Balancing order and compassion: How Utah lawmakers hope to target chronic homelessness

SALT LAKE CITY — State lawmakers aim to crack down on inconsistent enforcement of public safety measures in the 2025 legislative session as the next step toward achieving a compassionate approach to chronic homelessness.

Gov. Spencer Cox, Republican legislators and the newly formed Utah Homeless Services Board have set their eyes on overhauling the way Utah funds homeless services by prioritizing recovery treatment over temporary shelter. But before big funding gets the go-ahead, cities and resource centers need to prove their law-and-order bona fides.

"It's reached a point where the time for discussion is over and the time for action is yesterday," Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, said. "The urgency in which we will address this matter, I think you're going to see it very clearly, very early in the session."

Clancy, a police detective who spearheaded legislation last year to refocus homelessness services on rehabilitation instead of just housing, said the GOP supermajority is discussing building on legislation from last year that made state help for shelter cities conditional on the enforcement of ordinances that prohibit unsanctioned camping.

Other homelessness objectives under discussion also attempt to balance uncompromising expectations for local governments with enhanced care for those experiencing chronic homelessness. The proposals include:

• Designating homeless shelters as drug-free zones with heightened penalties for drug use and distribution;
• Strengthening the right of private individuals to sue property owners who permit dangerous criminal activity;
• Banning "safe-injection sites" and limiting clean-syringe exchanges from 10-for-1 to 1-for-1;
• Raising a second conviction of hard drug possession to a third-degree felony to penalize repeat offenders;
• Calling on federal authorities to end "housing first" mandates and to free up state funds for different kinds of care;
• Establishing a statewide framework to implement a pilot program that pairs homeless individuals with a case manager;
• Ensuring that first responders to overdoses are able to offer treatment resources right away;

There is "alignment" between Cox and legislative leadership on considering "enforcement the floor" of any response to homelessness, Clancy said. But this does not mean Utah leaders are abandoning compassion for some of the most vulnerable members of their communities. For Clancy, it means the opposite.

"We will meet you where you are, but we love you too much to let you stay there," Clancy said. "We've got to change course."

Putting order first

While Utah's homelessness rate is nearly half of the national average, the state has seen cases of chronic homelessness double from 14% to 27% of the homeless population over the last decade. Since 2019, there has been a 96% increase in chronic homelessness, including a 27% jump in 2022, according to the Utah Impact Partnership.

Conversations about chronic homelessness must start with public safety as the basic expectation of civil society and the fundamental obligation of local government, according to Charles Fain Lehman, a fellow at the right-leaning Manhattan Institute.

In many cases people experiencing chronic homelessness do not pose a direct threat to public safety, Lehman said. But permitting the use of public spaces, like sidewalks and parks, for sleeping or setting up tents, violates the sense of order that citizens have a right to and often attracts drug use, prostitution and physical assault, Lehman said.

When one takes seriously the causes of chronic homelessness, which is typically a combination of mental illness and substance abuse, it becomes clear that individuals on the streets need more than an invitation to sleep in a shelter, Lehman said. While the approach has become anathema in many liberal localities, Lehman said that the best help often comes in the form of forcing individuals into settings where they can receive real treatment.

"The norm that has prevailed in many blue cities over the past four years is a theory where compassion means doing nothing," Lehman said. "I think the compassionate thing to do is to say, 'We're going to give you help. We're also going to impose expectations on you.'"

Utah Homeless Services Board chair Randy Shumway said the current status quo in Utah shelters is to view such expectations as an obstacle to housing, but this can actually contribute to criminal incentives. Resource centers have become an impossible place for recovery because of the prevalence of drug use, Shumway said, explaining that progress toward wraparound services at homeless shelters will be halted until state authorities put order, not housing, first.

"We've seen no signs over the last four years that absent law enforcement, absent legislative and state executive branch engagement, that the problem won't just get worse," Shumway said. "We're asking them to intervene, to fix a broken law enforcement and criminal justice process."

Creating a recovery community

Some may put law enforcement first in the order of operations, but state Rep.-elect Grant Miller puts it last on the list of effective interventions. Miller, who was elected in November as a Democrat to represent the area surrounding Salt Lake City's Liberty Park, has worked with individuals experiencing chronic homelessness as a public defender for seven years.

Arrests of homeless individuals for drug offenses or nuisance crimes are sometimes necessary but usually result in the individual being released the same day in a different part of the city and without their personal belongings. Miller worries that simply enhancing penalties will do little to curb substance abuse and will do much to further destabilize people experiencing homelessness.

"The criminal justice system is kind of when all other triggers have failed," Miller said. "So I think that we should throw some criminal resources at it, but also some some resources upstream."

Read the entire story at Deseret.com.

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