Salt Lake City police chief meets with ‘nomads’ to talk homeless problems and solutions

To Julia Eubanks, it makes no sense that there are such limited shelter, supportive housing and addiction treatment options for couples experiencing homelessness in Utah that allow them to stay together. 

“There’s no couple’s shelters. None,” Eubanks told Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd on Monday.

Eubanks said she and her husband have been trying to find housing that would allow them to stay together and get help at the same time, but it’s been “impossible.” In Utah, the state’s strained homeless shelter system is largely segregated by sex-specific facilities, while family shelters, like one in Midvale, are reserved for families with children. 

“Like if it was you and your wife, and you were told, ‘Oh, well … you guys have to be completely separate for the next six months while you go to treatment, and that’s if it’s only six months, and then after that you guys are going to have to stay separate.’ You can’t snuggle. You can’t hold each other,” she told the chief. “Would you do it? Like, nobody would. It’s unbearable.” 

Eubanks was one of about a half dozen people with lived homeless experience who met with the police chief in a downtown office space in Salt Lake City as part of a candid conversation hosted by the Nomad Alliance, a Utah-based nonprofit that helps the state’s unsheltered.

Eubanks said there’s “so many couples out there” who want shelter or help, but “the only thing holding them back is they can’t go together.” 

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“Maybe if we could fix that, then I think there would be a lot more hope on the streets, period,” she said. “You would have a lot less drug problems.”

She questioned that if one of Utah’s “core values” is family, why is it so hard for couples?

“We are families. We do the best that we can to take care of each other because there’s so little resources,” she said, adding that people who live on the streets don’t do it because they want to. “It’s not fun for us. It’s not a lifestyle that I choose to have. … I want a better life. But there’s no bridge to get the resources that they claim are out there.” 

She called for more social workers, more mental health treatment, and more services in general because “If we all showed up we would overflow the entire system.”

Through the course of about an hour, Redd spent most of the time listening. 

David Chim, who held a guitar in his lap while he spoke, urged Utah’s leaders to consider allowing sanctioned camping — something Kseniya Kniazeva, executive director of the Nomad Alliance, echoed as something she’s heard “over and over again” from people experiencing homelessness “begging us for sanctioned camp grounds.” 

“That’s really common in the surveys we’ve done,” she said. “We have plenty of land and parking lots that we can use for this purpose.” 

Dwight Smith urged more action to help people stay stable in housing and prevent evictions. 

“The problem starts way before we become homeless,” he said. 

And Brian Drown said he has two unresolved traffic tickets with outstanding warrants that are blocking him from getting his driver’s license back so he can go back to work. But when he has tried to take care of the warrants, he said he’s been told “they’re not important enough for any officer to take me in on.” 

“I’ve even asked them to (take me in) before so I can get this done, taken care of. … I’ll go do my time. Or give me community service,” he said. “But, you know, saying it’s not important enough to arrest me for — but important enough to ruin my life over — I mean, we’re wasting everybody’s time and money at that point.” 

Kniazeva also listed off suggestions that other members of the Nomad Alliance wrote on a poster board — from allowing access to medical cannabis in order to prevent them from turning to hard drugs to allowing a space for people who are living in their vehicles to park overnight. She also suggested assistance for people who are struggling to pay car registration or insurance, because “the second that they miss a payment, their car gets impounded.” 

“There’s got to be a way that we can take a parking lot, put in bathrooms, put in trash receptacles, showers, and give people that little bit of leeway so that they can get back on their feet, get their jobs, get their registration and insurance, and then move on and out of there,” she said. “There’s better ways than just taking people’s possessions.”

Kniazeva also said members of the Nomad Alliance urge police to “stop giving us camping tickets” because they can block people from accessing housing assistance. 

“I know that you want people to get off the streets, but the more camping tickets you give, the harder it is, the more entrenched they become in the legal system,” she said. 

After nearly an hour of talking, Redd thanked those who spoke for sharing their thoughts, telling them, “I just want you to know, we do care about you, and we could be in your shoes just as quickly as maybe it happened to you.” 

“You’re part of our community. We want to see you successful,” Redd said, while adding, “We also have to balance your success with how the public feels.” 

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Redd said police have to respond to complaints and enforce the law, so he said they’re not going to stop enforcing anti-camping ordinances. But he said he welcomed the ideas — in particular, he said Eubank’s call for more resources for couples was a “great suggestion that we’ll take back and we’ll talk about.” 

While echoing a sentiment that Utah’s top Republican legislative leaders and Gov. Spencer Cox have expressed while calling for improvements to the state’s homeless system, Redd said there needs to be a focus on “accountability” both from the system and from the people it serves. 

“Where there’s no accountability, people don’t change, right?” he said. “So some of the suggestions around sanctioned camping or unsanctioned camping, you know, there’s got to be balance.” 

Redd added that while the state’s “system needs to commit to better processes and accountability and results, the people who are struggling also need to, at some level, commit to accountability,” especially when it comes to drug addiction. 

Redd also acknowledged that “we’ve got to increase the capacity for all of you.” 

“I know that,” he said. “But we have to strike that balance with the need for accountability.” 

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