‘Not why we elected you’: Davis County secured 3 emergency homeless shelters after a church backed out. Residents are furious.

When a Davis County pastor learned local officials needed to come up with a plan to temporarily shelter homeless people on especially frigid nights, he offered up his church as a solution.

His offer came with “the best of intentions,” explained Don Kraftt, of Mountain Road Church, at a public meeting in Fruit Heights earlier this month. The Presbyterian church, nestled in a residential area off Highway 89, already hosts some school groups and orchestra practices. An emergency “code blue” shelter — which opens to, at most, 16 unhoused people when the temperature hits 18 degrees or lower — seemed to fit its mission.

He did not expect to be met with intense backlash, and fear, from his neighbors, who packed that same meeting in protest.

“This issue has become one of contention and anger and even division in this precious community that we are so proud to be apart of,” Kraftt said, “and we certainly do not want to be the cause of such angst.”

That’s why he unexpectedly pulled the church’s offer at that Nov. 6 meeting. His announcement was met with a round of applause from the crowd.

With a chill already in the air, Davis County commissioners this month were left with little recourse. The county is required under an agreement with the state to provide temporary “code blue” winter shelter this season.

So officials there quickly returned to their original plan: Three rotating emergency “code blue” shelter sites, bound for an old county emission center in Kaysville, a senior center in Clearfield and a golf course clubhouse in Layton.

But residents still reject it. Many from Kaysville flooded a County Commission meeting this week, though the planned shelters weren’t on the agenda — so much so that a commissioner worried the Fire Department may need to direct some to leave.

“We’re not cold-hearted, unvirtuous people,” said Joel Harris, who lives blocks away from the Kaysville “code blue” site. “We’re concerned about the safety of our children. We’re concerned about property values.”

Kaysville Mayor Tamara Tran said she had personally emailed the commissioners a series of questions and demands — wanting to know how the site will be managed, whether people will be allowed to loiter outside, and more.

She hoped the commissioners had heard “loud and clear” that Kaysville wasn’t the place for such a shelter. Later, attendees shouted and interrupted Commissioner Lorene Kamalu as she tried to read a submitted written comment that was less critical of the plan. One woman pushed back when Commissioner Bob Stevenson tried to end public comment (which had surpassed the allotted 20 minutes) and move further into the meeting’s agenda.

“These people that are coming to these homeless shelters do not want help. They’re drug addicts,” she said. “They do horrific things.”

“This is not why we elected you,” she continued. “Listen to all of us. Change your agenda.”

Why is this happening?

Davis County leaders say they are in a tough spot. And Kamalu pointed to the Legislature as the cause of the problem, after state lawmakers last year passed a law requiring local emergency shelter plans.

“The law never empowered the county. I think it was next steps for places like Salt Lake County and maybe other counties that already have a general population shelter,” she said. “It was a lot of next steps for them.”

The 2023 law requires Utah’s most populous counties to prepare in advance for sheltering unhoused residents during the winter, including on especially cold “code blue” days.

Counties had two options: create a “winter response plan,” or provide the state with documentation ensuring that they would “address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness within the county throughout the entire year.” If a county chose option two, they also had to submit a plan for “code blue” days.

If counties don’t provide a plan, the state can provide one for them, said Sarah Nielson, a spokesperson for the state’s Office of Homeless Services.

Davis County chose the second option, and is looking to build a permanent facility in 2025, Kamalu said. That’s why they had to develop a cold blue plan. And since the longterm solution is a larger shelter, the “code blue” plan is only for this winter.

Officials there originally sought to procure a “Dignity Bus” from a Florida company that retrofits vehicles into emergency shelters, which can accommodate up to 20 people — four more than the county’s “code blue” plan requires.

But when the county brought that plan to state officials in August, they rejected it because it cost about $80,000 more than the county had been allotted to make winter plans, according to minutes from that meeting. The state had agreed to give the county approximately $100,000 — the lowest allotment given to the state’s first and second-class counties, according to the Homeless Services Board decision document.

Davis County officials then considered a number of other options. For instance, Fruit Heights Mayor John Pohlman said at the Nov. 6 meeting that he proposed more temporary solutions — a tent site near Cherry Hill Water Park that could be transformed into a convenience store and a parking lot, or a slab of concrete at a park that could be retrofitted into a pickleball court — all to no avail.

That’s where Mountain Road Church came in. The idea wasn’t unprecedented: In Utah County, two churches were selected in a rotating roster to host overnight warming centers throughout the winter.

But Davis County residents were incensed. Even after Kraftt announced the church had backed out, many stayed for more than an hour to express fear over the nonexistent temporary shelter site and lament that they weren’t clued into plans sooner.

Kamalu, who spent much of the Nov. 6 meeting fielding questions from residents, told The Tribune on Monday that she doesn’t think the new state law gave Davis County enough options.

Instead of relying on the county to make decisions, for instance, the law established a task force with just one county commissioner and seven city mayors. Their meetings were also conducted out of public view, and Kamalu said commissioners could not discuss the plans without violating the state’s open meeting laws.

“We’ve been seriously criticized for not being able to just make our decisions, or to be more productive with the community,” she said, “but the law has prevented it.”

She thinks more transparency could have assuaged many of the problems they are now facing.

“There might have been community pushback,” she said, “...but I don’t think it would have been a deal-breaker.”

Seeking a site for permanent shelter

Now, local officials are shifting focus to solutions they still have time to influence, like the 80-bed permanent facility that is slated to come online in 2025.

Residents say they want a facility where the county’s homeless population already resides — one near the services and resources that could help those people find housing, mental health treatment and also health care, and where law enforcement can quickly respond if issues arise.

But residents have already raised issues with a potential site in North Salt Lake. They don’t want it in Fruit Heights. They don’t want it in Kaysville. The 15-city county is essentially filled up, Kamalu said, adding that it’s doubtful the facility will end up in a spot that doesn’t offend or draw fear.

Tran, the Kaysville mayor, told The Tribune on Thursday that Kaysville residents “very much want to be part of the solution” to homelessness.

“But after evaluating all of the facts, it is clear to us that this location in Kaysville city is not the right place for this,” she said of the code blue site planned for her city. “So while we strongly oppose this particular location, we want to be part of the dialogue going forward.”

On Thursday, a change.org petition protesting the Kaysville site was gaining traction, making many of the same arguments residents did at meetings — it’s not close enough to services; there are better locations nearer to places homeless people already stay; it could jeopardize safety at a nearby public trail; it could be risky for the unsheltered staying there if they “wander inadvertently onto the tracks.” The petition also noted, “The aluminum building also wouldn’t provide much insulation from loud train noise.”

Despite being critical of the state mandate, Kamalu said the county endeavored to follow the law, which is why they are looking to build their own 80-bed shelter. The law said the facility must have that many beds to qualify for mitigation funds. If they opted for the “winter response plan” option and provided 60 beds, they wouldn’t get the money, but they’d have nearly as many beds.

“That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Why would we do that and not qualify for state funds?”

There is hope, however, that the chaos that defined this year’s homelessness plan will be fixed next year, according to Utah Rep. Ariel Defay, the Republican who represents Davis County. She said at the County Commission meeting this week that a bill file has been opened to help clarify parts of the law.

Stevenson, the Davis County commissioner, said during the same meeting that this issue was “by far the hardest that we’ve dealt with” in his decades of public service.

He said officials were still learning and that many issues remain unknown. For instance, he said, the county hasn’t operated any of its “code blue” sites yet; it’s not clear how many people will show up.

“We’ve been listening to you all along,” he said, promising transparency moving forward.