Balancing order and compassion: How Utah lawmakers hope to target chronic homelessness

State lawmakers aim to crack down on inconsistent enforcement of public safety measures in the 2025 legislative session as the next step toward achieving a compassionate approach to chronic homelessness.

Gov. Spencer Cox, Republican legislators and the newly formed Utah Homeless Services Board have set their eyes on overhauling the way Utah funds homeless services by prioritizing recovery treatment over temporary shelter. But before big funding gets the go-ahead, cities and resource centers need to prove their law-and-order bona fides.

“It’s reached a point where the time for discussion is over and the time for action is yesterday,” Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, said. “The urgency in which we will address this matter, I think you’re going to see it very clearly, very early in the session.”

Clancy, a police detective who spearheaded legislation last year to refocus homelessness services on rehabilitation instead of just housing, said the GOP supermajority is discussing building on legislation from last year that made state help for shelter cities conditional on the enforcement of ordinances that prohibit unsanctioned camping.

Other homelessness objectives under discussion also attempt to balance uncompromising expectations for local governments with enhanced care for those experiencing chronic homelessness. The proposals include:

• Designating homeless shelters as drug-free zones with heightened penalties for drug use and distribution.
• Strengthening the right of private individuals to sue property owners who permit dangerous criminal activity.
• Banning “safe-injection sites” and limiting clean-syringe exchanges from 10-for-1 to 1-for-1.
• Raising a second conviction of hard drug possession to a third-degree felony to penalize repeat offenders.
• Calling on federal authorities to end “housing first” mandates and to free up state funds for different kinds of care.
• Establishing a statewide framework to implement a pilot program that pairs homeless individuals with a case manager.
• Ensuring that first responders to overdoses are able to offer treatment resources right away.

There is “alignment” between Cox and legislative leadership on considering “enforcement the floor” of any response to homelessness, Clancy said. But this does not mean Utah leaders are abandoning compassion for some of the most vulnerable members of their communities. For Clancy, it means the opposite.

“We will meet you where you are, but we love you too much to let you stay there,” Clancy said. “We’ve got to change course.”

Putting order first

While Utah’s homelessness rate is nearly half of the national average, the state has seen cases of chronic homelessness double from 14% to 27% of the homeless population over the last decade. Since 2019, there has been a 96% increase in chronic homelessness, including a 27% jump in 2022, according to the Utah Impact Partnership.

Conversations about chronic homelessness must start with public safety as the basic expectation of civil society and the fundamental obligation of local government, according to Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute.

In many cases people experiencing chronic homelessness do not pose a direct threat to public safety, Lehman said. But permitting the use of public spaces, like sidewalks and parks, for sleeping or setting up tents, violates the sense of order that citizens have a right to and often attracts drug use, prostitution and physical assault, Lehman said.

When one takes seriously the causes of chronic homelessness, which is typically a combination of mental illness and substance abuse, it becomes clear that individuals on the streets need more than an invitation to sleep in a shelter, Lehman said. While the approach has become anathema in many liberal localities, Lehman said that the best help often comes in the form of forcing individuals into settings where they can receive real treatment.

“The norm that has prevailed in many blue cities over the past four years is a theory where compassion means doing nothing,” Lehman said. “I think the compassionate thing to do is to say, ‘We’re going to give you help. We’re also going to impose expectations on you.’”

Utah Homeless Services Board chair Randy Shumway said the current status quo in Utah shelters is to view such expectations as an obstacle to housing, but this can actually contribute to criminal incentives. Resource centers have become an impossible place for recovery because of the prevalence of drug use, Shumway said, explaining that progress toward wraparound services at homeless shelters will be halted until state authorities put order, not housing, first.

“We’ve seen no signs over the last four years that absent law enforcement, absent legislative and state executive branch engagement, that the problem won’t just get worse,” Shumway said. “We’re asking them to intervene, to fix a broken law enforcement and criminal justice process.”

Creating a recovery community

Some may put law enforcement first in the order of operations, but state Rep.-elect Grant Miller puts it last on the list of effective interventions. Miller, who was elected in November as a Democrat to represent the area surrounding Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park, has worked with individuals experiencing chronic homelessness as a public defender for seven years.

