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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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.
​
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.  
​
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.

Our emergency food pantries served 12,278 people during the month of August, 2024.  That is 3,425 more people than we served in August of last year.  During the firs eight months of this year our pantries have served 84,798 people-- 31,191 more than we served during the first eight months of last year.

We are so grateful to all of the amazing volunteers, donors and other supporters who help us meet the need in our community.

Crossroads Urban Center will be holding an event to recognize volunteers on Thursday, September 26, 2024 at Mt. Tabor Lutheran Church.  Volunteers are  essential to our ability to serve so many people in our two food pantries and at our thrift store.  Here are the names of volunteers we plan to honor this year:

• BARBARA TAYLOR :   Westside Food Pantry                          
• CHRIS ANDERSON:  Thrift Store         
• ELEONORE KULP &   ADAM FRITZ:  Downtown Food Pantry    
• DRIVEN TO CARE AMBASSADORS:  Manning Award