People congregate around the Geraldine E. King Women’s Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
The Utah Homeless Services Board took an initial step this week toward answering top Republican state leaders’ calls to act in response to President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order issued in July, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”
That July 29 letter from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, and Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said they’re not supportive of “‘Housing First’ policies that lack accountability” and urged the Utah Homeless Services Board to act in a series of ways to “fulfill” the president’s order.
That included, according to the letter, calls to:
“Accelerate progress on a transformative, services-based” homeless campus that state officials recently announced will include about 1,300 beds and will be put on a 15.8-acre parcel in northwest Salt Lake City, near the North Salt Lake city boundary. Cox, Schultz and Adams’ letter said the campus should prioritize “recovery, treatment, and long-term outcomes, not just emergency shelter.”
“Develop policy recommendations” for the Utah Legislature’s 2026 general session that begins in January, “alongside legislative and executive branch partners.”
“Ensure any funding requests are accompanied by a clear strategy that aligns with” Trump’s executive order, “with a focus on reprioritizing existing resources.”
“Streamline reporting requirements to reduce bureaucratic burden and maximize the time providers spend directly assessing, treating, and supporting clients.”
The governor, House speaker and Senate president gave the board a deadline of Sept. 30 to respond.
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This week, on the day of its deadline, the Utah Homeless Services Board — which is a powerful decision-making body that oversees the state’s homeless system and distributes state funding — sent its reply in the form of a letter sent on the day of the deadline, Tuesday.
The board letter — drafted after hours of discussion during the board’s meeting last week — proposed an “initial framework” while also saying the board and the Utah Office of Homeless Services will “further evaluate and refine proposals” in coming months, “with further recommendations to be considered” at its Nov. 25 meeting in preparation of the 2026 legislative session.
In response to state leaders’ calls to speed up progress on the homeless campus, the board’s letter emphasized a need for more money. Wayne Niederhauser, state homeless coordinator, has estimated that it will take about $75 million to build the campus, plus at least $30 million a year to operate it.
“Funding for both construction and operation of the campus will be the single biggest accelerant to campus creation,” the letter says, adding that the board “believes that the state of Utah should identify a consistent, predictable statewide funding source to this end.”
If that funding source can be identified, the board wrote “we expect to find savings in the existing system to support these expanded services — and we also believe that additional funding is needed in the near-term for it to be successful, with an expectation that these kinds of transformational investments will lead to significant cost savings over time.”
The letter has similar themes as a draft proposal that the board’s chair, Randy Shumway, wrote and presented to a legislative committee last month — but it leaves the door open for continued discussion. Shumway’s proposal had a more specific vision to respond to Trump’s executive order, calling for a “certified community behavioral health clinic” on the campus with 300 to 400 beds reserved for people who are civilly committed — or court ordered into mental health treatment.
Shumway’s proposal drew criticism and concern from some homeless advocates, who worried it would be wildly expensive and could create a chilling effect by building a civil commitment facility in direct proximity to homeless shelter beds.
“A 300-400 bed mental and behavioral health facility that people are not allowed to leave is not a shelter but an incarceration option,” Bill Tibbitts, deputy executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a low-income advocacy nonprofit based in Utah, told Utah News Dispatch at the time. “Having such a facility colocated with a shelter would probably lead to a sense that if you do not follow the rules in one facility you could be moved into the other.”
Shumway also proposed including on the campus what he called an “accountability center,” or a “secure residential placement facility that provides substance use disorder treatment as an alternative to jail,” where people would “receive care in a supervised environment where entry and exit are not voluntary.”
The Utah Housing Coalition also issued a statement this week saying it and other “homelessness community partners statewide” had “urgent concerns” regarding Shumway’s plan. The coalition included a list of “key concerns,” including the need to prioritize deeply affordable housing and eviction prevention.
The coalition called on state leaders to “add capacity — don’t cannibalize it” by ensuring the new campus adds capacity and isn’t “a reallocation” from other existing homeless shelter and housing services.
Members of the Utah Homeless Services Board did not vote on Shumway’s proposal last week – but instead worked together to craft a response they could agree on while leaving the door open to continued conversations with homeless providers and others within Utah’s vast homeless system as they drill down on specific actions to take.
Read the board’s full written response to state leaders below: