The first step is admitting that you have a problem.
The people the state of Utah has tasked with finding shelter for the homeless among us have officially admitted that the state’s much-trumpeted 2019 solution to homelessness in Salt Lake City — tearing down a large, central shelter and replacing it with three, much smaller “service centers” — has been a bust.
Blame for this can be assigned to many people and bodies. The problem is complex and the solutions hard to find. But the bottom line has always been the bottom line: The state — that is, the Utah Legislature — just wasn’t willing to commit enough money to making their preferred solutions work.
It took some nerve for the new Utah Homeless Services Board to face the unpleasant truth. It may have helped that that body didn’t exist when the Legislature decided on the service center approach, and so has no need to stick to it.
And there is still a risk that the new plan, the outlines of which were approved Wednesday, will also be a failure if that board, the county and the various cities, the Utah Office of Homeless Services, the Legislature and the governor ever again try to solve this problem on the cheap. This is a problem that is on all of us to face.
Lawmakers did this year start the process toward this new — well, old — approach when, in the final days of the session, they coughed up $25 million for a new centralized shelter and another $21.8 million for other operations and support.
That was far short of the $115 million contained in Gov. Spencer Cox’s proposed budget. One suspects it might not have even been that much had lawmakers not felt some remorse for the glee with which they promised nearly $2 billion in public money for a downtown sports pleasure dome and a proposed Major League Baseball stadium on North Temple Street.
It’s not that everything was wonderful before. The old 1,100-bed Road Home Shelter in the Rio Grande neighborhood was overstressed and had its hands full just keeping people alive, especially in the brutal Utah winter.
The nearby Pioneer Park neighborhood became a refuge for the homeless and a lawless area where drug dealers plied their trade. People with serious mental health or substance abuse issues were left to wander the streets, either committing crimes or being the victim of them, making the neighborhood a frightening place to go.
It was, as it is, a problem for all of us to face, beyond the ability of the city, county or private charities to handle. The state’s solution was to condemn and destroy the shelter and build three new service centers. The total number of available beds for the homeless declined to 800, even as the number of homeless souls increased. But the theory was that would be OK because the more aggressive support offered there would move those in need out of the centers and into permanent housing, clearing space in the centers for those who still needed help.
But chintzy budgeting for services and a continuing lack of affordable housing, especially the kind of housing that includes counseling and case management services, doomed that idea.
A recent state survey showed that at least 216 unsheltered persons died in Utah in 2023, many of them of drug or alcohol-related problems.
Homeless encampments sprang up, or grew, around Salt Lake County and the homeless population noticeably increased in areas such as Logan and St. George. Drugs, especially the new plague of fentanyl, are still a problem.
Temporary winter facilities were opened, closed and opened again. But we still see homeless on our streets, in our parks and along our river beds.
Now the plan is to build a new central shelter, one with 1,200 beds on 30 acres, at a location to be determined by the end of the year. It would not only house the state’s still-growing unsheltered population but provide case management and other services to deal with each individual in a way that will really help.
Combined with the three existing service centers and the new microshelter operation on 700 West, there is hope that the new system will be up to the task.
If it is, credit will belong to the board, the office and Director Wayne Niederhauser, the Legislature and the push provided by other, private groups, especially the Utah Impact Partnership.
The partnership has raised more than $15 million in private funds to aid various programs for the homeless and those in need of substance abuse and mental health services. Perhaps more important, it has leveraged its influence to demand more out of the public agencies in a way that gives private donors more confidence that their gifts will actually do some lasting good.
What everyone needs to keep in mind is that, as you don’t fix crime by building a jail, and you don’t provide education by building a school, you don’t solve homelessness by building a shelter. Staffing, services and affordable housing are essential, and won’t be there unless we are willing to pay for them.
