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Tensions flare as health department clears homeless encampments in Salt Lake City
“These are people’s only homes,” said an advocate, who worried that the unsheltered individuals will have nowhere to go.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) A Salt Lake City Police officer holds up police tape for two men leaving the Rio Grande area with their belongings, Dec. 10, 2020. | Updated: Dec. 13, 2020, 4:10 a.m.
Tensions flared between protesters and police in downtown Salt Lake City on Thursday as dozens of people experiencing homelessness were forced to leave the camps where they were living.
A front loader was used at one point to move discarded clothing into a dump truck. One couple at 600 West and 300 South, who declined to talk to The Salt Lake Tribune, struggled as they attempted to pile their things onto an overfilled shopping cart. A box on top of their belongings and a green tarp fell to the ground as they moved.
| Updated: 11:09 p.m.
When Salt Lake City opened an emergency overflow shelter earlier this year as a stopgap effort to get people experiencing homelessness out of the bitter cold, Mayor Erin Mendenhall expressed a need for action to prevent similar issues in the next winter season.
“I don’t ever want to have this happen again in Salt Lake City,” she said in announcing the temporary shelter in the city’s Sugar House neighborhood. “We’ve got to have housing, permanent supportive housing, case management, detox and access to all those services so we don’t have to be working in the middle of January to come up with a solution again.”