As Salt Lake City faces record cold temperatures and homeless advocates raise concerns about space constraints within the Salt Lake City area’s three new homeless resource centers, an emergency meeting of local and state leaders Wednesday ended with no new overflow options.
Instead, partners involved in the transition are calling on landlords to help get people into housing over the next four weeks to free up space in the overcrowded shelters. After that point, civic leaders promised to reconvene to see where things stand.
And though Lt. Gov Spencer Cox said during a meeting last week that the question of keeping The Road Home’s downtown emergency shelter open through the winter was still on the table, he told reporters after the closed-door meeting Wednesday that “keeping the downtown shelter open would be a step backward" and that leaders want the focus to shift to a new, housing-first model.