Six years ago, this state shut down a massive downtown homeless shelter. Now it’s planning to build an even bigger one.

This story was originally published by Utah New Dispatch.

Another major change is coming to Utah’s homeless system. While it’s an approach that may sound reminiscent of the past, state leaders insist it’s not the same — and it will be a step forward, not backward. 

In 2019, the Road Home’s old downtown homeless shelter that some nights sheltered more than 1,000 people shut down after years of heartburn over its impact to the Rio Grande area and painstaking political wrangling to site three new homeless resource centers meant to replace it with a “scattered sites” model, meant to break up populations into smaller facilities. 

But those three new resource centers, which cost more than $63 million to construct and ranged from 200 to 300 beds each, quickly filled up. Lacking funding and facing strained resources, homeless providers struggled to “divert” enough people out of homelessness and into housing or other programs as those resource centers were designed to do. 

In the years since, on-street camping has remained a frustrating issue, and every winter city and state leaders have scrambled to find enough winter overflow beds to safely house those who couldn’t fit into the resource centers — a need state officials estimate is somewhere between 800 to 1,200 beds in Salt Lake County alone. 

Acknowledging that what they’re doing now isn’t working and they need to try something new that takes a more permanent and holistic approach, state leaders are now setting the stage for a new chapter in Utah’s complex and growing homeless system. 

This week, the Utah Homeless Services Board (the powerful, newly-structured body that oversees homeless policy and funding across the state) unanimously voted to direct the state’s Office of Homeless Services to identify three possible properties to choose from for a 30-acre “transformative, centralized campus” to house Utah’s homeless. 

“The bottom line here is that we need additional beds,” state homeless coordinator Wayne Niederhauser told the board on Wednesday. “We need a place, a property, where we can get a facility up … especially before the 2025, 2026 winter so we don’t have to cobble together 800, 900 beds.” 

The board is requiring state officials to present those proposed properties no later than Dec. 15 of this year. By Jan. 15, staff is also required to present a master plan for that campus that includes “programmatic and structural schematics, costs, best practices from other similar institutions, and definitions of the success outcomes that will be measured and evaluated.”

The board also set a deadline of Oct. 1, 2025, for that 1,200 bed campus to be built, and signaled that those beds must be “low barrier” or easily accessible year-round. 

The “centralized campus” is new vernacular — and the 1,200-bed count is even bigger than originally discussed — for a project that the 2024 Utah Legislature funded when it set aside $25 million for a new “low barrier” shelter. At the time, it was described as a new emergency shelter that would house roughly 600 to 800, but more specific details would take shape as state officials worked to site the facility. 

It’s not yet known where this 30-acre project will eventually be — that will be up to the board to ultimately decide. Niederhauser has spent months searching for a site and has not yet publicly unveiled any options. But the board’s chairman Randy Shumway said Niederhauser has “probably evaluated over 100 possible locations” and finding even three viable options has been a challenge. 

Niederhauser urged the board to give his office the green light to proceed with narrowing down the choices.  

“We’ve already been looking for property, but having a clear direction from the board to our office regarding the purchase of additional land is really critical right now,” Niederhauser said.

Given the campus’ master plan has yet to take shape, details are fuzzy on exactly what this “transformative, centralized” campus would entail. But Niederhauser said “we’re going to have to have case management and wraparound services, and so there will be other facilities located” on the property. 

“We’d like to actually implement a program like the resource centers were designed to do but were never funded sufficiently to provide those resources,” Niederhauser said. 

While the $25 million will be used to fund the shelter itself, additional programs will need more ongoing funding — something he said his office will request from the 2025 Utah Legislature. But just because that funding has not yet been secured, Niederhauser said “that shouldn’t stop us from moving ahead, to locate a place, so the system can work better.”

Long term, however, he said the hope is to create a “transformational, centralized campus” where “the center of the homeless system would be, where you would have intake.” Niederhauser also said state officials envision they’ll need about 30 acres to eventually have medical facilities, mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment or other resources all on site. 

“The resource centers we currently have would continue to be part of that system,” Niederhauser added. “They could be morphed into more transitional (facilities) or to address a certain subpopulation.” 

Niederhauser said he doesn’t yet know how the campus would be set up or how it would “interact” with the rest of Utah’s existing homeless system, but he urged the board to give his office direction “so we can at least get a shelter and services for that shelter moving forward with the board’s support.” 

Salt Lake County Councilman Arlyn Bradshaw, who also serves on the Utah Homeless Services Board, voted in favor of moving forward with the campus model and narrowing down its potential property, but he expressed some hesitancy, saying he felt “unprepared” and a bit caught off guard to endorse this new direction, especially given he was involved in the effort years ago to “move to the scattered sites model.” 

Niederhauser acknowledged he’s “gotten this question a lot,” but he insisted it shouldn’t be compared to the old downtown shelter.

“That was not a campus,” Niederhauser said. “It was a central location, but there were very limited services and case management. … It was in no way what we’re envisioning for a campus, which is a more transformative vision. Resources and services there on the campus rather than scattered around.” 

Niederhauser added that the three new resource centers were meant to provide more resources, but he acknowledged they fell short — both in the number of beds and in supportive programs.

“Now have they been resourced to what we’d envisioned? I’d say no. And that’s been part of the issue that we’ve been having with homelessness,” he said. “First of all, we don’t have the number of beds that we need, and second, these beds need to be fully resourced.” 

Shumway pointed out that that a delegation of Utah leaders — including Niederhauser, other Homeless Services Board members, officials from Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City and others — traveled this week to San Antonio, Texas, where they were scheduled to visit Haven for Hope, a nationally recognized nonprofit, which is described as “more than a shelter,” and a “transformational campus” on its website. He said there’s another trip scheduled for Nov. 8 for another delegation from Utah. 

“Today, we have the benefit of several communities harnessing a centralized campus in a manner that has demonstrated high efficacy in helping people make progress along this pathway to human thriving,” Shumway said. “So we’re leveraging, now, evidence-based practices that have been proven in models like that of San Antonio.” 

When Jen Campbell, a board member who represents the Utah Homeless Network of homeless leaders and providers, spoke up, her voice strained with emotion. She said “there are always great suggestions and improvements we can make,” but she urged the board to have a “longer” and more “informed” process around this major shift, especially for all the homeless providers involved in the current system. 

“We have not had enough funding. We have not had enough support,” she said. “Don’t forget that.” She said she sees a commitment to help improve the system, and if helps then she said she’s supportive. 

“But let’s not forget what great structures and commitment we have and great partners doing this work right now,” she said. “We want to keep those, and not lose those services, and we are strengthening them.”