Report on homeless mixed

As the evening queue of weary and wary men waited for a spot on the floor at the Rescue Mission of Salt Lake, the tone in Terrell Young's no-guff voice was as raspy as a drill sergeant's.

"Gentlemen, remember, no backpacks in the sleeping area. No food. No drinks. This is not the cafeteria. No cell phones. No spooning. No touching."

"If I find any cell phones plugged in," co-worker Mike Heller chimed in Wednesday night, "they will be removed and so will you."

The mission and the other 14 shelters statewide function as the emergency rooms for the dispossessed. Compared with three years ago, the number of those who haven't had a place to live for a year or more has actually been declining — 19 percent around the state; 32 percent along the Wasatch Front, where about 90 percent of Utah's 15,525 homeless people reside.

Whatever conspiracy of circumstances or personal storm drove the 114 souls into the shelter at 500 South and 400 West, those elements are all left behind for the night. The world in here is going to be safe, at least until breakfast at 6 a.m. when they were free to go.

Most of the men weren't free, of course. Having nothing else to lose is a freedom of sorts, but most had come in, for the night at least, cuffed to drug addiction or by loss of a job or stuck in a situation that they were literally sick of or too tired to handle.

Deepening ripple effects from the faltering economy are definitely increasing the numbers of families seeking out short-stay shelter, according to 2009 Comprehensive Report on Homelessness in Utah released Thursday.

The Road Home, the state's busiest shelter/transitional housing center, had 60 families at the shelter Thursday, executive director Matt Minkevitch said. The shelter, which has worked closely with the state's housing-first approach that puts the homeless in stable housing then addresses the problems that drove them to the streets, will be busy helping get the families experiencing "episodic homelessness" re-settled before the cold weather hits, he said.

"Every shelter's busy and we're going at pretty good clip," he said. "We've had a break with the weather, which always brings a bump in the number of people needing emergency shelter. In the meantime, we'll be ready to open the overflow shelter in Midvale as soon as there is a cold snap."

Meantime, lack of funds is slowing Utah County's first overnight homeless shelter.