County tackles homelessness

Salt Lake County officials pitched their 10-year plan to reduce chronic homelessness to the public Thursday, detailing a trendsetting housing-first model.

The plan — created by the Salt Lake County Council of Governments— aims to get homeless people into housing faster and then offer support services like job training and drug-abuse treatment.

"This plan is directed to not only surround the chronically homeless population with services but to allow them in an independent way to grow back into society," said Palmer DePaulis, chairman of the county's Long Range Planning Committee.

But several residents at Thursday's public hearing at the Salt Lake Main Library urged DePaulis not to let services to the homeless population take a back seat in the housing-first priority plan,

George Dimas, former director of the National Council for Alcoholic and Drug Dependency, encouraged more of a "housing plus" model where services are considered equally with housing. Dimas added that the plan lacked specifics on how it would practically accomplish its goal to eliminate chronic homelessness.

"I find the plan kind of superficial; I don't find it has any guts. I don't find any specificity," he said. "I see these plans come and go. I feel we're destined for failure unless we become specific."

Those details will come, DePaulis said, after the final version of the county's plan is created for an October vote of approval by the Council of Governments. The main focus now, he added, is to get the general concepts in place.

The plan's overarching goal is to take the chronically homeless — those who have been in shelters at least four times in three years or continuously over a year — out of short-term solutions like shelters and put them in homes. By doing so, the shelters will be able to service the short-term homeless better and the chronically homeless will have a higher chance of success, DePaulis said.

At the Road Home, a downtown shelter and service provider, the chronically homeless make up about 12 percent of the clientele, but use about 57 percent of the agency's resources.

"If we can take care of that small group, it goes a long way," Mayor Peter Corroon said. The plan also has a few concrete goals such as building 600 housing units for the chronically homeless, placing 48 people in houses by 2006 and creating an inventory of all housing units for the chronically homeless.

Those goals will make a dent in the county's homeless population, DePaulis said, which includes 1,750 chronically homeless people. Salt Lake County has 70 percent of the state's homeless population and has an estimated 10,000 people who are homeless at some point each year.