The third resource center for the homeless in Salt Lake County is now open and beds are filling quickly. Most services are now located in each of the resource centers in order to facilitate each person’s unique needs.
We all hope that the people served will get the help they need. What we won’t know is if any of these efforts will be successful.
KSL reported that “Around $100 million was spent on homeless services in Utah last year [2017], but no one knows if the money made a difference.”
At the request of the Legislature, the State Auditor performed an audit of homeless services in Utah in 2018. They concluded that Utah lacks oversight and performance measures of its homeless system. As a result, they were completely unable to evaluate program performance.
The lack of consistent measures of success not only prevented comparing year to year results but it also resulted in the rejection of a previous claim of a 91% reduction in homelessness made in 2015.
Fortunately, the Legislature is setting its priorities for the upcoming session. I sincerely hope that they will follow through on the State Auditor’s recommendations to require that the State Homeless Coordinating Committee “prepare a new strategic plan that includes clear, measurable goals and performance expectations.”
While we don’t have much in common with the state of California, they lead Utah with over 25% of the nation’s homeless population making this a top issue for their state as it is here. California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently said, “We need real accountability and transparency.” Newsom’s office plans to measure how well local governments are working to get people off the streets and require local governments to report their progress to access state homelessness money.
In Utah, we should demand the same. Given the ongoing cost of $100 million a year, the Legislature and the public deserve accountability for the results of these expenditures.
Scott Rosenbush, Salt Lake City