Before ceding a portion of Rio Grande Street to state control for up to two years, Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski said the public should get to weigh in.
Those who took a Salt Lake City online survey as of noon Wednesday had provided a clear answer: Go for it.
City spokesman Matthew Rojas said that 1,300 people had weighed in prior to Wednesday night’s public forum at 116 S. Rio Grande St. — at the old Anthropologie store in The Gateway mall.
Seventy-eight percent of survey respondents said they felt a temporary closure of the stretch between The Road Home and Catholic Community Services ”will increase the safety of those seeking homeless services,” and 76 percent said it ”will benefit the larger community.”
Service providers have had little to say about the proposal, and groups such as the Crossroads Urban Center and the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah are keeping an eye out for details about the state’s vision.
Championed by House Speaker Greg Hughes since the earliest planning stages of Operation Rio Grande — a $67 million effort to reduce lawlessness around the 210 S. Rio Grande St. homeless shelter — the street closure would limit access to those in possession of a ”coordinated services card.”
The street would be fenced off, and the resulting enclosure would provide a ”safe space” with dual purposes: 1. It would give service seekers a place to go where they wouldn’t be preyed upon by lawbreakers, and 2. The existence of that space would blunt constitutional objections about enforcing camping and loitering ordinances elsewhere in the city.
Without that space, Hughes said, the tendrils of cartels will inch their way back into a neighborhood that drug dealers had for the most part evacuated during a mid-August crackdown.
Biskupski used her mayoral authority to temporarily close the street for up to 30 days, but she has yet to lease the street over to the state for a longer term — an agreement that will later be subject to City Council approval.
A memo sent to the City Council last week by Biskupski’s chief of staff, Patrick Leary, said the city “will receive a unique benefit … because the [Division of Facilities, Construction and Management] intends to partner with one or more homeless service providers to provide necessary services to individuals experiencing homelessness and provide a ‘safe space’ for these individuals to get the services they need and require. The lease will provide the further benefit of helping eliminate the criminal elements and nuisances in and around the leased area.”
Some elements of the plan, like the fence and the ID cards, were called for in 2015 by Texas-based homeless services consultant Robert Marbut, who has previously consulted with a group of area business owners, developers and residents — the Pioneer Park Coalition — and who said Wednesday he was following Operation Rio Grande ”very, very closely.”
An enclosure makes sense, Marbut said, because, ”you sort of have this default mall, so how do you better manage that mall and organize it? It could be done very well. Likewise, if you just put a fence around it and don’t get things right, you’ll actually make things worse.”
“Part of my frustration watching from afar is people are coming up with solutions before they figure out exactly what their problem is,” said Marbut, who said he‘s been included on a ”few” calls during the planning stages of Operation Rio Grande and wished it were informed by data about individuals’ length of homelessness and community connectedness.
Crossroads Urban Center, a nonprofit serving low-income Utahns, also proposed a street closure in 2015, but Crossroads’ Bill Tibbitts said the nonprofit is troubled that the area would be restricted to those in possession of an ID card, and that law enforcement might herd homeless people into the space.
“There are a lot of people on the streets who have paranoia issues, whether justified or not,” Tibbitts said. ”There are a lot of people who are going to say: I don‘t want any part of that. ... I like the idea of having a safe space, but if you’re going to punish people for not being in the safe space, then it actually becomes sort of an outdoor jail.”
Tibbitts said he’s also skeptical that the enclosed area — which would be managed by the state — has potential as a location of new services.
“I think if you try to cram 500 people into the street area between a half-block, it‘s just going to be elbow to elbow,” Tibbitts said. ”What services would you provide? A dance contest?”
Crossroads Executive Director Glenn Bailey invited himself to an Aug. 23 meeting of state officials and service providers and pocketed a draft overview of the ID card program that provides some additional detail.
As envisioned at that time, the cards would be issued through the Salt Lake County jail, the Salt Lake City Police Department’s Rio Grande-area Community Connection Center, and at the Department of Workforce Services’ office at 720 S. 200 East.
They would include a photo and, “if possible,” fingerprints. Prospective recipients would also have to take a short assessment that is already being administered as part of the treatment phase of Operation Rio Grande, said Department of Workforce Services Communication Director Nate McDonald, though ID cards have yet to be issued.
Crossroads released a statement later Wednesday in which it said the new ID system would ”have the capability of pinging law enforcement databases.”
“Homeless people have civil rights,” it said. ”This seems to be getting lost in the ongoing hysteria that has become Operation Rio Grande. Adding an unconstitutional ID requirement in order to be considered a ‘worthy’ homeless person is moving in the wrong direction.”
The ACLU of Utah — which was looped in during some of the planning for Operation Rio Grande but has expressed reservations about the rollout — said in a statement Wednesday that the assessments ”may have been initiated without the proper privacy protections in place.”
”Information is being collected, but no cards are being issued, and the information is not connected to any existing service provision databases,” it wrote. ”It is concerning to think that people might be giving up highly personal information ... in exchange for very little in the way of services.”
A copy of the assessment provided to The Salt Lake Tribune by the Department of Workforce Services included questions about health and housing, and for the most part resembles a standard homeless services assessment.
One notable area in which the assessment seeks more detail than is currently available: the origin of the area’s homeless service users.
It asks ”Where did you live before becoming homeless?” ”In what city did you live when you last had permanent or stable housing?” ”In what state did you live when you last had permanent or stable housing?” ”What was your ZIP code when you last had permanent or stable housing?” and ”If relocated, what was the main reason for selecting SL County.”
One big selling point for Hughes in his early contemplation of ID cards is that homeless people are often in need of a form of identification as they seek housing, employment and services.
However, the coordinated services cards will not serve as an official government-issued ID.
Rojas said city staff have summarized survey questions that it hopes to have answered at Wednesday’s forum. Those include:
- What are the boundaries of the closure?
- How will volunteers and donations access The Road Home and Catholic Community Services?
- How do people access the closed area? Will they need to show IDs? Is it the Catholic Community Services ID card program or a new one being created? Is there a screening process to access the area?
- How will people access services at Catholic Community Services and The Road Home if they want to avoid the closed area? How will people access meals at St. Vincent de Paul Dining Hall?
- What’s the plan to address the possibility that this would push issues to 500 West and nearby neighborhoods?
- What is the security planned for the closed area? Is it private or public? Will security change within The Road Home and Catholic Community Services?
- What are the costs? How is it being paid for?
- Have we also considered closing 500 West?
- Have we considered the impact to neighborhood traffic patterns?
- Why are we doing this for the full two years and not doing a short monthlong trial before going all-in?
- Does closure set precedent for closing other roads?