Downtown Alliance - Salt Lake City, Utah

Nobody wants to admit it, but many people would like the nagging panhandler, the homeless drunk and the grimy guy talking to himself in downtown Salt Lake City to just disappear.

For years, rumors have percolated about moving the homeless shelter away from tourists and businesses to the outskirts of town. But critics say shipping off the vagrant, addicted and mentally ill to a more institutionalized "campus" seems dehumanizing and cruel, especially if they are plucked from public transit options.

Like a third rail of social-service politics, capital leaders have been loath to touch the idea for decades.

Until now.

In early December, Mayor Ralph Becker's office staged a homelessness summit, flying in industry experts from San Antonio, Phoenix, Columbus, Ohio, and Minneapolis to outline various models of grouping services. The conversation continued during a recent March meeting.

"It's definitely stepped up a level from where it was," said Bradford Drake, executive director of Catholic Community Services.

Though providers to the homeless say they do not feel pressured by City Hall, they are open to exploring a possible move of the city's mix of shelters and other services -- centralized near The Gateway and Pioneer Park -- allowing new development along downtown's western edge.

To where? Nobody is saying.

Nothing is likely to happen for nearly five years, when a conditional-use permit expires. That permit allows The Road Home (the downtown shelter) to use overflow space across the street at St. Vincent de Paul. And the meetings with the city have prompted the nearby Fourth Street Clinic, which serves the homeless, to plan a cost analysis of such a move.

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Time to go? » Not all the homeless see relocation as a bad idea.

"By being close to The Gateway, it's kind of an eyesore to the city," said Eric Jelinek, 48, who recently got out of jail. "It's too close to the kids."

But others worry the homeless are never welcome -- wherever they might land.

"No matter where you go in the United States, people don't want us there," said Frank Billingsley, 58, who said he is a Vietnam veteran and has been homeless on and off since 1977.

Becker's housing director says the city simply is being "proactive," that no decisions have been made and no alternate locations even pondered.

But some advocates already know what they don't like: Clustering all the homeless services on a campus, which they see as a shift from the "Housing First" strategy that helps more and more people transition off the streets.

"There is an attitude on the part of the community that is somewhat uneducated about homelessness: Some people just want it to go away," said Allan Ainsworth, who founded Fourth Street in 1988. "Others want to be of help, but they think by creating new shelter space then they're helping to solve homelessness. In fact, all they're doing is warehousing people."

As part of a plan to eliminate chronic homelessness by 2014, about 450 new housing units have been constructed statewide in the past three years. The goal of "Housing First" is to move people who are most frequently homeless off the streets and out of the shelter. Once inside, they receive case management to help deal with addictions, mental-health problems and more.

The Road Home continues to analyze demand for its services, said executive director Matt Minkevitch. Though even more people are coming to the shelter, they are staying for shorter stints, thanks partly to federal housing dollars.

"If the city has got some idea of something, we're listening," he said. "But we're always talking about how do we refine, how do we improve, what about the life of the facility?"

Unlike The Road Home, the Fourth Street Clinic owns its property, which it bought in 2002 and recently spent about $350,000 to renovate.

All Ainsworth has heard is the possible offer of some land elsewhere -- no specifics. Whatever happens, he wants to be near the other facilities for easy client access. But a move doesn't mean the homeless will disappear from downtown.

"We can't be sure," he said, "our homeless clients would follow us."

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No 'strong arm' » When Rocky Anderson was running City Hall, the mayor and City Council agreed, through a nonbinding resolution, that the west-end neighborhood would grow up with the homeless shelter (and its stigma) in place.

But times -- and development interests -- have changed.

Still, when the city orchestrated the Dec. 1 summit, it simply was to gauge the best practices around the country and have an early dialogue, according to LuAnn Clark, the city's director of housing and neighborhood development.

"I would hope this would appear to be a collaborative effort, because that's what it is," she said. "It's not been the city coming in with any strong arm. The providers are in the driver's seat."

Both the city and business community insist a potential shelter move has nothing to do with the capital's controversial -- but not yet drafted -- ordinance against aggressive panhandling.

Clark says the 4 1/2-year shelf life of the shelter's overflow permit and the unsuccessful push by the nearby Rescue Mission to move about 25 blocks west are driving the effort. Any move, she concedes, would require some subsidy, noting Salt Lake County and state officials also are at the negotiating table.

"We would not be involved in a capital campaign," said Drake, at Catholic Community Services. "That would have to be the city or whoever as far as raising the money. We struggle just getting enough money to support our programs."

The city wants to be collaborative, not heavy-handed, as the business community was perceived several years ago when it pushed a $48 million plan to relocate the shelter to a former Newspaper Agency Corp. warehouse a few blocks south.

City Councilman Luke Garrott, who represents downtown, opposes any "campus model," insisting it would throw the neighborhood out of balance. That tilt, he argues, is happening right now.

"I'll have a hard time supporting a solution that creates the same problem," he said. "That's perverse. That's ridiculous. And it's against a certain ethic that we should be taking care of our own. Scattered site is the way to go."

Crossroads Urban Center carries similar fears. Executive Director Glenn Bailey notes the mayor's office is under "constant pressure" from the business community, condo developers and, now, the city's Redevelopment Agency, which wants to recast the so-called Depot District directly east of the transit hub.

"Something's going on, and it's all headed to try to get service providers to play ball," Bailey said. "They see the homeless services as an inconsistent use for their vision of the city."

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Minding their business » Downtown Alliance Executive Director Jason Mathis says some area businesses feel burdened, especially as the neighborhood blossoms, but he insists any decision to move the shelter and other services should be the providers' idea.

"My sense for the city is they see this as a logical next phase for the city's development," Mathis said. "But any move should be based on what's best for the homeless-service providers and not just what's best for the business community. It seems like we're approaching a time where that makes sense."

Since TRAX stretched west to connect to the Salt Lake Central transit hub, the RDA has been buying up warehouses in the surrounding Depot District. Now, planners and consultants dream up designs for offices, eateries, shops and housing in the area bordering the shelter.

After several months of living at the shelter with her two children, Laura Gardner, 33, wouldn't mind if the facility were located elsewhere in the city. She has heard shoppers at The Gateway refer to the poor and the rich side of the street.

"Maybe some people from the mall don't like to see all the homeless," she said.

The neighborhood already looks much different than decades ago, when it was known for a red-light district and industrial blight. That growth, along with space concerns at the current site, has more people than ever open to a move, according to Christian Harrison, chairman of the Downtown Community Council.

"It's not hypothetical anymore," he said. "The moment of flowering happened at the summit. Everybody walked away thinking, 'We can do it better.'"

Later this spring, homeless-services providers and city leaders will huddle again to plot a course. Whether it leads someplace downtown or miles west is the next debate.

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