(mellow music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Utah Insight" is made possible by viewers like you.

Thank you.

- [Liz Adeola] Next on "Utah Insight" a look at new solutions for Utahns experiencing homelessness.

- It's great to see that steps are being made in the right direction, and these steps take a long time.

- [Liz Adeola] Learn about holistic approaches organizations are taking to help people and see if they're making a difference.

- There's tons of resources and wraparound services that are out there that have all got best intentions, but, again, it's up to people to make the first step.

(mellow music) - Welcome to "Utah Insight."

I'm Liz Adeola.

The number of people and families experiencing homelessness in Utah is on the rise.

The 2023 Point in Time Count found that more than 2,700 people experiencing homelessness were sheltered with 980 people unsheltered.

3,687 people in Utah shared that they were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January of 2023.

That number is an increase from the 2,798 people who were counted back in 2019.

Well, a year after that count, we launched this program, "Utah Inside" and dedicated two episodes to the factors surrounding housing insecurity.

And here's what experts had to say.

- We have to remember that the home ownership market in Utah has become more and more difficult to crack into.

And that's the challenge that we have to address.

We have fewer households who can afford a home.

We have more household formations because population growth and people moving into Utah, and we don't have enough housing opportunities for families and households.

The rental housing market is just as stressed, if not more.

We don't have enough rental units, and we certainly don't have enough affordable rental units.

- You know, with homelessness is really a systemic issue.

And when we look at it, we do a lot of stuff that's reactionary.

And what we need to start doing is prevention.

- This has really highlighted a problem that we were always aware of, but didn't talk about as much as maybe we should have.

And that is that really shelters are not the best way to address homelessness.

Too often when people show up at the shelter, they really should be somewhere else.

- The panel of experts joining me now are the ones who help people who are struggling with housing and a myriad of other issues find they're somewhere else.

Joining me for this discussion, we have Carol Hollowell, the executive director of Switchpoint Community Resource Center.

Preston Cochrane, who is the chief executive officer of The Other Side Village, and Wendy Garvin, who serves as the executive director for Unsheltered Utah.

Wendy, for so many years, people have thought we have more people experiencing homelessness.

We need more shelters, we need more beds, but as you heard in that piece, there is someone saying that shelters are not the best way to address that issue.

What are your thoughts on that?

- I think that's very true.

I think that if I were to ask you, would you like to go and sleep in a room with 300 other people, you'd probably say, not if I can help it.

So finding solutions that fit the needs of the individuals that we're trying to serve is really critical.

And what we have found is that people would prefer to stay with their family unit, or a few close friends in motel rooms rather than in big congregate shelters.

And they do better in those situations.

They thrive when they have a locking door and a safe place to shower, and a safe place to sleep, their trauma starts to decrease.

Whereas, when you're living in a group of that large of a group of people, you have to deal with the constant threat of having those people so close and possibly in your stuff and in your business.

And so there are a lot of ways to address homelessness, and I think we should be exploring all of them.

- Yeah, there's a dignity issue to it as well.

Carol, we featured Switchpoint on the show before, but we never really talked about how it began.

How did meeting just one person change the way that you viewed homelessness?

- That's a great question.

You know, for me, it was a personal aha moment of wait a minute, I could do something.

I could do something different maybe to help them.

And it was really meeting that client, that individual where they're at and asking 'em why.

What happened?

How come you're homeless?

And when we were able to take a step back and look at it and say, oh, I could fix that today.

If I fix that, I could get you into housing.

And that really launched for me a window, if you will, of being able to look at individuals and figure out solutions for them that weren't cookie-cutter.

Everyone has a different story.

- Yeah, and that sounds like something, Preston, you've mentioned taking that holistic approach.

What does that look like for you and your colleagues at The Other Side Village?

- I mean, a holistic approach really you're looking at the mental wellbeing, you're looking at housing, you're looking at jobs, you're looking at just security and wellness in general.

It's really a whole person chain is what we're looking at.

