Revised plan calls for 4 small homeless resource centers in Salt Lake City


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SALT LAKE CITY — After meeting behind closed doors much of Friday morning, city, county and state officials announced that Salt Lake City will find locations for four small homeless resource centers in the city with a total of 550 beds.

Possible locations of the centers have not been announced, but the new facilities would be no larger than 150 beds each.

They would be similar to Volunteers of America-Utah's new Homeless Youth Resource Center at 888 S. 400 West, leaders announced at a late morning news conference at the Salt Lake City-County Building. The 30-bed center serves a targeted population, youths ages 15-22, and offers many services on site, which is open 24/7.

Previously, two homeless resource centers in the city of 250 beds each had been proposed.

But Salt Lake residents balked at the size of the proposed facilities, expressing concern that centers of that size would attract a critical mass of people who congregate in Pioneer Park and near homeless service providers in the area, said Salt Lake City Council Chairman James Rogers.

The news conference came on the heels of Operation Diversion, a law enforcement sweep of the area Thursday. According to preliminary numbers provided by the city, 51 people were arrested, nine people were jailed and one was hospitalized.

Forty-two others were taken to an assessment center, where 30 agreed to enter behavioral health treatment. Within 12 hours, 10 people walked away from treatment and face possible criminal charges. The other 11 people went to jail from the assessment center, Salt Lake City officials said.

Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams said it's disappointing that some people elected to leave treatment, but the operation is a starting point. Hopefully, the others offered treatment will elect to stay, he said.

"Nobody has figured this out nationally. We're going to be patient with ourselves and learn from this experience," McAdams said.

Friday's announcement ended a stalemate between Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski and the City Council over the size and number of homeless resource centers.

Rogers said residents expressed concerns that facilities of 250 beds each would not readily integrate into neighborhoods.

"Wherever these facilities are going, there needs to be some sort of policy to lessen that impact to that neighborhood," he said. "I don't care if it's a business neighborhood, industrial neighborhood, commercial or residential. There should not be a huge impact to that."

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Biskupski said the City Council and her office will work collaboratively to identify and build four new resource centers to serve specific populations such as women with children.

"This work will no doubt be difficult, but we are in this together and can make better-informed decisions reflective of the needs of this city when we work together in the spirit of serving the public," she said.

The city will also appropriate $4 million toward the development of affordable housing "and dedicate a to-be-determined percentage to transitional/very low-income housing," a City Council document said.

Rogers said the funding would likely target a segment of people whose incomes are 30 percent and below the city's area median income.

Some Utah media reported that state funding for homelessness — as much as $27 million over three years — could be in jeopardy if the impasse could not be resolved. Earlier this year, the Legislature appropriated $9.25 million to start addressing deteriorating conditions. However, appropriations have to approved during each year's budget process.

House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, said unless the parties came together, obtaining future appropriations would be more difficult because there are competing demands for scarce state dollars.

"The state's not going to withdraw from what's happening in that area. I don't know of any scenario that we're not stronger when we're together than we're apart," he said of Friday's meeting.

Still, the start of another state budget cycle is imminent, he said.

"We're running out of time. That session's coming up. We need to have those measurables. We need to have moments like we saw (Thursday) and like we see today, and even more needs to happen before the session to really show we weren't just talking in platitudes and patting ourselves on the back. We said we can do this. We need to do it," Hughes said Friday.

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