To stand without government funding, a St. George homeless shelter runs a dog daycare and other side businesses

Editor’s note • Through a grant from the Local Media Association, The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting on homelessness in Utah communities outside of the Salt Lake Valley.

St. George • Switchpoint, St. George’s only adult homeless shelter, is pinning its financial hopes on sales of homemade muffins.

And on the hydroponic tower the nonprofit is constructing in the yard behind the shelter, a “vertical farm” where it will cultivate fast-growing lettuce and other produce for area restaurants. It’s also banking on its dog day care, Bed ‘n’ Biscuits, its clothing boutique, and the shop where employees repair lawn mowers and leaf blowers.

Switchpoint leaders like to say these businesses are “multi-intentional,” meaning they serve several purposes — and one of them is for the shelter to attain financial independence from the government.

“We’re asking our clients to move to self-sufficiency,” said Linda Stay, Switchpoint’s development director. “So we’ve got to hold ourselves to the same standard.”

The nonprofit already draws almost a third of its revenue from its social enterprises. And the proposed muffin-making business and produce venture will only help it “inch closer and closer,” Stay said, to its goal of independence from the federal and state grants that make up about a quarter of its income.

Switchpoint’s resolve reflects the frustrations of many smaller communities that feel shortchanged by Utah leaders when it comes time to dole out homelessness funding.

The Salt Lake Valley in 2020 got more than $15 million from the state, or about 78% of the total awarded — which many argue is appropriate, since it’s the epicenter for homelessness in Utah. But this level of support stands in sharp contrast with the $516,000, or 2.7%, that Washington County received.

The organization isn’t at a point yet where it can lean on its business revenues, with the pet day care and drug treatment and clinical service programs costing Switchpoint more than they make, according to last year’s financial report. The thrift store alone was profitable, generating about $100,000.

But Switchpoint leaders don’t just see these businesses as moneymakers. They also use them to clear barriers to finding homes and help clients build job skills and feel a sense of agency.

“Not only is there a potential to generate revenue, but it also gives people at least a temporary job,” Wayne Niederhauser, the state’s new homeless services coordinator, said of business programs such as the ones operated by Switchpoint. “It’s the dignity of work. The dignity of being productive.”

‘A whole community effort’

Founded by businesswoman Carol Hollowell in 2014, Switchpoint perhaps places a particular emphasis on its businesses, compared to other homeless service providers. But it’s by no means alone in experimenting with social enterprises.

The Other Side Academy, a live-in program in Salt Lake City that teaches vocational and life skills, runs a moving service and consignment shop staffed by residents. Many participate as an alternative to incarceration and receive free treatment at the academy, which supports itself largely through its work programs.

And Volunteers of America, Utah, operates Maud’s Cafe as a way for residents of the nonprofit’s Youth Resource Center to gain job experience.

Niederhauser said if service providers can generate money through business enterprises, they free up more government funding for housing and case management. Collaboration between the public and private sectors, he added, is essential for taking on the problems of homelessness.

“Government alone is not going to be able to fix all of that,” he said. “It’s going to take a whole community effort.”

Niederhauser said one of his jobs as homeless services coordinator will be figuring out how to distribute funding across the state in an equitable way, something he believes will be no easy task.

“There are a lot of people around the state who say it’s not equal,” he said. “And obviously, it’s not equal. But how do you measure what’s fair?”

Michelle Flynn, executive director of The Road Home, a nonprofit that runs three emergency resource centers in the Salt Lake Valley, said it’s great when service providers try out various approaches. She said she has seen many versions of social enterprises in smaller, private shelter programs.

The Road Home, she said, runs larger resource centers and seeks to get people into housing as quickly as possible. Its emphasis is on linking clients with a paying job, state workforce services counselors and other community resources that will follow them out of an emergency shelter.

“We want to definitely connect people with skills and resources,” she said, “the types that can continue to support them as they move out.”

For The Road Home, it’s not a priority to pull away from state and federal funding. Flynn contends that addressing homelessness requires contributions from across the community — including government partners who should, she said, be heavily invested in making sure their constituents have access to shelter.

“We’re really here as a response to other systems that haven’t been able to help keep people housed in the first place. And we know that we need those partnerships with affordable housing and support services,” she said. “All of those things are the fabric, really, of a good, stable, vibrant society that will result in a reduction in homelessness.”

