- Utah has approved an initiative to connect hundreds of homeless individuals directly with recovery resources over next 100 days.
- This is the first example of coordinator Tyler Clancy's approach after the Legislature gave him $19 million in new annual funding.
- Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall said state is unified in focusing on "surgical" interventions instead of the central campus.
The resource that lifted Lanny Outcalt out of homelessness wasn’t a shelter bed. It was a familiar face.
Outcalt had been pulled onto the street by a drug addiction. He had stayed there because sometimes a crowded resource center feels just as lonely as a sidewalk.
A decade passed, in and out of treatment facilities, interspersed with nights spent in the Gallivan Center courtyard or a field along North Temple in Salt Lake City.
He felt forgotten — and often that’s exactly what he wanted.
Until he heard his name.
A community caseworker, Soap2hope founder January Riggen, recognized him from one of his sober periods, gave him a hug and asked him if he was willing to try again.
“It took me a long time to actually be ready to say ‘yes,’” Outcalt said. “Having somebody who actually cared, who showed that support, was the flip of the switch for me.”
Outcalt found full recovery in advocacy. He is now the site manager at Switchpoint’s Salt Lake Overflow Shelter in West Valley City, where he oversees 200 emergency shelter beds.
But the gap in the system he fell through 10 years ago is still there, he says. A lack of coordination between Utah’s 1,400 low-barrier shelter beds and pathways to permanent exit.
That’s what Outcalt told state Homeless Coordinator Tyler Clancy during a tour of the West Valley shelter as one of Clancy’s first stops after taking the helm earlier this month.
The conversation became the impetus behind Clancy’s inaugural initiative, Project BRIDGE, which the Utah Homeless Services Board unanimously approved on Tuesday.
Clancy aims to mobilize teams across the state to connect the 687 individuals in winter shelters directly with substance use treatment, mental health services and long-term living arrangements over the next 100 days.
The 29-year-old former state lawmaker hopes this program demonstrates the vision of Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to reorient homeless policy from inputs, like beds and dollars, to one output: lifting people out of homelessness.
Utah homelessness funding transformed
Since 2023, Utah has provided one-time funding to double the size of the shelter system during winter months. But these overflow shelter options typically have fewer resources to help point residents toward treatment opportunities.
On Tuesday, Clancy proposed reallocating $1.1 million, and raising another $900,000 from community partners, to keep the winter shelters open for an extra two months to conduct what he said was an unprecedented experiment.
Instead of counting on shelters to refer homeless individuals to resources, Clancy’s team will lead out in creating an inventory of every open spot in recovery programs around the state that will be updated daily.
The state will work with communities to build Project BRIDGE teams to “bring case management on the road,” actually driving individuals from the winter shelters to recovery programs and facilitating same-day intake.
This is just the kind of outreach Outcalt has been hoping for.
“The new program that Tyler is working on is amazing,” Outcalt told the Deseret News. “It’s going to help us fulfill the mission we’re already trying to fulfill and that’s to end homelessness one life at a time.”
It is also the first step in implementing what Clancy and his 28-year-old assistant, Nick Coleman, pitched to lawmakers: specialized interventions for different homeless populations as a test case for Cox’s proposed central campus.
And lawmakers listened.
They approved $45.6 million — including $19 million in new permanent funding — for Cox’s priorities of targeting criminal recidivism among those who are chronically homeless, improving emergency housing and strengthening behavioral health programs.
This “historic” vote of confidence from the Legislature wowed the Homeless Services Board members on Tuesday. It signals that after years of misalignment, state and local governments have caught Cox’s vision, according to Clancy.
“The governor has outlined a vision for the simple idea that there’s not a magic number of shelter beds that will solve homelessness,” Clancy said. “Rather than just ... funding the status quo, we want an opportunity to do something different.”
The new ongoing funding, which represents a 51% increase from the $37 million already going to homeless services each year, includes $9.4 million for Clancy to use however he sees fit to create new programs with legislative approval.
Cities supportive but questions remain
Mayors Erin Mendenhall of Salt Lake City and Cherie Wood of South Salt Lake, both members of the board, expressed optimism that the new funding would build on Utah’s “housing first” past to prioritize more comprehensive interventions.
In a shift to policy, legislators included intent language requiring every dollar for homeless services to be matched by communities. This will ensure that state, city and county governments are all “rowing in the same direction,” Clancy said.
Clancy met with the Utah League of Cities and Towns board of directors on Monday to discuss their concerns.
Members were united on working with the state to address “high utilizers” of the criminal justice system among the homeless population, league president Cameron Diehl told the Deseret News.
There remains questions about how the matching will work. Cities that need the most funds to improve homeless behavioral health services do not manage these services because it is a county responsibility.
But Mendenhall affirmed on Tuesday that Utah’s capital, which bears most of the burden of the homeless population, is on board with the broader reorientation taking place under the leadership of Cox and Clancy.
Cox has drawn national attention — and some local consternation — for his proposal to place Utah’s chronic homeless population in a massive campus with mental, behavioral and substance use resources all in one location.
What the state is doing now is refining the current homeless services system, Mendenhall said, to put Cox’s concept in practice in a measurable way before scaling it in a project that would cost tens of millions of dollars.
“I’m grateful we’ve moved, myself included, from thinking about 1,600 more beds at a campus facility to what are actually the more surgical improvements that we can make to increase the efficiency of the existing system and provide better long-term outcomes for people,” she said.
The consensus forming at the highest levels of state government is a lesson Outcalt learned first hand. A roof over the head is important, but it will do little to help individuals if they feel lost in an unwieldy and unaccountable system.
Utah has beds where the homeless population can sleep at night, Outcalt said. What it needs is a strategy to ensure shelters don’t become a “permanent fix,” but rather an open door to familiar faces ready to help people try again.
