This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In the past two weeks, local officials involved in the creation of a new and comprehensive homeless services system (including homeless resources centers) have changed to their plans. They announced that only two resources centers would be located in Salt Lake City and another placed in a yet-to-be-determined location elsewhere in Salt Lake County.
Such compromises always leave everyone feeling a little shorted but, while we may have concerns about some specifics of this latest proposal, having all parties agree is the most important element in keeping the momentum of this change. Having worked in homeless services and addiction recovery both in Utah and New England for over a dozen years, I have never seen such a public commitment to addressing these pervasive social problems. I support these important efforts.
However, there continues to be a deeply troubling belief that these resource centers should not be placed in residential areas. In fact, this has been stated by members of the site selection commission as well as neighbors in their attempts to keep new resource centers out of their communities or remove a site from their neighborhoods. While there might be a more detailed zoning density element to this argument, the crux of it appears to focus on the problems that many of us believe homeless people create for homeowners such as crime, drug use, prostitution, litter and general poor hygiene for a neighborhood (and they also seem to exclude those who live in other than single family homes from "residential"). And if one would take the current situation surrounding the Road Home in Salt Lake City, such an argument would appear to be reasonable.
What troubles me is that the new model set forth by Salt Lake County addresses all of those issues, from top to bottom, and yet we continue to hear that the homeless should be put elsewhere. Away from families, and stable neighborhoods and … other people. I do not understand when we decided that those without homes should not have contact with those who do. Even some leaders who advocate for this new model and state it is different from what we currently see seem to undermine such faith by tacitly accepting the status quo by placing these programs outside of "nicer" areas. Do we believe in the new model or not?
Of course, any resource center must meet the community standards in which it is placed — no one would argue this truth. However, it would appear from the location of the Midvale Family Shelter that even homeless children are only welcome in industrial areas. If one would be offended by focusing on building a wall to keep foreigners out, and placing blanket bans on entire nations from entering our borders, why wouldn't we be offended by strikingly similar efforts to keep the blanket population of "the homeless" out of our own neighborhoods?
If we are willing to accept that the homeless do not fit in stable, residential neighborhoods, we are also admitting that we believe they are fundamentally different than other people. I would posit that this is dehumanizing and ultimately destructive to us all. Not just because it undermines a just and fair society, but also because it accepts that the problem should not be shared among us all, but one to be dealt with elsewhere and, if at all possible, far removed from our homes.
The less contact we have with homelessness and these programs, the less likely we will be to serve those who are without shelter tonight, to maintain the highest standards for these homeless resource centers and those who operate them and to hold elected officials accountable to fund those services in the future. We will continue to tolerate lower standards for our homeless citizens because it doesn't hurt our property values.
I am not seeking to condemn people for acting out of fear to protect their own interests. Such protective instincts are natural. But, I am suggesting that our own self-interests alone will never be big enough or bold enough or strong enough to carry the weight of our collective social troubles, especially this one. These problems require us to harness our protective instincts and collectively use them to create a more effective and responsive system to assist the most vulnerable among us.
If our collective efforts are to work, I ask that we all choose to hold these resource centers up to the highest standards rather than seeking to hold them up or hold them out of our residential neighborhoods.
Andrew Johnston represents Salt Lake City Council District 2.