State leaders at the helm of Utah’s homeless system haven’t yet confronted one of the biggest and hardest decisions that they’ll face in coming months: where to site a new 1,200-bed homeless shelter and 30-acre “centralized campus” somewhere along the Wasatch Front.
The Utah Homeless Services Board met for about two hours behind closed doors Thursday to discuss “site acquisition and development,” according to its agenda, but no vote was held to select any properties. State officials have until Dec. 15 to present the board with a narrowed-down list of three viable options — but it’s unclear if the list will be revealed to the public or when the board will make a decision about a final site.
Utah law allows public bodies to hold closed-door meetings for “strategy sessions to discuss the purchase, exchange or lease of real property,” so for now state leaders’ discussions on the matter are secret. However, an internal memo showed that as of mid-September officials were considering at least five sites, The Salt Lake Tribune first reported last month. They included:
Lee Kay Conservation Center, near 2100 South and 7200 West
Standlee Warehouse at 5 S. 5100 West near I-80 in west-side Salt Lake City
Salt Lake County Oxbow jail site at 3148 S. 1100 West in South Salt Lake
131 continuous parcels in the Beck Street area in northern Salt Lake City
A property on the west side of West Valley City along Bacchus Highway near 5400 South
In an interview with Utah News Dispatch on Friday, state homeless coordinator Wayne Niederhauser (a former Utah Senate president who now leads the state’s Office of Homeless Services), said state officials are still considering those five properties, but not only those five.
“There are more properties,” said Niederhauser, who has spent months scouring the Wasatch Front for the right pick after the 2024 Utah Legislature set aside $25 million for a new large homeless shelter in the face of a homeless shelter system that’s functioned at essentially max capacity for years.
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Utah homeless board OKs search for up to 1,200-bed ‘centralized campus.’ What now?
It hasn’t been easy, he said, noting that at one point “there was a 10-acre (property) that we had ready to go, but determined it wasn’t big enough” to meet their vision for the campus. State leaders want it to be a “transformative” project for Utah’s homeless that eventually wouldn’t just house a 1,200-bed emergency shelter, but also provide on-site case management and services in the same vicinity.
Niederhauser, who is also a real estate developer, said he wanted to “manage expectations” that it could take a while before a site is selected. Even if three viable sites are identified for the board on Dec. 15, he said “that doesn’t mean those properties are ready to have a decision made on them,” because they could first need geotechnical or environmental testing.
“There’s all kinds of things that come into play,” he said, including “wetlands. Not all of them have wetlands, a couple of them have wetlands. … There’s not one of those properties that doesn’t have some kind of issue that we’re going to need to take some time.”
It’s also possible, Niedherhauser said, that after three sites are presented, the board could decide against picking any of them. “They could send us back to the drawing board,” he said.
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The Dec. 15 deadline for the three-property list, Niederhauser said, is just a “beginning point to identify properties and start working on testing and what we need to do to make sure that they could work.”
“The board will dictate to us what needs to happen at that point,” he said. “And I can’t predict what that will be.”
Sarah Nielson, spokesperson for the Homeless Services Office, who joined Niederhauser for Friday’s interview, said state officials are “doing our due diligence.”
“We want to make sure we’re getting this right,” she said.
The board, however, has also set a deadline ahead of next winter — Oct. 1, 2025 — for the 1,200-bed shelter to be built. So while Niederhauser said it could take more time to choose a site, the pressure is still on for next year.
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Whatever they decide, it’s likely to prompt backlash. The last time leaders selected property for three new homeless shelters in Salt Lake County, they were met with vehement outcry from neighborhoods concerned about the impacts the new shelters would bring.
And even as recently as the past two weeks, there has been public outrage over a much smaller effort to offer a limited number of temporary beds to people experiencing homelessness this winter. People experiencing homelessness hang out in the median on 400 West in Salt Lake City on Saturday, May 25, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Outrage in Davis County over temporary ‘code blue’ shelter
Residents in Davis County swarmed multiple public meetings this month to protest county leaders’ efforts to meet state requirements to form “winter response” and “code blue” plans meant to provide temporary places for people experiencing homelessness to go — not just in one community, but across the state — when temperatures drop.
Though Davis County residents feel caught off guard by the plan, it’s something counties across Utah have been working on for months. Back in August, counties submitted their proposals for state consideration.
They’re required by state law to do so after the 2023 Utah Legislature decided to require the state’s most populated counties to play a part in expanding access to warm beds for people experiencing homelessness in the wintertime. The law came after state leaders came to agree that homelessness was a statewide problem, and not just a Salt Lake City problem.
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That law gives counties two options: create a “winter response” plan to open temporary winter overflow shelters from Oct. 15 to April 30 2025, or pursue a “year-round” plan, which entails submitting a plan to the state by Aug. 1, 2025 that details how the county plans to “address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness within the county throughout the entire year” in the future.
What’s next for Utah’s evolving homeless shelter system
Davis County officials chose to eventually pursue a year-round facility with at least 80 beds — but the deadline for the plan isn’t until next summer and no decisions have yet been made for that. A document outlining Davis County’s timeline for implementing the year-round plan indicated a year-round facility wouldn’t open in Davis County until 2028.
However, because Davis County opted for an eventual year-round plan rather than a winter response this year, the state still required county officials to come up with a “code blue” plan for this winter. If it didn’t, state leaders would do it for them.
