Two years ago in these pages I penned a commentary printed in The Salt Lake Tribune that decried the state of Utah’s preemption of municipalities’ planning and zoning authority as the state and Salt Lake County struggled mightily to locate a new solution for homeless services called a “resource center.” We were all promised that this new model would have a completely different look and provide services in a new way that would make the system more humane, more effective, and less of a burden on the neighborhoods surrounding these locales.
Today, none of those promises are fulfilled, explained or described as to how those services look and function. Indeed, it does not yet appear to any of us who actually bear the brunt locally of trying to deal with consequences of policing and maintaining functioning services in a way that is both fair to those without a home, and to those that are trying to use our streets, parks, businesses, rivers and other public facilities in the clean, safe and attractive manner they were intended.
Now Mayor Cherie Wood of South Salt Lake, rather than surrender her city’s planning and zoning authority, has insisted upon seemingly reasonable requirements before Shelter the Homeless is allowed to open the facility. Among these requirements? Mayor Wood would have the organization ensure that no weapons or drugs enter the facility, that those individuals entering are checked for outstanding arrest warrants, and that sex offenders are properly identified upon entry. She also appears to be asking for the public safety funding that was promised to her municipality when they acquiesced to the state and County’s pressure to locate the facility in 2017.
Rather than fulfill the conditions, Shelter the Homeless appears ready to adopt the option of turning the property over to the state of Utah in order to avoid local requirements. This kind of action is exactly the reason West Valley fought so hard to keep this shelter out of our city in 2017. Nevertheless, we will be affected as well by all of these same concerns that South Salt Lake sees with clear eyes, while the state, county and service provision groups have glossed over or crossed their fingers and hoped would work out in the intervening months and years.
What Wood is trying to address, these entities ignore in their rush to close the Road Home downtown and open it again in other locations with fresh paint and new glass panels, but the same old problems.
It’s not the people that the resource center concept meant to house that are at issue here. Those seeking temporary housing solutions while they get back on their feet from lost jobs, medical bills or other misfortunes would not be those kept from these facilities.
Wood sees every day on the street the same problems that we do, that Salt Lake does downtown, and increasingly, every city on the Wasatch Front and across the nation. The people who she worries about are a distinct but large, maybe even large majority subset of the homeless population. Mentally ill or addicted to various substances, or often both, these people lead desperate lives that these facilities have demonstrably failed to help. It is time for a real solution that faces the reality of what we are dealing with.
Seattle television station KOMO recently explored an exploding problem in the Seattle metro area that has only gotten larger and worse over time. Looking for solutions, they found one program in Providence, R.I., that combined accountability for crimes committed along with treatment and a long-term path that allows those mentally ill and/or drug addicted offenders to find a way back, if they so choose.
Our own state, county and private non-profit services would be much better served to recognize the problem for what it really is, abandon the false premise under which they examine this problem and stop trying to circumvent or discount local requirements and concerns.
Wayne T. Pyle
Wayne T. Pyle is the city manager of West Valley City.