This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated.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.

It's time we get serious about the homeless problem in Salt Lake City. When men are comfortably shooting up in broad daylight on a public street, as our own journalist witnessed, we aren't doing enough to stop the problem.

Salt Lake City officials recently started a campaign to educate the public to not give money to panhandlers. Officials told the public that giving to panhandlers enables their addictions and exacerbates the drug problem. And they are right, Utahns should not be giving to panhandlers on the streets.

But this is not enough.

Thankfully, The Road Home homeless shelter has stopped sheltering families in its downtown location, to protect these families from the dangers of downtown. Instead, it houses families at its family shelter in Midvale, or provides motel vouchers if there is no room in the shelter.

This is a short term solution. Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, wrote that, "[T]he prospect of decreasing shelter capacity requires our community to increase the real number of affordable housing units and streamline the process for people to exit homelessness."

Again, it is not enough.

New York City had a notorious crime and drug problem in the 1980s, and its corresponding drop in crime during the 1990s was similarly infamous. Some argue that the crime reversal was a direct result of the New York Police Department's adoption of quality-of-life policing, or, the "broken windows" theory of policing. This theory states that authorities need to stop even the smallest crime, like broken windows or graffiti, in order to maintain control over larger lawlessness. Agencies throughout the city employed private security and hired the homeless to clean the streets. Transit police focused on minor offenses. Community groups similarly stamped out disorderly behavior. It worked.

The Legislature has spent much time and money on these serious matters. And they're still serious. And yet, the state just denied Salt Lake County some of the money it requested for supportive services such as mental health and drug addiction treatment.

It is not enough. We don't need more committees or more talking. We need a leader to stand up and do something. We need someone to use our housing-first programs to find homes for those who want them. We need someone to clean up the grocery carts and the camping gear and the strewn trash along 400 and 500 West between 600 South and 100 South in downtown Salt Lake. We need police to arrest the criminals who are selling drugs to the vulnerable populations, and we need these criminals to stay in jail and off our streets. And we need to find a way to pay for long-term treatment beds in addiction recovery centers.

That is what we need. And we need it now. Because what we're doing is not enough.