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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
