As Utah hunts for 1,200-bed homeless site, one county groans over 16 ‘code blue’ beds

People experiencing homelessness camp outside the Main Library in Salt Lake City on Jan. 5, 2024. Photo: Utah News Dispatch // Spenser Heaps

State leaders meet behind closed doors to mull properties for a new, 30-acre campus — but no decision made yet. Meanwhile, Davis County residents blast state mandate for ‘code blue’ winter shelters

Written by Kate McKellar, Utah News Dispatch

State leaders at the helm of Utah’s homeless system haven’t yet confronted one of the biggest and hardest decisions that they’ll face in coming months: where to site a new 1,200-bed homeless shelter and 30-acre “centralized campus” somewhere along the Wasatch Front.

The Utah Homeless Services Board met for about two hours behind closed doors Thursday to discuss “site acquisition and development,” according to its agenda, but no vote was held to select any properties. State officials have until Dec. 15 to present the board with a narrowed-down list of three viable options — but it’s unclear if the list will be revealed to the public or when the board will make a decision about a final site.

Utah law allows public bodies to hold closed-door meetings for “strategy sessions to discuss the purchase, exchange or lease of real property,” so for now, state leaders’ discussions on the matter are secret. However, an internal memo showed that as of mid-September, officials were considering at least five sites, The Salt Lake Tribune first reported last month. They included:

• Lee Kay Conservation Center, near 2100 South and 7200 West
• Standlee Warehouse at 5 S. 5100 West near I-80 in west-side Salt Lake City
• Salt Lake County Oxbow jail site at 3148 S. 1100 West in South Salt Lake
• 131 continuous parcels in the Beck Street area in northern Salt Lake City
• A property on the west side of West Valley City along Bacchus Highway near 5400 South

In an interview with Utah News Dispatch on Friday, state homeless coordinator Wayne Niederhauser (a former Utah Senate president who now leads the state’s Office of Homeless Services), said state officials are still considering those five properties, but not only those five.

“There are more properties,” said Niederhauser, who has spent months scouring the Wasatch Front for the right pick after the 2024 Utah Legislature set aside $25 million for a new large homeless shelter in the face of a homeless shelter system that’s functioned at essentially max capacity for years.

It hasn’t been easy, he said, noting that at one point, “there was a 10-acre (property) that we had ready to go, but determined it wasn’t big enough” to meet their vision for the campus. State leaders want it to be a “transformative” project for Utah’s homeless that eventually wouldn’t just house a 1,200-bed emergency shelter but also provide on-site case management and services in the same vicinity.

Niederhauser, who is also a real estate developer, said he wanted to “manage expectations” that it could take a while before a site is selected. Even if three viable sites are identified for the board on Dec. 15, he said, “that doesn’t mean those properties are ready to have a decision made on them” because they could first need geotechnical or environmental testing.

“There’s all kinds of things that come into play,” he said, including “wetlands. Not all of them have wetlands, a couple of them have wetlands. … There’s not one of those properties that doesn’t have some kind of issue that we’re going to need to take some time.”

It’s also possible, Niedherhauser said, that after three sites are presented, the board could decide against picking any of them. “They could send us back to the drawing board,” he said.

The Dec. 15 deadline for the three-property list, Niederhauser said, is just a “beginning point to identify properties and start working on testing and what we need to do to make sure that they could work.”

“The board will dictate to us what needs to happen at that point,” he said. “And I can’t predict what that will be.”

Sarah Nielson, spokesperson for the Homeless Services Office, who joined Niederhauser for Friday’s interview, said state officials are “doing our due diligence.”

“We want to make sure we’re getting this right,” she said.

The board, however, has also set a deadline ahead of next winter — Oct. 1, 2025 — for the 1,200-bed shelter to be built. So while Niederhauser said it could take more time to choose a site, the pressure is still on for next year.

Whatever they decide, it’s likely to prompt backlash. The last time leaders selected property for three new homeless shelters in Salt Lake County, they were met with vehement outcry from neighborhoods concerned about the impacts the new shelters would bring.

And even as recently as the past two weeks, there has been public outrage over a much smaller effort to offer a limited number of temporary beds to people experiencing homelessness this winter.

A church offered to open its doors, but residents shot it down

Wanting to be a part of the “code blue” response, leaders at Mountain Road Church in Fruit Heights offered their church to be a warming center when needed. But Fruit Heights neighbors bristled at the idea.

On Nov. 6, angry residents packed into a Fruit Heights City Council meeting to protest Mountain Road Church’s offer. The outcry led the pastor to rescind the offer, expressing grief that the warming center had “become such a divisive and emotional issue” in the community, KSL.com reported.

So Davis County officials instead decided to rotate its “code blue” warming center between three different county-owned locations:

• A former county vehicle emissions testing center at 520 Old Mill Lane in Kaysville
• North Davis Senior Center at 42 State Street in Clearfield
• Valley View Golf Course at 2501 E. Gentile Street in Layton

The Kaysville site, in particular, drew an angry crowd to the Davis County Commission’s meeting on Tuesday, with residents expressing concerns about the safety of the location for people experiencing homelessness because of its proximity to a rail line and busy roads — as well as concerns about bringing people struggling with substance use issues near their neighborhoods.