Arrests of homeless individuals for drug offenses or nuisance crimes are sometimes necessary but usually result in the individual being released the same day in a different part of the city and without their personal belongings. Miller worries that simply enhancing penalties will do little to curb substance abuse and will do much to further destabilize people experiencing homelessness.

“The criminal justice system is kind of when all other triggers have failed,” Miller said. “So I think that we should throw some criminal resources at it, but also some some resources upstream.”

Utah suffers from a dearth of mental health resources, Miller said. During his first term in office, Miller hopes to work with lawmakers like Clancy and Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, to increase funding for public-private partnerships with mental health providers and substance abuse centers so that if a person experiencing chronic homelessness does end up getting arrested, Miller, as a public defender, will be able to discharge them into treatment instead of out to the streets.

The extremes of only increasing arrests or just increasing housing are equally unfit to address a problem that stems from mental illness and drug addiction, according to Robert Marbut, President-elect Donald Trump’s former homelessness czar. As the founding president of San Antonio’s homeless shelter Haven for Hope, Marbut has been a pioneer in prioritizing treatment and program participation requirements for the chronically homeless.

According to Marbut, the Beehive State has wasted 15 years by debating over whether to have central- or scattered-site models for homeless shelters while neglecting the only step that actually reduces the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness long term: large treatment facilities that coordinate several hours of treatment every week with strict schedules for participants to get sober, therapy for trauma suffered on the streets and training to reintegrate into society.

“You can’t get big improvement without making big changes,” Marbut said. “There’s no gimmick to get around eating your vegetables.”

Fully funding the change

Utah leaders are looking to break ground on this kind of big change next year. During the 2024 legislative session, lawmakers appropriated $25 million for the construction of the largest homeless shelter in the state, a central campus that could house anywhere from 600 to 1,200 beds depending on the amount of land the Homeless Board is able to purchase, according to Jim Behunin, the House appointee to the board.

Behunin, who previously audited the state’s homelessness approach as a member of the Office of the Legislative Auditor General, has an ambitious vision for what the potentially 40-acre “campus” will become. It will include different residence tiers, ranging from low-barrier entry shelters to high-demand programs, with access to mental health resources, drug treatment and life coaching.

“It’s not about the campus or the location, it’s about the culture and creating a community where people can transform their lives,” Behunin said. “Our focus is not just on providing them with a safe place, that will be part of this, but helping people address a number of issues that they may face that are preventing them from thriving.”

It won’t come cheap. Behunin said this kind of a location with wraparound services will require $20-30 million a year in ongoing funds to operate. Behunin hopes that much of this will be paid for by municipalities, philanthropists and Medicaid funds, as homeless services are in most other states. But he is counting on an initial $5 million in ongoing money from the Legislature to begin building a team of caseworkers.

Eliason, the senior financial manager at University of Utah Hospitals, who for years has been the legislative point person on homelessness policy, knows that these kind of investments are easier said than done.

While philanthropists, like Clark Ivory, have played a big role in funding homelessness services, particularly since the closure of the massive downtown Rio Grande shelter in 2019, Eliason said it’s unlikely these sources will want to fund homelessness services “in perpetuity.”

And with a slight budget deficit going into the next legislative session, lawmakers won’t be able to count on new revenue to fully fund their new homeless campus. If the Utah Legislature agrees with Behunin’s vision of creating a community of recovery at a central campus yet to be constructed, it will require extensive reallocation of money from other programs.

“That’s gonna be an extremely heavy lift,” Eliason said, “because there’s very little new money, and there’s going to be lots of requests.”

But, according to Democratic Rep. Gay Bennion, who represents Cottonwood Heights, almost any lift is worth doing to address Utah’s problem with homelessness.

Unless lawmakers are willing to see their new facility frustratingly flatline as a resource center unworthy of the name, Bennion said they will have to commit to pay caseworkers enough to stop high turnover, to enforce drug free zones in shelters, to support individuals who are transitioning to sobriety, to increase the number of mental health providers and to really make a difference.

“Funding is the No. 1 thing I would like to see from the state because the models that we’ve tried haven’t been adequately funded,” Bennion said. “I see funds going to lawsuits and other projects that are not as high need in our society as this is. So I believe that we can find the funds if we have the willpower to do that.”