facebook-pixel

Letter: Latest debacle with Salt Lake’s shelter misses a bigger point

(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Richard Smith, gathers up some of his belongings as the Salt Lake City Health Department, Salt Lake City Police and other partners conduct a camp cleanup in the area near Victory Road in Salt Lake. Smith has been camping in this area for 9 years. Thursday, June 14, 2018.

In an unsigned editorial appearing in your pages, someone on your staff has written one of the most myopic opinion pieces ever to appear in the pages of The Salt Lake Tribune, because it misses the largest point that needs to be made: Why is our homeless shelter being closed down at all?

And the answer, of course, is that the real estate on which it sits has become “too valuable” to sustain its use on behalf of the homeless. Valuable to whom? Aye, there’s the rub. It’s probably going to be a few years before we get the answer to that question and, when we do, it’ll be too late for us to do anything about it. The usual voices of outrage will be heard, my own among them. But as usual, that outrage will not last, because as citizens and voters we have the approximate attention span of a 3-year-old.

Displacing the homeless to "somewhere else" isn't going to solve the problems of homelessness — nor is enriching a few fat cats among us by selling off the property a wise use of public resources.

Thomas N. Thompson, Salt Lake City

Submit a letter to the editor