Salt Lake City wants to cut homeless population, close shelter
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Salt Lake City officials announced a plan Tuesday to close an overflowing downtown homeless shelter hit by violence including a police shooting that wounded a teenage refugee, but critics expressed concern about a new shelter system envisioned at serving half the people it does now.
The situation around the city’s main shelter, the Road Home, has become chaotic, with drug dealers targeting the homeless people who gather there, said Mayor Jackie Biskupski.
The shelter that houses more than 1,000 people each night has also become a contentious political issue in the gentrifying neighborhood that is home to the arena where Utah Jazz basketball team plays, newly built apartments and a shopping mall.
Salt Lake City is betting on innovative new housing and employment programs to cut the current shelter population of about 1,100 people in half so they can be housed in four smaller shelters located elsewhere in the city, Biskupski said.
Read more: http://www.standard.net/State/2016/12/14/Salt-Lake-aims-to-cut-homeless-population-close-shelter.html