By Jacob Rueda
Erin Mendenhall is running for re-election as mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah.
On her campaign website, she talks about the homeless, saying that they are "our neighbors and should be treated with compassion."
She then addresses some points about homelessness in the United States and what steps she has taken as mayor to address the issue.
However, during her time as mayor, Salt Lake City's homeless problem has not improved. The situation was not helped when city police cleared a homeless encampment near the downtown area in 2021. Similar moves to clear out the homeless have come with a heavy price tag for tax payers, along with some harsh criticism from residents and community leaders.
Rio Grande Street in Downtown Salt Lake City. Police were criticized for clearing out homeless encampments in the area in 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)
According to the Utah Department of Workforce Services Annual Report on Homelessness, the state saw a 10 percent increase in homelessness in the state during the 2022 Federal Fiscal Year. Between 2020 and 2021, the rise was 14 percent.
The report also said that there was a "5% increase among those who have experienced homelessness multiple times accessing services." That is, resources that assist people in getting out of homelessness.
Focusing strictly on Salt Lake City, resources for those experiencing homelessness include places like The Road Home, Shelter The Homeless, and the Gail Miller Resource Center.
Despite the presence of these resources, whether or not one can come out having taken full advantage of them varies greatly for different reasons. Those reasons include how able a person applying for assistance can meet the requirements needed to move forward.
People working to get out of homelessness sometimes face challenges posed by the system itself.
Dani Gill, a former social worker based in Salt Lake City who worked directly with homeless applicants, said processes and regulations can keep individuals seeking assistance from transitioning out of homelessness. One such process involves the use of vouchers.
"There is a cap for a certain amount of time for someone to be on a voucher that's not permanent," she said, "Those vouchers usually last about a year."
Vouchers allow for short-term housing assistance. However, Gill said that the time allotted for the vouchers is not enough to sufficiently help a person transition from homelessness, especially if they're not earning income at that moment.
"They'll typically get kicked out because they can't pay rent and end up back in the shelter or on the street," she said, "So it's a really a vicious cycle."
Recidivism is also an issue. According to the Nolan Center for Justice, Utah's recidivism rate is currently at 46 percent. In Salt Lake County, the rate is at 74 percent. Gill points out that part of what maintains homelessness is people constantly going back to jail.
When people lose housing, they may turn to crime and end up in jail, which makes it more difficult to get out of homelessness.
"You have those individuals that are homeless that go to jail for crimes that they committed while they're on the street," she said, "but then when they're released, they don't have anything after, so they just go straight back to it."
Another things that Gill says is an impediment to qualifying for housing is documentation.
"A lot of those individuals have either lost their birth certificates or Social Security Cards or IDs," she said. Getting back that documentation is even more challenging, being that in order to have one the other is needed. While there is no charge for getting a new Social Security Card, there is a charge for getting a birth or naturalization certificate. And, even if they were able to pay for it, the person requesting it has no address for it to be sent to, so the cycle continues.
Essentially, the bureaucracy involved in transitioning away from homelessness is a part of what keeps a majority of people in it. It's something that creates more stress for those who work in outreach and the community as a whole.
On top of bureaucracy is funding, since outreach programs are considered community non-profits and generally don't charge for providing services. Due to their non-profit status, organizations have to request money which can come from anywhere like city governments to private donors, which Gill said does not arrive soon enough.
As a result, Gill said the wait can have catastrophic results for those needing assistance.
"By the time they get there, there's maybe a thousand plus people that weren't able to be helped and just end back up on the street or dying from a drug overdose because they don't want to deal with it anymore," she said.
Incumbent mayor of Salt Lake City Erin Mendenhall is up for re-election. Homelessness will be a topic she and other candidates will address in their campaigns. (Salt Lake City Mayor's Office)
With mayoral elections coming up, the topic of homelessness will most likely be talked about extensively. Candidates will be weighing in on what should be done about the situation. However, Gill said that there is an undercurrent of bias against homeless individuals due to a lack of understanding of what they're going through.
"The politicians just think that everyone is lazy and they just want to live off everyone else's dime," she said, "but that's not accurate all the time." A 2021 study by the University of Chicago found that in the United States, 53 percent of individuals living in shelters and 40 percent of individuals who had no shelter at all were employed, either full or part time, between 2011 and 2018.
The same study also found that only 9 percent of individuals living in shelters transition into regular housing. Although rent prices are down nationally from 2022, the national average for rent was $2,029 in June of this year. In Salt Lake City, the median rent was $1,895 for the same period.
Same thing goes for housing. The average home sale price ending the third quarter of this year in the U.S. is $416,100. In Utah, the median home sale price is $522,488.
All of these factors and more lead to a broken system and individuals who, no matter how hard they fight, end up getting defeated in the end. It comes to a point where some of those who work in the field have had enough.
"I had to leave social work in general just because I was burned out," said Gill, who had been in the field for 12 years before deciding to leave.
Whether it's a politician's attitude, a change in the system, or a change in public perception, it will take more than what is there now to address homelessness in Salt Lake City or elsewhere in the U.S.
The interconnectedness of each element makes it so that if one fails, then the others cannot work to their full potential to help people get out of homelessness and end it once and for all.
Watch the full interview with Dani Gill below.
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