For the past two years the Coalition of Religious Communities has been working to educate faith communities about child homelessness and its long term impact on children in Utah.  After two years of study, we are not ready to propose a three part plan for reducing child homelessness in Utah.  The outlines of the plan can be found in our Fall Newsletter, which can be found below.  We will have hard copies of the newsletter at Crossroads Urban Center's Annual Poverty Summit and information about how you can get involved with efforts to promote these policies with elected officials.  

Crossroads Urban Center's annual  poverty summit is on this Saturday, August 25, and is going to to be focused on specific ideas for reducing homelessness  in Salt Lake County and Utah.  You do not need to be a policy expert to participate in the conversation but it may help if you think about the following seven facts beforehand.

1.  More Utahns receive homeless services than you might think.  According to Utah's Homelessness Dashboard, 19,226 Utahns accessed services from a homeless services provider between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.  13,531 of those people were served by a homeless shelter.  
 
2.  More Utah children are homeless each year than you might want to believe.  The period of life when people in the United States are most likely to become homeless is during the first year of life.  The second most likely time is between the ages of one and five years old.  According to Utah's Homelessness Dashboard, 4,662 children aged 17 or younger accessed services from a homeless services provider between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.  2,636 of those children were served by an emergency homeless shelter.  This number does not include children sleeping in a domestic violence shelter or a car or who are otherwise homeless.  During the 2015-2016 school year 15,094 Utah children were counted as homeless by their school district.
 
3.  Domestic violence is a major cause of child homelessness in Utah.  Utah's 2018 Point in Time Count found that 42 percent of homeless children were classified as currently fleeing domestic violence.  Domestic violence service providers do not participate in the state homeless services database for privacy reasons and so we do not have data for how many children became homeless because of domestic violence over the course of the past year.
 
4.  Most people receiving homeless services in Utah receive them in Salt Lake County.  According to Utah's Homelessness Dashboard, about 70 percent of people receiving homeless services in Utah receive them in Salt Lake County. According to the Census Bureau, 36.6 percent of Utahns live in Salt Lake County.  Another 32 percent of Utahns live in Davis, Tooele and Utah Counties which all border Salt Lake County.

5.  Most people who become homeless are only homeless for less than a month and do not return to the shelter after they leave.  According to Utah's 2018 report on homelessness, 70 percent of homeless individuals and 51 percent of homeless families that live at homeless shelter leave that shelter within one month.  Over 60 percent of individuals who leave the homeless shelter do not return during the next 24 months.  

6.  Utah's shrinking supply of affordable housing is one big reason so many families and individuals become homeless.  According to the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies, Utah had 15,332 less apartments available for less than $850 per month in 2016 than it had in 2006.  Over half of the affordable units lost during this period were located in the Salt Lake City metro area,

7.  Only five percent of homeless people remain in the shelter for six months or more but those people make up a large share of the people sleeping in the shelter on most nights.  Five percent of the 13,531 people who were served by a homeless shelter between July 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018, is 677 people.  677 people would be 27.6 percent of the 2,456 Utahns found living in a shelter during the 2018 Point in Time Count.  

Thank you for taking the time to read through these facts.  We hope to see you at the poverty summit on Saturday!  The summit begins at 9:00 AM and will take place at First United Methodist Church, which is located on the corner of 200 South and 200 East in downtown Salt Lake City.  Everyone is welcome to attend all, or part, of the summit.  The full summit agenda can be found here. 

Data Sources:
Utah Homelessness Data Dashboard
Policy Statement on Meeting the Needs of Families with Young Children Experiencing and At Risk of Homelessness from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development U.S. Department of Education
Federal Data Summary: School Years 2013-14 to 2015-16, by the National Center for Homeless Education 
State of Utah Annual Report on HOMELESSNESS 2018
United States Census Bureau Quick Facts
CHANGE IN RENTAL UNITS BY MONTHLY RENT, 2006-2016 on Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies website