After last year’s legislative session steered significant funds to more shelter beds in the Beehive State, the 2025 lawmaking period saw a handful of meaningful tweaks to Utah’s efforts to ease homelessness.
Legislators sent almost $181 million to the Utah Office of Homeless Services to run the system. They also dedicated $1.9 million in ongoing funding for the operation of a second family shelter in the Salt Lake Valley and $6 million in one-time funds to get it up and running. A $5.5 million single-use pot will aid state officials in getting emergency shelters set up on cold winter nights.
The money and legislative changes come as the state grapples with a growing homelessness crisis, local resistance to emergency shelters in neighborhoods throughout Utah and concerns about public safety, especially in Salt Lake City.
Here’s a look at some passed bills that aim to improve the state’s response to homelessness:
HB465: Public Safety Amendments
This controversial bill from Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, originally would have obligated Salt Lake City to enter into a contract with the Utah Department of Public Safety to clear illegal encampments and target drug dealing — or lose some state funding. Mayor Erin Mendenhall came out hard against this version.
“All of the sticks have been taken out of this bill, and I would say it’s largely carrots now,” Snider said after edits to the measure. “It still requires the city to enter into an agreement but also allows the city to come forward to an interim committee and talk about ways to improve. There’s also an imminent domain provision.”
That provision allows the city and the state to build a homeless services facility on city-owned land. It remains to be seen whether that facility is a temporary space — which Mendenhall offered to host in her public safety plan — or the state’s proposed permanent 1,200-bed campus.
Snider’s bill passed both chambers with only Democrats voting against. It still needs Gov. Spencer Cox’s signature before it becomes law.
HB199: Substance Use Treatment and Enforcement Amendments
One of two bills from Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, targeting drug use and dealing, this one contains a range of provisions related to how the state treats people dealing with addiction and suffering from overdoses. It encourages first responders, for example, to carry lists of substance abuse and mental health service providers to hand out to those they treat.
The legislation also tells the state to collect more information about syringe exchanges, allows opioid treatment providers to operate mobile units, and cracks down on property owners and operators who allow drug manufacturing and use on their premises.
HB329: Homeless Services Amendments
Clancy’s other bill addressing homelessness also touches on a number of issues. The top takeaway is that the Provo Republican wants to make the state’s homeless shelters and the residents who live around them safer by requiring more safety measures, like bag checks, in them.
The legislation also creates a data-sharing pilot program — the so-called Know-by-Name system — to better match homeless Utahns to the services they need and allows the use of state funding to pay for out-of-state travel costs when someone experiencing homelessness wants to reconnect with a support system elsewhere.
Both of Clancy’s bills cleared the House and Senate unanimously and await Cox’s signature.
HB505: Homeless Services Revisions
This narrower bill from Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, mainly bars people from camping on state property and penalizes them with a misdemeanor if they do so. It changes how cities that host shelters report how they used crucial state funds pegged for mitigating the effects of those facilities and requires the Utah Homeless Services Board to consider how cities applying for funds enforce camping bans when doling out money.
The measure awaits the governor’s signature.
SB78: Homeless Individuals Protection Amendments
Sen. Jen Plumb, D-Salt Lake City, looked to solve a slightly different problem with this bill. After working with a homeless family who experienced abuse at the hands of a private service provider, she drew up legislation that creates an ombudsman to oversee the state’s homeless services.
“This would be, essentially, [an office] where we could start collecting information on any possible violations,” Plumb said on the Senate floor, “abuses as well as possible places where the state needs to focus more attention or perhaps have more influence.”
The measure also requires service providers to display posters indicating clients can reach out to the ombudsman with complaints and calls for the official to report annually various statistics to state lawmakers.
It passed the Senate with a dozen Republicans voting alongside Democrats for it. The House initially rejected it but then adopted it a day later. It still needs Cox’s thumbs-up.
