Salt Lake County working to meet ‘tall order’ of more than 900 winter overflow beds

SALT LAKE CITY — The first emergency winter overflow shelter beds of the season for Utah’s homeless opened last week with more expected to come online in the coming weeks.

But not all beds identified by the Salt Lake Valley Coalition to End Homelessness will be available all winter.

The Salt Lake County winter response plan has unveiled approximately 732 winter overflow beds and 250 “code blue” beds, which falls short of the 900 winter overflow beds and 100 code blue beds recommended by the Salt Lake Valley Coalition to End Homelessness along with the Utah Office of Homeless Services.

“That’s the largest number of beds identified as needed for a winter that we’ve ever had. I think it also speaks to a need for year-round beds. And I think historically, we’ve seen that,” said Katherine Fife, Salt Lake County’s associate deputy mayor. “The state is working on identifying additional year-round beds that aren’t just temporary winter beds.”

The Salt Lake County Winter Task Force only identified about 450 beds in its first plan submitted to the Utah Office of Homeless Services on Aug. 1 as required by state law. Due to the deficit, Salt Lake County’s plan was deemed noncompliant, which allows the state to step into the planning process. State Homeless Coordinator Wayne Niederhauser acknowledged that the ask was a “tall order” during August’s Utah Homeless Service Board meeting.

To help fill in some of the gaps, the Utah Homeless Service Board approved funding for Ville Property Management to acquire Ville 1990, 1900 W. North Temple in Salt Lake City, earlier this month. The property would be used for temporary winter overflow before being converted to deeply affordable housing in April. The building has 105 rooms and will provide approximately 210 beds. The acquisition of the property is anticipated later this week.

Despite some pivoting, Salt Lake County winter plans have identified approximately 732 winter overflow beds of the 900 seasonal goal. Those beds include:

• 170 beds, potentially 200 beds with fire marshal approval that remains pending, at the West Valley overflow site operated by Switchpoint.
• 65 beds at St. Vincent de Paul.
• 50 microshelter units that were recently relocated.
• 175 additional beds between the three homeless resource centers.
• 32 youth and family beds, likely provided through motel vouchers.
• 210 beds at the Ville 1990 facility, if the purchase is finalized.

The 170 beds at the West Valley overflow site and the 65 beds at the St. Vincent de Paul are all online. The 175 additional beds between the three resource centers are anticipated to come online in increments of five to 10 beds per day.

As required by state law, the Salt Lake County winter response plan also outlined “code blue” beds. A code blue alert is declared by the Utah Department of Health and Human Services when temperatures reach 18 degrees Fahrenheit or below, including wind chill. The protocol was established in the 2023 legislative session with HB499 after at least eight unsheltered people died on Utah’s streets in 2022. The code blue would work to prevent deaths on some of the coldest nights in the winter by requiring resource centers to expand capacity by 35%, allow code blue overflow facilities to open and allow other entities to open warming centers.

“When the coalition identified last year it was 200 code blue beds, and it was, I believe, 600 overflow beds. Those code blue nights were high in demand, and folks sought shelter on those cold nights. So to get to be able to have those year round or more available was really what we wanted to make sure could happen,” said Fife.

The additional code blue beds are intended to help meet the deficit of the approximately 200 winter overflow beds.

The 250 code blue beds in Salt Lake County’s plan include:

• 10 family hotel rooms.
• 20 additional beds at Geraldine E. King resource center.
• 20 additional beds at Gail Miller resource center.
• 30 additional beds at Pamela Atkinson resource center.
• 85 beds at First United Methodist Church, operated by 2nd and 2nd Coalition.
• 85 beds at another church operated by 2nd and 2nd Coalition.

Code blue beds will only be available on nights that meet the standards outlined in HB499. Last session, the law was amended to allow the enforcement of camping bans outlined in city ordinances but prohibit the removal of any survival gear. The gaps in beds and changes in enforcement were acknowledged in Salt Lake City Council’s recent work session during an update by the city’s homeless policy coordinator Andrew Johnston.

“If I’m listening correctly, when code blue is in effect, we can tell people that they’re not allowed to illegally be camping, and we can’t take their stuff, but as we have no place to send them and there will be at this point no other beds — are we functionally just asking people to have things that protect them from the cold but not to deploy them in a way that would protect them from the cold — like they’re going to keep them in a bag and walk around?” asked Councilwoman Victoria Petro-Eschler.

“What I read is ‘we may’ doesn’t preclude us from enforcing a camping ordinance, so we didn’t have to just leave people to camp indefinitely in places. However, it doesn’t really give necessarily an option, an alternative,” answered Johnston.

For shelter cities to receive funds from the State Homeless Shelter Cities Mitigation Fund, it must prove that it is enforcing no camping ordinances and making efforts to reduce homelessness. The ability to do so and the availability of those funds was also a point of contention for Salt Lake City Council members.

“We only get a third of those funds for the mitigation funds for winter overflow. Two-thirds of them are used by the Office of Homeless Services, which has passed through us to the providers to pay for those services because there weren’t separate money allocated,” Johnston told the council. “They’ll try and recoup as many unused funds from other contracts, under the couch cushions, wherever they can, to find those other funds, local funds that they can. Every year, we’re scrambling to get money for winter overflow put together, just to get enough to get those bids running.”