They are calling it a “safe space.”
And, with any luck at all, it will be. But it won’t be enough.
It’s the block of Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande Street in front of the city’s largest homeless shelter, The Road Home. It is being fenced off to create a controlled area where people in need can both receive necessary services and get away from the drug dealers and other influences that would drag them backwards.
It is part of what is being called, in keeping with the military nature of the short-term approach to dealing with the increasingly lawless and violent neighborhood, Operation Rio Grande.
The Utah Legislature, meeting in special session Wednesday, ratified the deal for the street closing and moved $4.9 million from other state accounts into the project. That is supposed to be enough to tide the operations over to January, when the regular session of the Legislature will be asked to come up with another $67 million for the work going forward.
The push, led by House Speaker Greg Hughes, was a necessary shock to the system, to a status quo that was deteriorating beyond the ability of charities, city law enforcement or county service providers to manage.
There will be portable toilets and other sanitary facilities. There will be counselors to help with medical and mental health and employment issues. Parts of it will be cool in summer and warm in winter. There will be locks and ID cards to let in the people who need help while keeping out the dealers and others who would only make their lives worse.
It’s all good. And it’s a drop in the bucket toward what needs to happen.
For Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and the state of Utah to really deal with the problem of homelessness and the crime and misery that often attend it, the “safe space” will have to be much, much larger.
Larger, even than the plans to close The Road Home by 2019 and replace it with three, smaller homeless services centers.
It will have to include thousands more affordable housing units, units that are not included in the boom of “luxury apartments” that are spouting up all over the Salt Lake Valley.
It will have to include increased educational opportunities and jobs that pay a living wage but that don’t require four-year degrees.
It will have to include access to health care, including mental health, substance abuse, dental and vision.
It will have to include tax policies that reduce the burden on low-income households, policies such as eliminating the state sales tax on groceries and offering a state version of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income workers.
Without sustained efforts, and expenditures, in those and other areas, there is no way the problems suffered by the homeless, and the problems caused by homelessness, will fit in a block. Or many blocks. Or a city.
State lawmakers see that enough to take the actions they have taken, and spend the money they have spent, rather than just leave it to the city or the county.
But they will have to do a lot more work, and spend a lot more money, if our community is to be, for all of us, a safe space to live and grow.