Utah will fund the purchase of a downtown thrift store owned and operated by the Mormon church for $4.46 million following negotiations on the final of three future homeless shelters to be opened by July 2019.
Janell Fluckiger, executive director of the nonprofit Shelter the Homeless, which will own the two sites in Salt Lake City and one in South Salt Lake, told members of a state homeless committee the church would operate the thrift store through Nov. 30 before selling it to the nonprofit.
Construction would then begin almost immediately under the framework approved by the State Homeless Coordinating Committee on Tuesday, which continued moving ahead with plans to close the large homeless shelter in the Rio Grande neighborhood and reopen three scattered and smaller sites within two years.