Robert Gehrke: Utah needs a workable, certain path for homeless residents, even if that means another shelter
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Robert Gehrke.
| April 5, 2021, 12:04 p.m.
The pandemic has thrown everything about our lives into turmoil, and how we help homeless Utahns is no exception.
This past year, providers scrambled to accommodate the need to socially distance. They reduced beds at the resource centers and lined up overflow shelters and hotel rooms, a patchwork of improvised solutions to keep people safe from the elements and the coronavirus.
They managed to pull it off, to a remarkable degree.
And, while COVID-19 certainly complicated things, it’s not all that different from where we were a year prior, when a winter overflow shelter had to be set up at the old Deseret Industries building in Sugar House.
SALT LAKE CITY Utah s 2021 legislative session marked milestones in investments in affordable housing and sweeping changes to the homeless governance system, all meant to enact measurable improvements in two of the Beehive State s biggest issues.
The Legislature approved $50 million in funding to affordable housing initiatives and homelessness, which advocates described as a record in the state. Leaders with the private philanthropy community announced Wednesday those funds will be multiplied through private donations and investments to $730 million. Good things are taking place, and we re deploying innovative solutions and seeing positive impacts, Utah philanthropist and homeless advocate Gail Miller said.
Homeless system restructuring
Utah Legislature made sweeping changes to homeless, housing systems deseret.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from deseret.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Soren Simonsen, executive director of the Jordan River Commission, takes down information as to where he is seeing homeless camps during the 2021 Point-in-Time count, a nationwide annual event to survey people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2021. A Utah House committee on Thursday OK’d a sweeping bill to restructure a homeless governance system in the state.
Laura Seitz, Deseret News
SALT LAKE CITY A Utah House panel offered early support to a bill that would create a central leader on homelessness and make other sweeping changes after a study late last year identified several issues with the state’s homeless services system.
Utah legislation would address the âconfusingâ system to help the homeless
The bill would create a new Office of Homeless Services and put a single person in charge of overseeing policy affecting the stateâs unsheltered populations.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) People experiencing homelessness seek shelter under the freeway on Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020. A Utah House committee voted 7-1 Thursday in support of a bill that seeks to address problems in the stateâs homeless services system. | Updated: 8:00 p.m.
The bill, HB347, would create a new Office of Homeless Services within the Department of Workforce Services and would put a single person in charge of overseeing policy affecting the stateâs unsheltered populations, in accordance with the recommendations of a report from the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute last fall.