Local leaders in Salt Lake County say they submitted a plan for homeless Utahns to have expanded shelter access this winter, meeting a new, state-mandated deadline to do so, but offered few specifics on the proposal.
The plan would make hundreds of new beds available this winter, Salt Lake Valley mayors said at a news conference Tuesday morning, but officials who attended the announcement refused to say what cities could host the additional beds.
“That’s part of the plan,” Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini said, “and I am not going to talk about that today.”
Silvestrini said the plan includes 600 overflow beds and potentially 200 other beds — a significant increase in the number of beds leaders sought to open last winter. Some parts of the plan, he said, could be “more permanent than others.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Millcreek Mayor Jeff Silvestrini joins other Salt Lake County leaders and mayors gathered at Pioneer Park on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, to announce a homeless plan for winter has been submitted for approval.
The Millcreek mayor, who co-chaired the task force to put together the shelter plan, was joined at the announcement by Salt Lake County Criminal Justice Initiatives Director Jean Hill, West Valley City Mayor Karen Lang, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, and state homelessness coordinator Wayne Niederhauser.
Silvestrini said the refusal to share details about the proposal stems from property issues that could arise if details were publicized, questions that still surround funding streams that need shoring up, and not wanting to “create a stir” in a particular neighborhood where a shelter may not come to fruition.
“This isn’t a victory lap,” he said. “This is a step along the way.”
Mendenhall said unlike last year, when overflow shelter was only open overnight, this year’s plan includes arrangements for 24-hour shelter.
The plan is the result of a measure passed by the Utah Legislature in March as part of a larger bill addressing homeless services.
This year’s demands amended a process created by the Legislature in 2022 that required leaders within the county to submit a plan for opening temporary overflow shelters in winter.
Last year, the state saw at least five unsheltered Salt Lake City residents die over winter, prompting Mendenhall to issue an emergency order allowing shelters in Utah’s capital to expand capacity.
At the announcement of the emergency order, Niederhauser told reporters that, up until then, he had been confident in the system’s response to homelessness heading into winter.
“The state was leading that charge by statute,” he said, “and then that confidence has been shattered over the last week with the amount of people that are accessing shelter, even though we’ve provided more beds than we ever have, and earlier than we ever have before.”
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall joins other Salt Lake County leaders and mayors at Pioneer Park on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023, to announce a homeless plan for winter has been submitted for approval.
The new law requires the county to create a task force to outline its winter response for the coming season to assure it meets a target bed count provided by the local homeless council. State statute also requires a detailed transportation plan, and how the county will respond in a “code blue” event, which is declared by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services when temperatures are forecast to dip below 15 degrees.
Utah’s Office of Homeless Services must determine whether the plan meets the state’s standards by Aug. 15, but Niederhauser said the state would report its findings by Aug. 10.
If the state rejects the plan, it could draw up and implement its own shelter plan. Niederhauser said that won’t happen.
Other larger counties in the state — including shelterless Utah and Davis counties — will be required to submit winter response plans next year.
