After the House passed a bill that would pay for running homeless shelters in Utah, the Senate passed its own bill that would pay for the cost of policing and first responders in cities that host shelters.
The two bills represent the Legislature’s attempts to make homelessness a statewide issue by requiring cities that have no homeless shelter to foot the bill for cities that do.
Under SB235, cities with no homeless shelter would forgo 1.8 percent of their state sales tax distribution unless they have a qualifying homeless shelter. Large cities would be assessed $200,000. Cities like South Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Ogden, St. George and Midvale could apply to a state committee for a portion of the funding under the bill.
“South Salt Lake is actually a city that 50 percent of its property is tax exempt,” said Senate Minority Leader Gene Davis, of Salt Lake City, whose district was chosen to host one of three new homeless shelters to be built next year.
Passage of the bill sets up competing bills that would both require cities to lose out on sales tax revenue to cities that have shelters, and it’s not clear if both will pass or legislators decide to pay for first responders with Davis’s bill or to operate the shelters in HB462.
HB462 would require cities without enough affordable housing and without a homeless shelter to forgo sales tax money that would be used to operate the state’s shelters.
Rep. Steve Eliason, a Sandy Republican and the bill’s sponsor, said he was trying to incentivize cities to plan for and build affordable and low-income housing. Lack of housing is a root cause of homelessness.
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