If you were to imagine a czar, in the traditional, Russian sense, Wayne Niederhauser’s image probably wouldn’t come to mind. Which may be why Utah’s new homeless services coordinator doesn’t like the informal title of “homeless czar.”
“That’s a negative. That’s not my style of leadership,” he told me when I asked if he was comfortable with the name.
Indeed, that’s true. The term implies an emperor; an all-powerful ruler most commonly associated with the leadership of imperial Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Niederhauser is a certified public accountant and a real estate broker, an affable and mild-mannered sort whose style is to bring people together and search for common ground.
Deseret News
Is Utah solving its homeless problem? The answer is complicated
Political leaders, advocates take stock of what’s been right, and what’s gone wrong, with the state’s new service center model
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Kristin Murphy, Deseret News
When a sudden gust of wind lapped at a tent propped up on the sidewalk, Andrew Blackburn jumped to save a bike that was leaning against it and had toppled over.
A storm was blowing in, with strong winds forecast for the Salt Lake area that night. The tents nestled on the sidewalk beneath murals representing the faces of people killed by police painted on the sides of buildings in an industrial area named the Fleet Block were about to be put to the test.
SALT LAKE CITY Gov. Spencer Cox on Tuesday unveiled his pick to be the state s leader over Utah s umbrella of homeless services an announcement that has been eagerly awaited by advocates since the passage of a new bill to restructure Utah s homeless services system.
Cox tapped a familiar face, former Utah Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, to serve as state homeless services coordinator, according to a news release from the governor s office issued Tuesday. During his legislative career, Wayne did not shy away from helping to solve some of the most complex and difficult issues facing the state, and he s proving that resolve again in accepting this key public service assignment, Cox said in a prepared statement. His leadership and ability to bring parties together will be crucial as we develop a coordinated approach to improving life for some of the most vulnerable among us.
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
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