So when someone's experiencing homelessness, whether it's situational, or chronically homeless, there's a difference.

And you have to be able to meet them, as Carol mentioned, meet them where they're at.

There is no one size fits all approach.

There's a lot of band-aid approaches, but you really have to look at the individual what their needs are.

So from a holistic approach, really, you gotta get inside and build trust with them.

And that's the first part.

Once you build trust, you also have to make sure that they are a willing participant in the process.

- Yeah, that's a big part of it as well.

We asked people on social media, what do you think we can do to help prevent homelessness?

And how might Utahns come together to help the unsheltered community?

And here's what some of you had to say.

Sandy Pyper wrote, housing first!

Before any issues can be resolved.

We also had someone who goes by the name of Varnyo say this, A housing first initiative has worked in Utah before!

Do it again in perpetuity!

And then we had a few other comments that came through saying that really there needs to be more legislation to prevent developers from making housing less affordable for people.

Carol, what are your thoughts about that?

- Ugh, it's just been such a huge piece of what Switchpoint has taken on the last four years of creating deeply affordable housing.

And that deeply affordable housing means 30% AMI, or average median income, or below.

And that is a big part of our homeless population here in Utah, but nationwide is those that are barely on the cusp.

They're fixed income seniors, they're veterans on a pension, they're people on disability, and they just can't afford anything else.

So if we can't have an avenue for deeply affordable housing to come in like a tiny home community, or like our vertical tiny homes, which is our hotels that we've converted, there is not a place for them to be.

And we want them to have dignity, right?

So if we can create that deeply affordable housing that they can pay on their own without vouchers or subsidized it creates a community that they feel like they're a part of.

- Yeah.

Preston, the issue of homelessness is dynamic.

It's always changing.

How does that conflate the issue and make it difficult to address, and difficult to find solutions?

- So housing first, it's one solution to it.

We look at it from a humans first perspective.

So housing is a component of it, but if someone's not ready for housing, they're gonna lose that housing.

If you just put 'em in an apartment, expect them to thrive, and they're not fully prepared to do that, they're gonna lose that housing very quickly.

So when you have the humans first approach, housing's one component, but you've gotta treat the mental health aspect of it.

70% of individuals who are chronically homeless have a mental illness.

And so without that, if you're just putting 'em in a home, or apartment, or somewhere else you're setting them up to fail.

- The lack of affordable housing in Utah certainly doesn't help.

Workforce Services, Homeless Service Division shared that there's a deficit of 77,000 deeply affordable housing units in Utah.

Wendy, what are you hearing from people that you interact with?

- Oh, that's absolutely true, and it affects the people who are currently homeless trying to get into housing, but it's also affecting those who are barely holding on with housing.

We have a constant influx of new unsheltered people into the community because they are getting forced out of housing by cost increases.

And so it's hitting us on both ends.

We can't move people into housing and we're also getting more people on the street.

- Well, one man I sat down with, Brian Higgins, said, "It's important for people who go through programs to be a shining light for others."

Higgins now works to do just that after PTSD from conflict-based violence made him feel like he was shrouded in darkness.

(soft music) - Of course, growing up, America was the goal, you know, Disneyland, all of these wonderful things that I saw on TV and in films.

I was from Belfast, Northern Ireland during The Troubles.

And that is why I came to America from a conflict resolution visa because of my work in conflict resolution back in the days.

- [Liz Adeola] A time when violence and cruelty plagued Brian Higgins formative years.

Even after physically escaping the battles at home, Brian says, "A mental battle reared its ugly head."

- It led me to, you know, lose everything, lose my family, and my friends, my job, my house, you know, and I just had no other option but to live on the streets.

- [Liz Adeola] Brian says he tried different resources and searched for relief for about two decades, but nothing stuck.

He found himself relying more and more on drugs and alcohol to drown out his inner turmoil.

- I was struggling so intensely with my mental health issues and my addiction that I couldn't really see the light at the end of the tunnel.

