New coordinator says Salt Lake City is the ‘epicenter’ of homelessness in Utah. Here’s why Ogden officials are pushing back.

Editor’s Note • Through a grant from the Local Media Association, The Salt Lake Tribune reports on homelessness in communities in Utah outside of the Salt Lake Valley.

Ogden • As the sun burned through the clouds on Ogden Monday, Verna McCloy and her dog Dosha were looking for shade next to a utility room in front of the Lantern House, a shelter next to the city’s freight yard.

McCloy has been on and off at the 33rd Street nonprofit since 2019, she said. But she misses a camp on the adjacent street, where she used to have a tent and space to herself, before Ogden city officials closed it up in December.

“We have to go in now; We can’t camp here anymore, ”said McCloy. “But I like camping.”

Ogden’s move made its unprotected residents less visible – a shift recently noticed by Wayne Niederhauser, the state’s new homeless coordinator.

“I was in Ogden the other day and didn’t see any camps there,” he said in a recent interview with the editors of The Salt Lake Tribune.

“I drove onto Wall Avenue and I saw this in Ogden years ago, but it’s not like that anymore,” he continued. “Is it because they’re interested in Salt Lake because that’s where the services are offered? Is it that they are attracted to Salt Lake for political reasons? I don’t know, but I have yet to discover it. “

It is “very evident” that Salt Lake City is the “main epicenter” for homelessness in the state, he added, if only for the capital’s “visual representation of people camping on the streets” in the capital.

Niederhauser will visit the Weber district on Friday to learn more about the community. He was named to his new position last month and has admitted that he doesn’t have a lot of local experience with people affected by homelessness.

His first impression caused frustration among some service providers and homeless attorneys in the Ogden area, who have long felt that decision-makers across the state did not know that homelessness is not an exclusive problem in the Salt Lake Valley.

“I wonder where he’s gone,” said Andi Beadles, executive director of the Weber Housing Authority, “because it’s so visible to all of us.”

Many supporters and residents of the Ogden area are aware of the level of homelessness in their community. A problem that, according to data, has grown steadily over the past few years as Utah grapples with an affordable housing crisis.

“There are a lot of apartments that have been moved up, raised and opened, but none of them are low-income apartments,” said Angelyne Cook, who has lived in the Lantern House for about a month. “People like me, I am disabled. I can’t afford $ 1,000 a month. “

She was one of several unprotected people who had gathered in front of the lantern house on Monday. Some said they want Ogden to allow tents again and to camp within the city limits. They also have other needs: help with obtaining services while the social security office is closed due to the pandemic. Better access to the internet. Bus drives past. And of course cheaper housing in Weber County.

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Visitors to Ogden’s Lantern House sunbathe on the property where meals are served and occasionally stay overnight on May 3, 2021.

“It makes my heart ache”

Angel Castillo, a homeless attorney and candidate for Mayor of Ogden in 2019, said homelessness is “not as visible to a challenge as it is in Salt Lake City.”

“We have fantastic access to the outdoors – trails, parks, places where people who have to camp because they don’t have a home go under the radar and can’t be seen,” she noted.

“There are fewer places to camp in Salt Lake City that are not open to the public but still bring you to a bus or close enough to access the services you need from a shelter provider,” she said. “We are different in this respect.”

And that difference means some residents of the county, as well as Utahns across the state, need training to understand homelessness is a problem in Weber county, Castillo said.

However, business owners and homeowners near the lantern house reported making people homeless on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. The problem, they said, seems to be getting worse.

“It’s here. It didn’t go anywhere. Where do you want it to go?” Said Chad Barnett, owner of DSI, a company that builds surveillance systems for commercial customers.

Barnett’s business is located between the Lantern House and Jefferson Park, a public place where many of the Ogden homeless spend their day waiting for the shelter to offer a meal or open for the night.

“[I see] Many of them take their children to school, ”said Barnett. “They’re down and out, but they’re trying.”

Barnett said he has occasionally offered jobs to some of the unprotected people he comes across. And Allen Haddon, a nearby owner, said he let people he met spend the night at his home.

“It hurts me a lot to see people like that,” said Haddon, who has lived in the neighborhood for 12 years. “When I moved in, I didn’t see anyone. Anybody. Now they come and go and it’s always different people. “

(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) Allen Haddon, of Ogden, said pedestrian traffic for the homeless had increased in the 12 years he lived at his home on 33rd Street east of the Lantern House on May 3, 2021. Occasionally, Haddon has let people he meets spend a night at his house.

A growing number of unprotected

Although the 2021 numbers have not yet been released, 2020 data shows that 411 people were homeless in Weber and Morgan counties – a 9.3% increase from 376 in 2018.

This data, which suggests that the region is home to one of the largest homeless populations in the state, comes from the annual time census. It provides a snapshot of how many people are homeless in the state in a single night each year.

The Weber County’s homelessness rate rose 48% in four years from 2014 and was proportionally higher than Salt Lake County’s 2019, according to a strategic plan commissioned by the Weber Housing Authority.

Niederhauser said in a follow-up interview with The Tribune on Tuesday that his comments should not indicate that Ogden “solved homelessness” and that he views homelessness as a national challenge.

(Screenshot) The 2020 census, which provides a snapshot of the number of homeless people in the state, found 411 people were homeless in Weber and Morgan counties, up 9.3% from 376 in 2018.

His remarks were intended to serve as a compliment to Ogden officials. “Whoever was involved, the whole area in Ogden has changed,” said Niederhauser. “And I was impressed.”

Obviously, people working on the city’s response to homelessness “are doing something that has an impact there,” he said, “because the appearance of Ogden has improved so much from 15 or 20 years ago.”

Niederhauser would have seen a different point of view last year when an unusually large warehouse grew outside the lantern house protection.

It became home to up to 100 people reportedly homeless, and city officials eventually decided to disperse the camp early last winter. Officials said the police had received numerous calls to respond to attacks, harassment and campfires in the camp, as well as trespassing, theft and vandalism at nearby businesses.

Just because the camp is gone doesn’t mean its residents have left Ogden. Past tenants like McCloy and their dog Dosha either had to seek shelter in the lantern house or find another location to set up camp outside of the city limits or in other locations that can more easily fly under the radar.

“If you pitch a tent, you will be thrown in jail,” said Clive Fox, who was waiting with McCloy for the shelter to open for dinner.

The lack of tents and other visual reminders means the unprotected often feel invisible, said Fox – even of Utah’s new homelessness coordinator.

“It’s a lot worse than he thinks,” he said.

There are half a dozen people Niederhauser could call who could take him to a camp “right now,” Castillo said. And she hopes he will meet with these people on Friday to get a better feel for the challenges the church is facing.