Though the warming center would temporarily shelter up to 16 people at a time on a rotating basis, residents expressed concerns it would turn into a permanent facility (something that’s not being proposed currently).

Kaysville resident Joel Harris, who said he lived four blocks away from the emissions center, told the Davis County Commission he worried it would bring a “spike in crime” and an “uptick of something as obscene as public urination, public defecation, other paraphernalia left around on the ground.”

“All the reasons why I live in Kaysville will be gone,” he said.

He pointed to cities like Portland and San Francisco with much larger troubles with homelessness than Utah, and said “I’m sure they all began with good intentions.”

“We’re not not-in-our-backyard people,” Harris said, noting Kaysville already hosts a domestic violence shelter and rehab centers. “We’re not cold-hearted, unvirtuous people. We’re concerned about the safety of our children. We’re concerned about the property values.”

Davis County Commission Chair Bob Stevenson initially allotted 20 minutes of public comment time to hear residents’ concerns although the matter wasn’t on their agenda Tuesday, but he repeatedly extended that time after some residents shouted over him.

“The people that are coming to these homeless shelters do not want help,” one woman shouted. “They’re drug addicts. They do horrific things. I have small children. This is not why we elected you. Listen to all of us. Change your agenda. Take a little more time to see what other people have to say. This is ridiculous.”

Kaysville Mayor Tamara Tran said her city “absolutely opposes this” and “we will keep track” of its impacts. She urged the county commissioners to provide more answers about how the warming centers will operate and whether “people are going to loiter and stand around and walk through neighborhoods.”

Davis County’s “code blue” plan states people will be picked up at five different bus stops starting at 7 p.m. on nights when alerts are called, or people coming to the centers can transport themselves. They must also leave the warming center in the morning, and they won’t be allowed to leave during operational hours unless for emergencies.

Tran and Rep. Ariel Defay, R-Kaysville, also called for more transparency and changes to clarify the Utah law that mandated Davis County’s participation.

Stevenson told the angry crowd that he understood and heard their concerns, and said that county commissioners would be calling legislators to ask for clarification in the law to make the process more clear.

“In all honesty, I don’t think any of the (warming center) places that presently we’re using are the right places,” Stevenson said.

He noted that this is the first time Davis County has ever had to come up with a “code blue” plan, and county leaders don’t yet know what to expect, including how many people will access the rotating warming centers.

“This is by far the hardest issue that we’ve dealt with, and there are things that we have to try to figure out,” he said. “But hopefully, we’re going to be able to discern and learn some things over the next three or four weeks as we get into colder nights to be able to know what’s best, what type of problems there are.”

Why does the state require counties to help with homelessness?

What was clear from Tuesday’s Davis County Commission meeting was residents and local leaders were not fond of the state mandate that required them to help house the homeless — a task that’s largely been shouldered by Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County up until state leaders decided to bring other counties along. And they felt caught off guard, decrying a lack of transparency around the process.

Kaysville residents also started a Change.org petition, which, as of Friday, had over 2,000 signees, demanding to halt the county plan. Some residents argued Kaysville didn’t have a homeless problem and the state shouldn’t be busing people from other locations to their city.

Niederhauser, when asked about the controversies in Fruit Heights and Kaysville, told Utah News Dispatch on Friday he’s “not critical of a public process and public input.”

“But everybody has to realize that at the end of the day, we have to have some place for people to go,” he said. “And we’re just hoping people will be willing … It’s a temporary situation in Davis County. It’s for the winter. All of that can be evaluated at any time.”

Niederhauser also noted other counties — including conservative Utah County — have implemented winter response plans “and it’s working well.”

He also pushed back on claims that Kaysville doesn’t have a homelessness problem.

“I understand their comments,” he said, adding that sentiment comes from not just people in Kaysville or Fruit Heights, but from cities all across the state. But he said people become homeless in all types of communities, and “every city ought to be stepping up to the plate to help the situation. Because homelessness starts in their city, whether they realize it or not, it’s true.”

That was the policy decision the Utah Legislature made when it passed the 2023 law requiring populated counties to play ball.

“That’s why the statute was created the way it was,” he said. “And it’s not to bring a hammer down. That’s not the way we do this. But, you know, at the end of the day we’ve got to have a place for people to go.”

However, Niederhauser said he’s open to proposals to tweak the law. “We’re very open to statutory changes to make it better,” he said.

In the meantime, though, he’s expecting to get word soon from Davis County on implementation of its “code blue” plan, which state officials have approved.

“They’re working to move ahead,” he said.

Bill Tibbitts, deputy executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a nonprofit that helps low-income Utahns, said the public outcry in Davis County is perhaps not surprising given there’s “never a community where everybody is really excited to have a shelter.”

“But it’s really sad,” he said. “I mean, it’s just for 16 people.”

If anything, Tibbitts said the public outcry in Davis County “really reinforces the idea” that the state needs to step in — whether it’s to pressure local leaders to play even a small part in winter response, or to take charge on big projects like the 1,200-bed homeless campus.

“No matter where you build a shelter, there will be some NIMBY reaction,” he said. “And that’s why the state is having to take a bigger role.”