This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A member of Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski's staff appeared ignorant when I asked why the city was watering downtown parks in mid-October. The sprinklers were going full blast in Pioneer Park on Oct. 15 and earlier that week at the library, and yes, I already understood why.
Nothing the city has tried in the past has impacted the downtown homeless population. The sprinklers, combined with aggressive police harassment and taking away the carts and possessions of the homeless, are doing what our failed mental health system couldn't, reducing the homeless population in the downtown area.
When a system fails, we turn on those it failed. The administration, by its actions, is blaming the mentally ill and poor for the administration's inability to deal with homelessness. A byproduct of the city/county actions is that the homeless are moving away from downtown into other neighborhoods.
The mayor may be right, and the problem is the homeless themselves and the administration is doing residents a favor by "cleaning up" downtown. That may be the administration's perception, but not mine. Systematic harassment is no way of dealing with Salt Lake's homeless problem. Pleading ignorance about what's happening makes it worse.
Bernie Hart
Salt Lake City