Your perspectives and experiences provide us with essential insights that help us understand the multifaceted nature of homelessness and the impacts it has on individuals and families in our city.”

‘I don’t know how to stop it’

This City Council meeting was at least the second where people experiencing homelessness have gathered to air their grievances with local leaders.

Shiffler-Olsen said the unhoused began coordinating to attend the meetings in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in June that found cities could enforce camping bans regardless of shelter availability, because such enforcement on public property does not constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The ruling reversed a previous decision from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, called Martin v. Boise, which initially found that governments may not enforce camping bans if no shelter options are available.

“I think that prior to that [SCOTUS] decision, the fact that we had the precedent of Martin v. Boise gave people hope that things could change here,” Shiffler-Olsen said. “That even though we’re in a different circuit district, that eventually it would mean that people could camp, people could shelter themselves that way.”

Now, she said, morale is dangerously low.

“Many of the unhoused that I interact with down here, they feel like they’re being herded like animals, because there is really no place that they can go to rest, to get sleep,” Shiffler-Olsen said. “People are constantly losing their property because they don’t have anywhere that they can keep it.”

Provo’s camping ordinance prohibits sleeping on sidewalks, streets and other public places that impede pedestrian and car traffic, as well as camping on public property without a permit. The rule defines camping as setting up a site with bedding, like a sleeping bag.

This means many of Provo’s unhoused spend their nights walking around, either because they’ve been awoken and asked to move by police officers, or because they are trying to avoid that confrontation, Shiffler-Olsen said.

Crane, director of the Food and Care Coalition, recalled meeting a man soon after the ordinance passed who was so tired from being woken up and asked to move throughout the night that he “fell asleep and face-planted in his soup” mid-conversation.

Provo police officers will “typically advise” people camping on public property that they are violating city code and give them information on available resources, police spokesperson Janna-Lee Holland said in a written response. Then, she said, officers will ask them to move, “usually giving them a 3-day grace period unless the site is causing an obstruction or safety concern.” If an officer returns, and the site remains, that’s when they may issue a citation.

Holland said if someone is found camping on private property, that would constitute a trespassing violation.

Between last October and March, she said the department had issued 20 anti-camping ordinance citations. Last winter, the police department tallied one death for a person experiencing homelessness, she said. That man was found dead outside a business on Jan. 10, when the high temperature was 36 degrees, the low was 25, and there was 1.5 inches of snow on the ground. His death was attributed to hypothermia.

The winter before, when the city wasn’t required to open warming centers, the police department reported that five people experiencing homelessness died. Most, Holland said, were attributed to drugs, alcohol or health conditions. One died from hypothermia.

Carpenter, reached by phone at the Food and Care Coalition where he showers and gets meals, said he has more recently been sleeping on private land in a trailer he’s converted into a shelter with tarps. When the sun comes out, it’s sweltering inside, but at least that staves off the mosquitoes. Not so much the mice, he said, but he still considers himself more fortunate than others.

But, he said, he still needs somewhere reliable to charge his phone and electric scooter and feels like city officials aren’t doing enough to help.

Even outside the coalition building that day, he said he saw police officers “hassling this guy that was sitting on the grass.” That’s why people like him, he said, have to stay “on the go.”

The last public comment during the July 16 meeting came from a man who wished to be identified only as Chuck. He wore an American flag-print cowboy hat, a tattered, sleeveless black shirt and struggled to speak as he outlined his life up to this point.

He had earned a degree, served a mission with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, got married in a temple, had three children and started a business. But, he said, “21 years of doing my best wasn’t enough,” and now he finds himself living on the streets — where he’s seen others die from exposure. One, he said, on the library steps.

“The shots keep on coming, over and over again,” he said, pushing through the sentence as his voice cracked. “I don’t know how to stop it.”