Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall heard Shane Gillis’ viral comments lambasting homelessness in Utah’s capital, and she thinks the comedian is missing the bigger picture.

In an Aug. 13 appearance on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Gillis said when he performed here earlier in his career, he thought Salt Lake City was the “cleanest, nicest city.” But when he visited later with friends, he said, “we landed, and there was 10 homeless guys chasing us.”

The clip has since spread across social media, racking up hundreds of thousands of views and stoking debate among users.

One social media commenter said there are “beggars on every street,” while another said the city has changed “drastically for the worse over the last 15 years.”

Others defended Utah’s capital, with one person saying they’ve never been chased before. “But honestly? If it scares these type of people, good,” the user said. “Stay away. We don’t want you.”

It’s not clear when Gillis’ alleged encounter occurred. He last performed in Salt Lake City in March 2025 at the Delta Center.

Mendenhall said Tuesday that she takes comments like the comedian’s seriously. From what she could tell, the last time Gillis performed at Wiseguys at The Gateway — the club that one of the other podcast guests was discussing — was at least four years ago, in the middle of a yearslong transformation of downtown. Crime, she said, is down.

“A lot’s happened since 2020,” Mendenhall said. “We had an office-based economy in the downtown core that is now an entertainment, retail, recreation-based economy. And while we were in the pandemic, those offices were empty by and large. There was a different experience in downtown Salt Lake City.”

Mendenhall’s comments came during a roundtable discussion about homelessness with Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, state homelessness coordinator Tyler Clancy and Steve Leifman, founder of the Leifman Group, a consulting firm that works on criminal justice reform. The city, county, state and the Leifman Group are working together on a new approach to homelessness.

That partnership, Mendenhall said, is an example of Utah’s capital moving in the right direction.