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SALT LAKE CITY — A bill passed in Utah's recent legislative session will require homeless resource centers to prioritize up to 85% of shelter capacity for certain groups to receive state funding. However, some say the bill will block help for those who need it most.
HB421, Homelessness and Vulnerable Populations Amendments, establishes three groups to receive prioritization of shelter beds across the state.
The bill also authorizes the Utah State Hospital to contract for certain services, establishes the HOME Court Pilot Program which provides step-down services and court-ordered treatment for those with mental illness in Salt Lake County, and expands funds related to enforcement of unsanctioned camping for the Department of Public Safety in certain circumstances.
The three groups to receive prioritization up to 85% of a shelter's capacity includes:
- Individuals discharged from the Utah State Hospital.
- Individuals eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families funds.
- A third group to be designated by the newly arranged Homeless Council board.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has not signed HB421 into law.
Throughout committee meetings and floor debates on the bill, bill sponsor Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, pointed to several patients of the Utah State Hospital being discharged into homelessness. Usually, when a patient is discharged and it is known they are unsheltered, a hospital employee will call local shelters for an overnight bed.
"An individual was discharged from the State Hospital, and they called and found that a shelter in Salt Lake County had a bed. The caseworker drove the individual up here and got to the shelter. And in the meantime, they'd hit capacity from the time they call to the time they got here," said Eliason in an interview with KSL.com. "They can't take them back because you have to have a court order to be in the State Hospital. They left them on the sidewalk with their belongings because there is no bed."
The bill also allows the State Hospital to contract with other services to aid patients who are unsheltered with mental health conditions either within the hospital or outside it where funds allow. The prioritization and flexibility of options granted to Utah State Hospital employees when a patient is unsheltered addresses the goal of reducing the chronically homeless population.
But where some see flexibility, others see a potential barrier in providing full access to those in need of services.
Families experiencing homelessness
The second prioritization is aimed at families experiencing homelessness, but some homeless advocates say it overlooks a number of those families based on the requirement that they be eligible for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. To qualify for the program an individual must:
- Be a resident of the state of Utah.
- Be responsible for a child age 18 and younger, or be a woman in her third trimester of pregnancy.
- Be unemployed or underemployed with very low wages.
- Have a net income less than Utah's "Standard Needs Budget."
"I don't think it's great policy to have prioritizations in state legislation," said Michelle Flynn, Road Home executive director. "We will serve any family that comes to us. We want to try and help every family that needs it that doesn't have a place to stay — that is sleeping outside or sleeping in an unsafe location — and that's our only criteria. We don't have screening criteria for them to come in, and we want to continue doing that."
But with an influx of migrant families and an increase in Utah families experiencing homelessness, shelter providers feel they have been put into a bind. Family shelters have seen near to full occupancy for over two years, with waitlists continuing to grow and families staying longer in the shelter. A second family shelter was announced to meet the need but has seen little movement outside of the purchase of the building in South Salt Lake. Salt Lake City kicked in half a million dollars this year for family motel vouchers, but that funding has since run out.
"As we've seen this influx, we're not the experts that these families really need. They do need a safe place to stay. They need support, the resources that we use ... to help families are typically not resources that these families are eligible for," said Flynn. "Whether or not families are legally able to work or not can really impede their ability to move on, which is the goal with our Midvale Family Resource Center."
The Road Home has put out a request for a parallel program for migrant families and additional resources. The bill outlines 85%, leaving a 15% flexibility for providers to serve other populations, such as asylum seekers, in a way that "doesn't close the door on them," added Eliason.
"With the migrant crisis that we're having, we could fill up 10 shelters if we built them with asylum seekers. Look at what's happening in New York, Denver, Chicago, L.A. This is simply saying we want to prioritize those resources for individuals that can move through the quickest to thereby benefit the most people," explained Eliason.
Funding woes
A little over half of the funding allocated by the state to the Road Home is federal funding from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The eligibility requirements to receive some of those funds have not been an issue in years past as the shelter has received support.
"But we have seen a rising increase in the number of migrant families, particularly since last summer. It has reached the point where we won't be able to bill for the entire amount of the dollars that we were awarded because the dollars are only eligible for families that fit those eligibility criteria," said Flynn.
With the additional requirements of prioritization established in the bill to receive state funding, the organization will be faced with a difficult decision if additional funding, whether private or public, is contributed.
"We never want to give a family an end date to their stay without knowing that they have a place to go, and I also still need to be able to pay the bills and continue operating that facility through the end of June. And so, what we're asking for is for support to come to provide that shelter in a different location," said Flynn.
Without additional support or programs, there have been discussions about implementing time-limited stays at the family shelter.
"We don't want to single out a population in any way; that's not who we are as an agency. That piece of it really is about ensuring that the funding is there. But we're looking at all possibilities," said Flynn.