- [Liz Adeola] He spent about 18 months homeless as a result.

- From the self-stigma, you learn to believe that you're not worth it, you know.

You don't fit into society, you don't have a community around, so the only option for you is to continue to fall down and continue the road because there's no self-esteem and you just feel worthless.

And a lot of people in that realm, when you are approached by somebody experiencing homelessness on the streets, you can be very hesitant.

Straightaway you're already saying no.

No, I don't have any money for you.

And that might not be what they're asking.

Most times they're just asking for help.

- [Liz Adeola] Something that's not as easy as it sounds.

- The two hardest questions are, I don't know when I need help.

We as a community have to know how to answer those questions.

- [Liz Adeola] Brian felt lucky to be paired with the right people at the right time.

- There was waiting lists, there was forms to fill in.

There was a lot of process that I had to do, but at this stage, I had just lost all humanity within myself.

And there was really nowhere to go but up.

- [Liz Adeola] Another journey that is not as easy, or linear as it may sound.

- I relapsed over and over and over, fell back, but by that stage people were around me, and people knew who I was, and people were there for me, you know, to pick me up, and helped me move forward.

And same old cliche, you know, that's what I'm trying to do for others.

- [Liz Adeola] Volunteering with emergency services, then becoming the creative director of Mental Healthy F.i.T.

a nonprofit organization that uses creativity to teach people about mental health issues and acceptance.

- We want to listen to people and understand that it's their experience.

And even though it's not our experience, be empathetic to realize, hey, that must be a difficult situation for you.

And then we can agree upon that because, again, we're trying to help the other person and then partner together to move forward.

And that does not work if we shun, or shame, or create stigma.

Where I am today compared to where I was, is leaps and bounds ahead of where my mindset was of where I thought I would be.

And I'm certainly not a millionaire, or a billionaire, or anything, you know, I'm a thousandaire maybe.

(chuckles) But, you know, I can pay my bills.

I can go to bed sober, I can wake up sober, and every day's a brand new day.

And that's where the dream is.

Of course, the dream does turn into a nightmare sometimes, but I know that it's not gonna last.

- In the federal fiscal year of 2022, the Utah Homeless Management Information System reported the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time increased by 10% while the number of people experiencing reoccurring homelessness increased by 5%.

And, Wendy, we saw in that piece, Brian sharing that recovering from experiencing homelessness, it's not always a happily ever after story instantly, and Preston said, "There's no band-aid approach."

- Yeah, it's complicated.

People end up on the street for a lot of reasons, but as Preston said, "Mental illness is a very common reason."

And even if you go onto the streets without mental illness, the amount of trauma that people suffer while they're on the street is really concerning, and often causes mental illness.

So we see people who go on the street sober and experiencing a bit of a downturn in their life.

And if they end up stuck on the street as opposed to a shelter, or a program they deteriorate.

They get PTSD, their mental health declines rapidly.

And until we can get them into a safe situation, that decline is gonna continue.

And so every approach that we have, whether it is the human-first approach, or the housing-first approach, getting people stable is the first and most important step because otherwise they continue to experience that trauma.

- [Liz Adeola] Yeah, and Preston I see you nodding, you agree with that?

- Yeah, I know a lot of Brians out there.

I've met a lot on the street.

I've seen people overcome major challenges just like Brian did.

And when you look at people that have experienced unsheltered homelessness for a long period of time, someone's been chronically homeless, they've been outside so long that they forget what it feels like on the inside.

And when you meet them trying to get them, whether it's shelter or into services, some are very, very willingly, you know, you just have to encourage them and challenge them to do that, while others, they may not.

It's a trust issue and it takes time to build that trust in order to help them get to the next step.

- And there are numbers that suggest that permanent housing projects are making a big difference in the community.

The 2023 Annual Data Report On Homelessness found that nearly 93% of people enrolled in such projects successfully exited or kept permanent housing.

Carol, you have the data showing that this could work.