Addressing what’s ‘keeping people stuck’

The barriers to helping people out of homelessness are vast, notes Stay, ranging from a loss of government identification needed to apply for jobs to challenges obtaining needed mental health or drug addiction treatment.

Switchpoint aims to identify the hurdles that are “keeping people stuck,” she said, and find ways to help this population overcome them.

Sometimes, that means the nonprofit has to create the resources itself.

One of the major barriers Switchpoint identified to getting people back on their feet was a lack of access to drug treatment for those who didn’t have good insurance or the ability to pay privately. Only two residential treatment centers in the area accepted Medicaid coverage, the St. George News has reported.

To address that gap, Switchpoint last year opened Crossover Recovery Center, a treatment center located in Hildale that offers people who are uninsured or underinsured access to social detox, residential treatment and other addiction-related therapies.

Stay said Crossover has the ability to bill Medicaid and can provide services at a much lower rate “than what traditional treatment centers offer.”

“That has helped tremendously in serving this population,” she said of the facility.

The organization also broke ground last year on Stepping Stones — a first-of-its-kind, 24/7 child care facility that Stay predicts could serve about 275 kids throughout the day.

Homeless families sometimes struggle to secure housing without access to child care, the Institute for Children, Poverty & Homelessness noted in a 2014 policy report. Switchpoint’s facility, which is expected to open early next year, comes after the organization realized that child care issues were preventing some clients from getting the jobs that would help them exit homelessness, Stay said.

Most day cares in the area are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., leaving people who work nontraditional hours — whether they’re homeless or not — with few places to turn.

“We can help a client get a CNA [certified nursing assistant certificate],” Stay said, “and the veterans home is like, ‘Yeah, we’ll hire them in a second.’ But they have to work midnight shifts, so they have to turn it down.”

It’s not just access that poses challenges for low-income or homeless St. George residents. Affordability can also present obstacles, with estimates from the University of Utah that day care costs can range from $225 to $845 a month in the southwest region of the state, depending on the age of the child.

Stay said the Stepping Stones center will accept child care vouchers available to qualifying low-income Utahns and will also accept market rate clients.

‘I got a lot of confidence out of it’

People experiencing homelessness who stay at Switchpoint are encouraged to job-shadow or volunteer at the various businesses the organization runs in an effort to help them gain job skills and build their resumes.

At Bed ‘n’ Biscuits, the nonprofit’s dog grooming and boarding business, for example, Switchpoint clients help clean and mop floors and sometimes work with the animals under the supervision of qualified dog handlers.

Lance Williamson, a former police dog trainer who now works at Bed ‘n’ Biscuits, said he’s noticed a shift in some of the people experiencing homelessness who have had the opportunity to work around the animals.

“You can really tell the ones that thrive off of that, and you can see a change in them physically,” he said. “You can see a change when they’re like, ‘Oh, can I pet this one?’ And you’re like, ‘Sure, you can pet him.’ And you can see it. Puppies make everybody happier.”

Clients at Switchpoint have the opportunity to earn “Switch-bucks” when they volunteer at the shelter or at social enterprise businesses, as well as when they attend case management meetings or life skills classes.

They can then spend this “money” — one Switch-buck equals $1 — to do laundry, to board or groom their dogs at Bed ‘n’ Biscuits or to buy items at the thrift stores Switchpoint runs.

“One gal when we got her housed, of course she just had nothing,” Stay said, “but she had accumulated over $1,000 in Switch-bucks” and was able to furnish her new house with it.

Milton Owens, who was in and out of Switchpoint for a few years while he battled substance abuse and addiction, was a volunteer at Bed ‘n’ Biscuits and also worked at Switchpoint’s thrift store. And he credits the opportunity to hold a steady job with helping put him on a new path.

“I just started getting into the routine of working every day,” he said. “I wasn’t used to having a normal job where people talk to you with respect. … And then I got a lot of confidence out of it, being able to have something other than I was used to having.”

The thrift store also brought him something he wasn’t expecting: a family. Owens, 26, met his wife, who was not a Switchpoint client, while they were both employed in the shop. He said work relationships normally “never work out,” but added, it “definitely worked out for us.” The couple now live in Logan and recently welcomed a newborn son, Oliver.

“It brought me everything,” he said of Switchpoint and its social enterprise efforts. “It brought me a second chance at life.”