For more than a year the state, Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County have been trying to get their hands around the issue of downtown homelessness, and it appears that there has been some progress.
Crime has fallen around Pioneer Park, people are getting easier access to services, drug rehab and mental health efforts are ramping up. Signs are pointing in a positive direction.
But all of those advances could vanish if the state doesn’t aggressively go after the most foundational and perhaps the most difficult and expensive part of the problem — the lack of affordable housing.