What else is needed so that more people are able to get help by these programs so that they can expand to meet the needs that are out there?

- Well, we definitely need more housing, right?

We can't solve homelessness without that piece of housing.

I'd like to add to the housing-ready, housing-first, people-first model, what we've seen at Switchpoint is that the most successful is when they're wrapped around with a lot of case management and services.

If you just stick somebody into housing and say, oh, here's your house, go for it.

They are not ready, right?

To accept responsibilities of keeping up on their apartment.

And that's where they could be forced out back to the street if they have not had the support system that's been buoyed up around them.

So for me, we wanna continue to develop and create housing that has those supportive services always attached to them, but we're in a deficit.

We've gotta have more people stepping up to the plate and creating housing.

- Yeah, and Brian said in that package, one of the hardest things to do is to ask for help.

So to ask for help, fill out the forms and the applications, and then not get in what else is next for those people that are on the waiting list, or aren't approved the first-time around?

- Yeah, I mean, Carol brings up a good point.

I mean, affordable housing, developing affordable housing is a challenge.

There's so many barriers for those who have done it.

Not only is it expensive, but just to get the city buy-in, and get community buy-in to do that, it takes a long time, and the costs have risen to develop affordable housing.

So if you're on the waiting list, sadly many people have been on for so long, there's just not enough inventory to go around.

And people who are in permanent subsidized housing, they're there, they've got their spot, but there's this choke in the system, there's not enough to go around.

And so people just extends that line.

And if you lose your housing, now you're back in the back of the line.

- If I could add to that, one of the things that I see that is really challenging is that trust in the system is broken.

As you mentioned, if you ask for help and then there just is no help available, that creates a lack of trust, but a lot of these folks came from the foster system, and are on the street because they don't have any backup support, or they've been through the jail systems, the prison systems.

And so they have developed a deep underlying lack of trust in institutions.

And so when they do ask for help and we can't meet their needs because of a lack of housing, or a lack of programs, or a lack of funding, it just increases that trust deficit and it makes it harder each time we approach them, harder each time they reach out for help because they start to expect to fail.

And that's just a terrible place to build off of.

- Well, Governor Spencer Cox, this came up at the Governor's Monthly News Conference and he talked about it.

Take a listen to what he had to say about this topic.

- I've never been more optimistic about our ability to deal with the homelessness issue that's impacting Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County, and really the rest of the state.

This is an incredible board, some of the best, smartest, most giving people I know.

And now with what we did in the legislative session with these new resources, I think you'll see some pretty exciting things coming back.

So, again, speaking of dichotomies, it really is about holding people accountable and getting them the resources.

- The Utah State legislature approved more than $66 million, far short of the $128 million the governor proposed the state spend on housing and homeless initiatives.

With funding tight, how are your organizations filling in the gaps?

I see you smiling over there, Carol.

You're like, it's impossible, sorry.

- Oh, it's so tough.

I mean, we've gotta have more people come to the table that have money to help create some affordable housing.

It can't just be the state burden, right?

I mean, it was helpful when we were able to use some of the art money during COVID.

That created kind of an extra push on some of this deeply affordable housing, but once it stops, then what, right?

And now we're in that then what phase of now how do we create all this housing?

There's not enough money through low income tax credits, or through the state's deeply affordable housing pot.

They just had to take a cut again this year.

And so when we're looking at that big request of 128 million and then it gets cut down, it means that there's not gonna be enough housing coming online.

And, again, that makes the clients have to wait and wait.

So how to get creative as stakeholders, as providers in our state, how do we get creative to keep going, and looking at different options?

One of the things that we did just recently is purchased an assisted living facility, but then turned it into chronically homeless, chronically mentally ill women facility.

That is a gap that was in our community that was occurring.

And how do we keep looking at something that is outside of the box and is cost-effective?

Much more cost-effective to buy an existing building than to try and build new.

- Preston, what's your organization doing?

- Yeah, The Other Side Village, our goal is to be reliant on ourselves, self-supportive.

