It s not uncommon for those who are experiencing homelessness to sleep during the day. It s so cold during the day, we go find the sun and we sleep; that makes us look lazy. You know, we re exhausted, we re starving, we re hungry, we re angry, we re lonely, we re tired, Sunny Sparkman said.
She added that the other night she had walked all night to stay warm.
Utah s previous approaches and solutions
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development statistics in 2019, there are 2,789 people experiencing homelessness either temporarily or long-term in Utah on any given night.
Utah was once hailed as a national model for reducing chronic homelessness by 91 percent in 2015, but that number was misleading. A 2018 performance audit of Utah s Homeless Services revealed that although matters did improve, the data displaying a significant drop in the number of chronically homeless people could be attributed to the changes made in the methods used to count chronic homel