There are no homeless people anywhere else in the state so the ones you see in Salt Lake are it.
Not all panhandlers are homeless. Most of the homeless in Salt Lake City seem to disappear at night. There are no massive homeless camps like you see in San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. A lot of the panhandlers in Salt Lake have houses and consider panhandling to be their day job. https://www.ksl.com/?sid=27782692
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-Nevada-reach-tenta...
Edit: I just remembered a city ordinance was passed specifically in response to the tent camping. I'll see if I can dig up a link for reference. Many homeless advocacy groups were quite upset with the decision.
Edit 2: Found an article. This is much more recent that the OP article, which dates from 2015.
http://www.sltrib.com/home/4976771-155/provo-city-ordinance-...
Uhh, you sure about that? I literally ride my bike by two almost weekly downtown. They are right off the exit ramp for I-15.
I've seen panhandlers in Provo before on Center street (not sure if they were homeless or just panhandling)
From the article:
"As of 2015, the state can just about declare victory: The population of chronically homeless people has dropped by 91 percent."
...
"In fact, Utah still has a substantial homeless problem. The overall homeless population is around 14,000."
"The chronically homeless, on the other hand, are a subset of the homeless population that is often the most vulnerable. These are people who have been living on the streets for more than a year, or four times in the past three years, and who have a "disabling condition" that might include serious mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability or illness."
...
"By implementing a model known as Housing First, Utah has reduced that number from nearly 2,000 people in 2005, to fewer than 200 now."
A shelter I contribute to here in Portland focuses specifically on homeless families who have recently fell on hard times and tries to address getting them back on their feet and into sustainable jobs before they enter a vicious circle and are unable to get back into the system at all. I don't believe those families would have counted toward the chronic homeless number.
"The chronically homeless, on the other hand, are a subset of the homeless population that is often the most vulnerable. These are people who have been living on the streets for more than a year, or four times in the past three years, and who have a "disabling condition" that might include serious mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability or illness."
http://www.aei.org/publication/on-utahs-91-percent-decrease-...
> Figure 2 shows that, measured by its point-in-time counts, Utah experienced a less dramatic, but still impressive 71 percent decrease in chronic homelessness since 2005. Yet should we trust even the point-in-time counts?
Yes. If you want to challenge them, go out and do point in time counts rather than suggest that someone is lying. In fact, challenging them in the manner that the writer is is fundamentally dishonest, suggesting again that research by its very nature shouldn't be trusted.
> In fact, as Figure 3 shows, there were major drop-offs in chronic homelessness during two separate periods: 2009–10 and 2014–15. If not for these two periods, chronic homelessness in Utah would have increased over the past decade.
Just because reductions appear during specific time periods during a research period does nothing to deny the fact that overall reductions occurred. This is like suggesting that a small uptick in violent crime means that crime hasn't reduced at all over the last several decades.
The entire article is anti-science, as the AEI all too often is. If you want to challenge research, you don't do it by suggesting someone is lying, you do it by using the scientific method. AEI really doesn't do any of that, it is primarily there to challenge research to protect support for conservative ideals while making them seem as if they are well researched.
Reductions appeared during specific years, and Utah also changed the way it measured chronic homelessness in those specific years, in ways that we'd expect to reduce measured chronic homelessness. Specifically:
- in 2010, Utah stopped counting people in "transitional housing" as chronically homeless.
- in 2015, the Salt Lake region implemented a "new process for confirming whether individuals are chronically homeless."
> If you want to challenge research, you don't do it by suggesting someone is lying, you do it by using the scientific method.
If you want to challenge research, you don't do it by attacking the motives of the researchers or by brutally misstating their arguments to make them look ridiculous. You don't pretend that the research is just "suggesting someone is lying" when it's not. If "anti-science" means "willing to look into potential methodological issues with data provided by the government" then sign me up.
They have an end goal in mind: uphold or attack research to support conservative ideologies.
I cannot find a rebuttal of the author's interpretation that the 91% statistic is largely due to reclassification. The author appears reasonable. Here is a quote from him:
"The state has rightly focused most intensely on the homeless who sleep on the street and who have serious problems with mental illness and addiction. Hundreds of people have been moved from the street and shelters into housing. Whether the overall numbers have plummeted the way Utah reports should not distract from these positive steps [2]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute#...
[2] - http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865650317/Utahs-big-drop-...
If they want to prove to the chronically homeless that they can get a home, they only need to follow through with the home.
Or perhaps they want to prove to their constituents that the number of chronically homeless has diminished. Easy enough: tell their constituents where to go to count homeless people. Again, it's not incumbent upon them to count, or even to provide easy access to the location. Just give verifiable steps and expect your constituents to do some legwork. (Most won't, but maybe a news crew will.)
That's completely biased though. You can only know who is chronically homeless AFTER the fact. So this whole celebration of reducing chronic homelessness is more likely just a PR piece.
No... that's not a fair comment.
We are measuring it. People are constantly going through rough patches and become homeless. In some cases, most cases, they get help "soon" and get into a home. In other cases, they don't. This article is about the latter cases.
Your statement suggests that the efforts to reduce chronic homelessness compete with efforts to help the temporarily homeless. The article doesn't suggest that is the case.
That seems like a fairly straight-forward statistic based on a snapshot in time (e.g. when you do the survey): Has the person in question been: (a) living on the streets for more than a year, or four times in the past three years, and (b) has a "disabling condition" (e.g. serious mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability or illness)
"In fact, Utah still has a substantial homeless problem. The overall homeless population is around 14,000.
The chronically homeless, on the other hand, are a subset of the homeless population that is often the most vulnerable. These are people who have been living on the streets for more than a year, or four times in the past three years, and who have a "disabling condition" that might include serious mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability or illness."
The Road Home (mentioned in the article) and a Catholic food bank and other homeless services are located in that area, hence the reason for the homeless density in that area.
source: I live in downtown salt lake
The admittedly surface impression I got was that the city is hostile to the homeless.
I don't think anyone pays attention to the signs.
http://money.cnn.com/interactive/economy/minimum-wage-since-...
Utah still has ... a substantial ... homeless population ... around 14,000.
The chronically homeless ... are people who have been living on the streets for more than a year, or four times in the past three years, and who have a "disabling condition" that might include serious mental illness, an addiction or a physical disability or illness.
If that is less than 200 people either I don't understand what "homeless" means or something is... off. How does one define "chronic homelessness?"
I really want it to be true. I have seen first hand how hard so many people work to help the homeless; through nonprofits, the government, and the LDS Church. But declaring "victory" over homelessness rings pretty hollow if you walk the streets of Salt Lake City.