So our goal is not to rely on any federal, or grant money, things like that.

So we look at social enterprise, micro enterprise businesses that not only provide resources and operational funding 'cause all of our services are free, but it also gives our residents an opportunity to work in those social enterprises.

So vocational and job training.

And it gives them dignity of work.

So it serves two purposes, training, but also resources for our programs.

- Yeah, you were telling me there's a grand opening that's coming up.

- We're a couple weeks away from our grand opening of The Other Side Donuts.

So it's one of our enterprises.

We have folks that work in our donut shop, and we secure contracts with different businesses around the valley to provide them the best tasting donuts in the state.

- Wendy, how does your organization fill in that gap of funding?

- Well, Carol is kind of my hero.

Carol has proven to be one of the most resourceful people in the system at finding opportunities and turning them into housing.

So I've tried to model some of my programs after what she does, but one of the things that I do is I use volunteers very heavily.

I work my programs out of churches, and churches are really great buildings because they are not very heavily utilized most of their time except Sunday mornings, or occasional activities.

So we can do nighttime programs in the middle of winter, and we now have two shelters that run out of local churches.

So donated facilities from the churches, and then donated time from our volunteers makes our program run very smoothly at a very low budget, but you can't get volunteer timber to build a facility.

You can't get volunteer tiny homes.

Some things just cost money, so we need the money, too.

- Yeah.

Well, before we wrap up, I would love each of you to, you know, share any resources that people can look into to get help if they need help, or know someone who needs help.

And just to share your final thoughts, take a minute or two to share your final thoughts starting with you, Carol.

- Sure.

I think it's important for anybody to, like a Brian, be able to feel comfortable asking for help.

It's been an interesting journey on this pilot program this year that we ran the micro-shelters downtown Salt Lake.

And to be able to really have that time with those clients to say, what do you need?

It's okay to ask.

And it took a long time, you know, about four months for them to finally say, this is what I need.

So we could start the process on how to move them forward.

It's a hard road for clients who have been chronically homeless to actually regain some of those soft skills, is what I would call 'em.

And polish them up so that they're employment ready.

There's a lot of resources throughout the state, and it can start with going to ending homelessness, or the state's website, or any of the providers.

If you just Google homelessness in Utah, people can find resources that they can either volunteer at, donate to, or direct people to.

- [Liz Adeola] Preston.

- So two thoughts.

The question I get the most from people is, what can I do to help?

So for viewers at home thinking, gosh, you know, I pass homeless individuals on the street every day, what can I do?

Do I give them money?

Do I do a handout?

The first thing is compassionate citizenry.

You've gotta have compassion on individuals who are experiencing that.

And second of all, there's lots of resources.

There's a hotline, the coordinated entry hotline for anyone that comes across an individual, you can call that number, be connected with someone who can help them navigate the system, whether it's going to a temporary shelter, whether it's going to a micro-shelter, whether it's coming to The Other Side Village, or other resources that are available.

So just getting educated on the process is important.

- [Liz Adeola] Wendy.

- I think we need to focus on low barrier solutions.

There are so many solutions in the system, but one of the toughest ones to address is the people who are not yet ready to stop using drugs, or not yet ready to accept the full treatments for their mental health issues.

And yet they still don't deserve to be living outside without food, without resources.

So I focus on low barrier solutions, and my heart is drawn towards these folks who have been living on the street for five or six or seven years who, as Carol said, need help to even reintegrate into the social fabric, but because there are lots of programs out there that offer rehab, or substance use disorder treatment, we just focus on getting those folks inside because sometimes they need a hand to realize that their lives are not what they had hoped for.

So that's where we try and focus.

- Well, thank you all for being here today and joining us for this discussion.

Next week on "Utah Insight" we're gonna be talking about amping up electric vehicles, and we wanna hear from you.

Would you ever consider purchasing an electric vehicle?

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Thank you so much for watching "Utah Insight."

We'll see you next week.

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