Every month over 350 people in Salt Lake County become homeless for the first time.  Many of those people struggle to find help.  One huge problem right now is that the homeless shelters in Salt Lake County are full and so over 1,000 people are sleeping outside.  The state of Utah is working to solve that problem by building a 1,200-bed homeless shelter. 
 
Unfortunately, many of the locations being considered for the new shelter are very far away from other places homeless people go to find help.   According to reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune and KSL the following locations are being considered for the new shelter:

• ​LeeKay Conservation Center, at approximately 2100 South and 7200 West,
• Bacchus Highway, at approximately 5600 South Bacchus Highway,
• Standlee Warehouse, at 5 South 5100 West, 
• Salt Lake County Oxbow Jail, 3048 South 1100 West, and,
• Properties on Beck Street in North Salt Lake City.

We used Google Maps to get estimates for how far each of these sites are from the Department of Workforce Services Employment Center in Salt Lake City, located at 720 South 200 East, and how long it would take to get there by car, foot, bicycle and transit.  We did not find a good way to estimate the time it would take to travel to each potential site using a wheelchair.  DWS offices are a likely place a recently homeless person would go for help because that is where people apply for Medicaid, SNAP, cash assistance, job training and other services that can help individuals move out of homelessness.  There are only two DWS employment centers in Salt Lake County and so it is very likely that many newly homeless people will learn about the location of the new homeless shelter at the Sale Lake center.

In addition to looking at travel time from the employment center to a potential shelter site we also looked at how far people would need to travel by foot or wheelchair if they traveled using public transportation and how early and late in the day people could use transit to leave or return to a potential shelter site.  These things are important because they factor into whether a recently homeless person will be able to keep their job if they have to get there from one of these potential shelter sites.

​Here is what we found.

Many homeless people do not have money to pay for public transportation and so it is very important that it would take five hours and forty-seven minutes to walk to the most remote of the potential locations.  That is longer than it would take a person with a car to drive from Salt Lake City to St. George.  Homeless people are disproportionately likely to have physical disabilities that make it hard for them to walk miles and so even the distance they would be required to walk to use public transportation would be impossible for some people.  Homeless people are also disproportionately likely to have cognitive problems or mental health issues that make them less able to navigate a transit trip that includes eight stages alternating between walking, riding a bus and riding a train.

We did not have time to conduct a detailed assessment of how safe the roads to each of these locations would be for pedestrians and bicyclists but we did drive to each location and made a few observations.  None of these locations will be safe for people who are not in cars when there is snow piled on bicycle lanes after snow plows have cleared the roads.  Many of the roads are in industrial areas that were not designed to be safe for bicyclists or pedestrians.   There was a wave of pedestrian fatalities when the existing men's shelter was opened in South Salt Lake City and so it is important to plan for safety from the beginning.

These photos give some sense of road conditions at each of the potential sites.

For many years Crossroads Urban Center has been one of the charitable organizations that benefits from this clothing drive. It plays a big part in our ability to give away warm clothing each winter and we are grateful to Bank of Utah, Arctic Circle and Red Hanger for their efforts to make it a little better each year. This year's clothing drive ends on November 15.

​For more information, visit https://www.bankofutah.com/clothing-drive

Last week on Wednesday, October 9, 2024, the Utah Homeless Services Board voted to use part of $25 million appropriated by the Utah Legislature to purchase 30 acres with the goals of:

• Building a new homeless shelter using prefabricated, pop-up, building materials (like a shelter in Reno, Nevada) with 1,200 beds by October of next year, and,
• Creating a "transformative, centralized, campus" where some other homeless services can be moved.

This vote has been covered extensively by Utah media outlets, including these stories:

• Utah News Dispatch:  Utah homeless board OKs search for up to 1,200-bed ‘centralized campus.’ What now?
• KSL:  Utah Homeless Board approves search for new, 1,200-bed homeless shelter site
• Salt Lake Tribune:  Utah bucks homeless resource center model, will build a new centralized shelter
• Salt Lake Tribune Editorial Board:  Tribune editorial: Utah makes the hard decision to return to a homeless shelter model

The most important measure of how effectively a community is responding to homelessness is how many people are forced to sleep outside because there is nowhere indoors for them to go.  In recent years the number of unsheltered homeless people in Utah has been steadily growing and so there is no doubt that all 1,200 beds are needed.  If those beds are in place by this time next year then lives will be protected from extreme cold next winter and from extreme heat the following summer.  That will save lives.  Being in a shelter should also mean having a caseworker who can help people access additional resources they need to be able to heal and move out of homelessness.
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However, three big questions about the proposal to create a centralized homeless campus remain unanswered at this time.

