Homeless Utahns who commit petty crimes like camping in public places should be forced into the state’s proposed mega-shelter if they refuse to accept help.
That was The Other Side Academy executive Joseph Grenny’s message to state policymakers Thursday as he shared his vision for the 1,300-bed shelter planned for Salt Lake City’s west side at 2520 N. 2200 West.
Under Grenny’s proposal, the shelter, which Utah officials have long touted as a "transformative, centralized campus," would actually operate more like a jail.
“The missing pieces in the motivational infrastructure are: appropriate incarceration for property and personal offenses, [and a] facility for involuntary detention for petty offenders who refuse help,” Grenny’s organization wrote to the Utah Homeless Services Board. “Involuntary detention is 30 days minimum to allow for sobriety, observation and reasonable mental health stabilization.”
Those petty offenses, according to The Other Side leaders, would include public camping and intoxication.
The Other Side Academy runs a live-in vocational and life skills training program as a jail alternative. The organization — which is a part of the bigger umbrella that includes The Other Side Village — has received praise from elected officials on both sides of the aisle and at all levels of government in recent years. Other Side endeavors, meanwhile, have received millions in government funding.
The homeless policy board’s Thursday meeting included presentations from a handful of homelessness experts, including local government officials, about what role they think the campus should play. The proposals demonstrated a diversity of opinion on the shelter, with some asking it be the keystone of a systemwide overhaul and others pitching that it should complement the existing homeless resource centers.
Grenny, representing the only service provider of the bunch, offered the most unconventional recommendations, calling the current system “broken” in his five-minute presentation.
First, he said the state should stop funding nonprofits that only help homeless Utahns in one part of their lives, like providing emergency shelter or offering drug rehabilitation programs. Instead, it should prioritize aiding what he called “super-providers,” which help people find permanent housing, build self-reliance, and stay away from drugs and crime.
Grenny also argued that Utah doesn’t detain enough homeless residents involuntarily.
The chair of the board, Randy Shumway, previously pitched locating involuntary drug and mental treatment facilities at the campus to a group of lawmakers in September.
While Shumway did not directly address The Other Side Academy’s proposal at the meeting, he did tell presenters that the board would keep taking feedback on how to run the shelter.
Devon Kurtz, presenting on behalf of a conservative think tank known as the Cicero Institute, also pitched boosting what’s referred to among government officials as civil commitment.
Other organizations, including Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, encouraged leaders to plan to safely host homeless people with a range of needs, develop an overarching exit strategy for those who will eventually use the shelter, and make sure to connect those sleeping there with longer-term support.