Once a Leader in ‘Housing First,’ Utah Upends its Homelessness Model
The state’s proposal for a 1,300-bed Salt Lake City shelter reflects a national movement to reverse longstanding housing and mental health treatment policies.
Utah Governor Spencer Cox (left) and Representative Tyler Clancy (center) at a bill signing ceremony in April.
Photographer: Chris Samuels/SL Tribune
In 2015, Lloyd Pendleton, then the director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, delivered a powerful TED Talk about the state’s pioneering use of the “Housing First” model in getting people off the streets of cities such as Salt Lake City. The approach prioritizes low-barrier shelters — giving people rapid access to permanent housing, without preconditions or demands about sobriety or drug use, then connecting them to social services like addiction treatment.
The son of a highlands cattle rancher, Pendleton was initially skeptical of the idea; he said he’d once sneered at the urban homeless as hobos who made bad choices. But he came around to embrace Housing First as the best evidence-based fix for a stubborn social problem. Over a decade, Housing First-focused policies had cut Utah’s chronic homeless population by 91%, focusing national attention on the strategy and offering hope that other states — conservative and progressive alike — would follow its example.