Proposed Facility for Homeless People Raises Concerns About Coercion, Control and a Shift Away from Evidence-Based Care
Lawmakers in Utah took steps to make the state’s proposed detention center for people experiencing chronic homelessness a reality during the most recent legislative session.
Last year, state officials unveiled plans for a 1,300-bed homeless services campus located on roughly 16 acres of land outside of Salt Lake City. The campus includes 300 beds for people who were involuntarily committed, and a bevy of services ranging from health care to reemployment and mental health services. Advocates have claimed that the facility would act more like a jail than a homeless shelter.
The plan faced bipartisan pushback during Utah’s 120-day legislative session. Democrats authored bills that would bring more transparency to the process, requiring the state to submit a comprehensive plan before approving plans to build the shelter and adding ways for people who live in the shelter to hold shelter workers accountable for complaints and living conditions. Some Republicans pushed back on the campus idea due to its potential impact on the Great Salt Lake.
At the end of the session, the legislature passed more than $43 million in spending to pay for the new shelter. That total includes $17.6 million in ongoing and $26 million in one-time funds, part of which will be used to create a program addressing “high utilizers” in the homeless services system, Deseret News reported. The funding hinges on local governments matching it at a 1:1 ratio.
Notably, no money was approved during the legislative session to build the 1,300-bed shelter. Overall, the shelter is expected to cost $75 million to build and $35 million annually to operate. But lawmakers are expected to take up the issue during the next legislative session.
“I don’t know if we’ve ever seen the Legislature show a vote of confidence like this,” former Rep. Tyler Clancy, a 29-year-old Republican and Gov. Spencer Cox’s incoming homeless coordinator, told Deseret News. “I see a huge sign of support that we’re all rowing in the same direction.”
Federal Policy Changes Are Reshaping Local Homelessness Responses
Utah’s new shelter was proposed at a time when homeless services have reached a significant crossroad. At the federal level, the Trump administration has sought to pare back its support for local homeless services by revising the criteria to receive funding from the Continuum of Care grant program, the largest source of federal funding for homeless services. Some of the proposed changes include allocating more money to religious organizations and capping expenditures for permanent supportive housing at 30% of the total grant awarded. For comparison, about 90% of CoC grant expenditures go toward supporting existing PSH properties.
Advocates estimated the changes could cause as many as 170,000 people in PSH to lose their homes. A federal judge in Rhode Island has blocked the administration’s proposed changes. However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has made it clear it will continue pursuing the changes in other ways.
Similarly, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring homelessness a criminal justice and mental health issue. It also called on the federal government to stop supporting Housing First programs, even though multiple studies have shown Housing First is the most effective way to end homelessness. That executive order has been considered the genesis for Utah’s proposed shelter.
Rising Costs, Not Failed Policy, Are Driving Homelessness
Locally, Utah was already moving away from Housing First before Trump signed his executive order. That’s despite the state claiming that Housing First helped reduce homelessness by 91% between 2005 and 2015. However, chronic homelessness has surged by 288%, accounting for roughly 673 people, across the Beehive State since 2015, leading some local officials to claim that Housing First failed.
That argument artfully ignores the other factors that are contributing to chronic homelessness, like the sharp rise in rents during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lack of long-term shelter space in Utah. Since 2020, median rents in Salt Lake County, Utah, have surged by 34%, according to a Zillow analysis. That outpaced the 24% growth in average annual monthly wages in Salt Lake County, data from the Department of Workforce Services showed.
The dislocation of rents and wages is one of the primary driving factors behind the rising tide of homelessness across the nation. A Government Accountability Office report from 2020 found that every $100 increase in median rents correlates with a 9% growth in local rates of homelessness.
Instead of creating the massive shelter, Utah advocates are calling on lawmakers to increase low-barrier shelters. Some service providers have said they are “bulging at the seams” to help all the people who need it.
“The need is here, and it’s time for the community to come together to address that in a meaningful manner,” Heather Crockett, executive director at the William A. Burnard Warming Center in Logan, Utah, told local news station KSL.com.
Advocates Call for Housing Solutions Over Institutional Expansion
Now is not the time to be silent about homelessness in America. Poverty and homelessness are both policy choices, not personal failures. That’s why we need you to contact your officials and tell them you support legislation that:
- Streamlines the development of affordable housing
- Reduces barriers for people experiencing homelessness to enter permanent housing
- Bolsters government response to homelessness
Together, we can end homelessness.