Right now the biggest proponent of focusing homeless services at a single large shelter or camp is former President Donald Trump.  The page of his campaign website outlining his approach to dealing with homelessness includes these sentences:  "Under my strategy, working with states, we will BAN urban camping wherever possible.  Violators of these bans will be arrested, but they will be given the option to accept treatment and services if they are willing to be rehabilitated. Many of them don’t want that, but we will give them the option.  We will then open up large parcels of inexpensive land, bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and drug rehab specialists, and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified. We will open up our cities again, make them livable and make them beautiful."

Trump's Homelessness Czar when he was President, Robert Marbut, helped create a homeless shelter in San Antonio that is often hailed as the model of a centralized homelessness campus.  Critics of his approach state that, "Dr. Marbut advocates for punitive, mandatory behavioral requirements that are at odds with well-established best practices. He says he does not support the criminalization of homelessness, but his approach uses the threat of jail – by outlawing life-sustaining activities such as “street feeding” programs run by churches, sleeping in public, and panhandling – to force people into large shelters without a path back to housing."

Whether or not those criticisms are valid, it is clear that when it comes to homelessness, Trump and people like Marbut who are advising him, are very focused on adults who are sleeping outside in urban areas.  Trump's policy page does not mention children once.  This is not a surprise, however, because most conversations about homelessness ignore families with children.  This is unfortunate because hundreds of thousands of children experience homelessness every year in the United States and the experience of homelessness has negative long-term impacts on children's physical and mental health and educational attainment.
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In 2022 there were 6,497 people in families with children who received homeless services in Utah.  Right now, children in Salt Lake County are not allowed to stay in the same shelter as childless adults.  If the family shelters are full in a future year, as they have been this year, will families with children be allowed to sleep in the new centralized campus?  

If children are allowed to stay at the central campus what will be done to keep them safe?  In the Utah Homeless Services Board discussion about the proposed centralized campus there was some discussion about how with 30 acres it would be possible to add new shelter space as needed.  It is proposed that the campus will  begin with bunk beds for 1,200 people in shared space.  If our state does not produce more deeply affordable housing it is quite likely we will need 1,200 new beds every four to six years.  It will be hard for children to thrive in a campus with 4,800 residents-- many of whom are struggling with serious mental illness and/or a substance use disorder.
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It would be much better to create shelters and supportive housing specifically for families than to try to figure out how to make facilities designed for childless adults in crisis to meet the needs of children.

Thirty acres is a lot of space and unused, habitable, land is becoming more and more scarce along the Wasatch Front.  If we want people to be able to sleep at a homeless shelter during the night and go to work in the day it is important that the shelter is located at a place where people can get to a job on time using public transportation.  If we want people to be able to sleep in a homeless shelter and get medical care that cannot be provided at an on-site clinic then there will need to be a plan for getting shelter residents to medical appointments on time.   These basic transportation requirements will be almost impossible to meet if the campus is located between the Salt Lake City Airport and the prison.
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A homeless shelter where people are unable to leave to look for work stops being a temporary shelter and becomes a de facto home--- a tragically substandard home with no privacy at any time in the day.  Such an arrangement would not be appropriate for children.

In addition to discussing the idea of creating a centralized campus at their meeting on Wednesday the members of the Utah Homeless Services Board spent a lot of time talking about how Salt Lake City can be pressured to enforce laws on camping, panhandling and other crimes.  That discussion made it clear that one big goal in creating a central campus that includes shelter beds for at least 1,200 people is to make it possible for law enforcement to move people who are sleeping outside to this campus.  It will be very challenging to make a warehouse where people sleep in bunk beds after being dropped off by the police not feel like a jail.  This will be particularly true if the location is remote, if the population at the campus gets too big, or if the behavioral and mental health services available at the campus are less than what is needed.  
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A quasi-correctional facility would be unpleasant for adults.  It would be traumatizing for children.  Utah needs to invest in solutions that meet the needs of homeless children.