The Salt Lake County Long Range Planning Committee is advocating a "housing-first" approach to address the county's chronic homeless population. With permanent housing as an anchor, homeless men, women and families would receive intensive case management. The committee — co-chaired by former Salt Lake Mayor Palmer DePaulis and Midvale Mayor JoAnn Seghini — wants to place the chronically homeless in subsidized homes throughout the county. Committee members believe the cost savings from this approach could be used in other aspects of aiding the homeless.

This approach makes perfect sense. Unlike most problems facing government, this issue won't fail for a lack of funding. Available funding will be reprioritized, and there is also federal housing funding that is presently underutilized. The challenge in this case will be convincing cities and neighborhoods that homelessness is everyone's problem. That will require education, compassion and a collective sense of responsibility for those who are less fortunate..

"We have to make the people of our society understand that they are people," Mayor Seghini says of the homeless. "They are not 'those' people. They are 'our' people."

Whether they are living in an SRO in Ogden or living under an overpass in Salt Lake County, don't all of "our people" deserve a place to call home?

---

Marjorie Cortez is a Deseret Morning News editorial writer. E-mail: marjorie@desnews.com