What a nice Sunday editorial on boldly confronting the homelessness crisis (“City, state and church leaders must do more for Utah’s homeless population,” July 23)! But do you read your own newspaper and its documentation of systemic factors that must contribute to homelessness?
Take landlord-tenant laws in Utah that favor landlords, as you and the Utah Investigative Journalism Project have documented: Covid relief funds, meant to help renters, that went primarily to landlords, until the feds called Utah out; the end of the program resulting in soaring evictions; unchecked misuse of the eviction notification period; imbalanced legal representation of tenant/landlord, which results in legal decisions that hurt tenants; and the state’s entire rental/eviction legal framework. Attorney Kirk Cullimore had a hand in writing the laws for years, while his senator son represents landlords’ interests in the Legislature. The firm alone accounts for roughly half the legal judgments against tenants in the state. Certainly, this systemic imbalance contributes to homelessness.
Or how about UDOT’s expansion plans that destroy the existing home stock for road expansion: the widening of I-15 to the north of Salt Lake, the new interchanges to make Bangerter into a freeway, and all the projects of road building further west? Destroying peoples’ homes makes them homeless, and they may stay that way in our overheated housing market.
And is there any reason to think that the Legislature’s tinkering with the selection of judges will not result in future legal decisions that favor our developer-landlord legislators and their powerful friends over those who may be on the margin of homelessness?
“Les Mis,” which starts with the injustice suffered by Jean Valjean, was just in town. Even if you didn’t see it, your own news coverage should have led you to give at least a bow to systemic factors that affect homelessness, factors that could be changed if there were the political will.
Ken Jameson, Salt Lake City