Utah’s Office of Homeless Services recently submitted a funding request to the governor to build a new comprehensive homeless services campus in Salt Lake City. Utah needs comprehensive solutions to homelessness, but the operational vision taking shape should concern us all.
Joseph Grenny and The Other Side Academy have been positioning their model for this project, framing homelessness as a market failure solvable through service consolidation, civil commitment and a strident focus on personal accountability. All other homeless service providers are being characterized as ineffective, unaccountable and unconcerned about outcomes.
This narrative is not only inaccurate; it is harmful.
The homeless service providers I partner with across Utah’s Balance of State are some of the most dedicated, knowledgeable and compassionate professionals I know. They are doing difficult work in broken systems they did not break. Yet the work of homeless-service providers cannot reasonably be characterized as failure. In Salt Lake County, providers report that 75% of the people they serve resolve their homelessness in 90 days or less.
Evidence matters — and the evidence favors housing, not detention
The total cost of the proposed megacampus has not yet been made public, but operating costs are estimated at $65 per night per person. Add that to what is sure to be a massive capital cost. Meanwhile, supportive housing — which has decades of rigorous evidence behind it — costs approximately $21,000 per person annually ($58 per night per person). A systematic review of 26 empirical studies found that Housing First programs reduce homelessness by 88%. The Utah Homeless Services Board (UHSB) memo presented to the Health and Human Service Interim Committee in September dismisses Housing First by mischaracterizing its aims. Housing First has never meant “housing only” or “no expectations.” It means pairing housing with person-centered, evidence-based services rather than withholding housing until people achieve behavioral compliance.
In contrast, Grenny advocates for “motivational infrastructure” that would allow for involuntary detention of unhoused people “when necessary.” Utahns should know: There is no evidence that mass detention or civil commitment reduces homelessness. No parallel model anywhere in the country demonstrates success with this approach.
Innovation is a hallmark of our state. But innovation without a pilot, evaluation or evidence is not innovation — it is experimentation on human beings. The recommendations emerging from the homeless service system power structure are detached from evidence and community insight. The expertise of service providers, researchers, clinicians and people with lived experience is being looked to last in the current environment.
Centralization will harm rural Utah
The UHSB memo pushes for centralized governance, centralized funding and a centralized campus as the solution to homelessness. In this model, all local Continuums of Care would be merged into a single statewide body controlled by UHSB. This would weaken the ability of rural, micropolitan and suburban communities to address local needs. Consolidation does not magically create resources where none exist.
Centralization not only erases rural expertise; it transfers both authority and dollars to Salt Lake County. This shift would diminish local ownership and decision-making and ultimately undermine place-based solutions. In a centralized model, how will rural families experiencing homelessness fare? We cannot take them away from their jobs, schools and social supports and expect them to thrive.
Homelessness is not a moral failing or a market failure — it is a housing failure
The UHSB memo elevates personal responsibility and repeatedly ignores structural realities. It advances a civil-commitment framework without addressing due process concerns, resource constraints, or the ethical and constitutional implications of involuntary detention. Framing homelessness primarily as the result of individual choice, moral failing or personal willpower is misguided when the evidence is clear. States with the highest homelessness rates are those with the highest housing costs. Utah’s increasingly severe housing shortage drives the problem. Every year Utah fails to meaningfully invest in deeply affordable housing and supportive housing, we fall further behind.
Progress requires reducing systemic barriers, not creating new punishments. We must make it easier for people to clear minor legal records, access treatment on demand, find jobs and secure housing. Well-reasoned policy can reduce these barriers and policymakers should start by listening to the expertise of providers who do this work every day.
Real solutions are local, evidence-based and focused on housing
Effective shelters act as engines of housing — not warehouses or holding cells. Stays should be short, low barrier, and housing focused. Services should be trauma informed, promote human dignity and respect the autonomy of service users.
Homelessness is complex, and Utahns deserve solutions grounded in evidence, not ideology. Homelessness is not a market-incentive problem. It is a challenge produced by intersecting failures in affordability, behavioral health care, wages and policy. No single homeless services campus can solve it alone.
Collaboration, local community governance, local expertise and meaningful investment in housing are what will move Utah forward.