Under the same 2023 law, Code Blue Alerts are now issued, by county, when temperatures in specific areas are forecasted to drop below 18 degrees (including wind chill) for two hours or more during a 24-hour period. The alert allows existing shelters to flex their capacity and triggers new temporary warming center locations to open, meant to offer more places to shield people from the cold when need be.
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A church offered to open its doors, but residents shot it down
Wanting to be a part of the “code blue” response, leaders at Mountain Road Church in Fruit Heights offered their church to be a warming center when needed. But Fruit Heights neighbors bristled at the idea.
On Nov. 6, angry residents packed into a Fruit Heights City Council meeting to protest Mountain Road Church’s offer. The outcry led the pastor to rescind the offer, expressing grief that the warming center had “become such a divisive and emotional issue” in the community, KSL.com reported.
So Davis County officials instead decided to rotate its “code blue” warming center between three different county-owned locations:
A former county vehicle emissions testing center at 520 Old Mill Lane in Kaysville
North Davis Senior Center at 42 State Street in Clearfield
Valley View Golf Course at 2501 E. Gentile Street in Layton
The Kaysville site, in particular, drew an angry crowd to the Davis County Commission’s meeting on Tuesday, with residents expressing concerns about the safety of the location for people experiencing homelessness because of its proximity to a rail line and busy roads — as well as concerns about bringing people struggling with substance use issues near their neighborhoods.
Though the warming center would temporarily shelter up to 16 people at a time on a rotating basis, residents expressed concerns it would turn into a permanent facility (something that’s not being proposed currently).
Kaysville resident Joel Harris, who said he lived four blocks away from the emissions center, told the Davis County Commission he worried it would bring a “spike in crime,” and an “uptick of something as obscene as public urination, public defecation, other paraphernalia left around on the ground.”
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“All the reasons why I live in Kaysville will be gone,” he said.
He pointed to cities like Portland and San Francisco with much larger troubles with homelessness than Utah, and said “I’m sure they all began with good intentions.”
“We’re not not-in-our-backyard people,” Harris said, noting Kaysville already hosts a domestic violence shelter and rehab centers. “We’re not cold-hearted, unvirtuous people. We’re concerned about the safety of our children. We’re concerned about the property values.”
Davis County Commission Chair Bob Stevenson initially allotted 20 minutes of public comment time to hear residents’ concerns although the matter wasn’t on their agenda Tuesday, but he repeatedly extended that time after some residents shouted over him.
“The people that are coming to these homeless shelters do not want help,” one woman shouted. “They’re drug addicts. They do horrific things. I have small children. This is not why we elected you. Listen to all of us. Change your agenda. Take a little more time to see what other people have to say. This is ridiculous.”
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Kaysville Mayor Tamara Tran said her city “absolutely opposes this” and “we will keep track” of its impacts. She urged the county commissioners to provide more answers about how the warming centers will operate and whether “people are going to loiter and stand around and walk through neighborhoods.”
Davis County’s “code blue” plan states people will be picked up at five different bus stops starting at 7 p.m. on nights when alerts are called, or people coming to the centers can transport themselves. They must also leave the warming center in the morning, and they won’t be allowed to leave during operational hours unless for emergencies.
Tran and Rep. Ariel Defay, R-Kaysville, also called for more transparency and changes to clarify the Utah law that mandated Davis County’s participation.
Stevenson told the angry crowd that he understood and heard their concerns, and said that county commissioners would be calling legislators to ask for clarification in the law to make the process more clear.
“In all honesty, I don’t think any of the (warming center) places that presently we’re using are the right places,” Stevenson said.
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He noted that this is the first time Davis County has ever had to come up with a “code blue” plan, and county leaders don’t yet know what to expect, including how many people will access the rotating warming centers.
“This is by far the hardest issue that we’ve dealt with, and there are things that we have to try to figure out,” he said. “But hopefully we’re going to be able to discern and learn some things over the next three or four weeks as we get into colder nights to be able to know what’s best, what type of problems there are.”
Why does the state require counties to help with homelessness?
What was clear from Tuesday’s Davis County Commission meeting was residents and local leaders were not fond of the state mandate that required them to help house the homeless — a task that’s largely been shouldered by Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County up until state leaders decided to bring other counties along. And they felt caught off guard, decrying a lack of transparency around the process.
Kaysville residents also started a Change.org petition, which as of Friday had over 2,000 signees, demanding to halt the county plan. Some residents argued Kaysville didn’t have a homeless problem and the state shouldn’t be busing people from other locations to their city.
Niederhauser, when asked about the controversies in Fruit Heights and Kaysville, told Utah News Dispatch on Friday he’s “not critical of a public process and public input.”
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“But everybody has to realize that at the end of the day we have to have some place for people to go,” he said. “And we’re just hoping people will be willing … It’s a temporary situation in Davis County. It’s for the winter. All of that can be evaluated at any time.”
Niederhauser also noted other counties — including conservative Utah County — have implemented winter response plans “and it’s working well.”
He also pushed back on claims that Kaysville doesn’t have a homelessness problem.
“I understand their comments,” he said, adding that sentiment comes from not just people in Kaysville or Fruit Heights, but from cities all across the state. But he said people become homeless in all types of communities, and “every city ought to be stepping up to the plate to help the situation. Because homelessness starts in their city, whether they realize it or not, it’s true.”
That was the policy decision the Utah Legislature made when it passed the 2023 law requiring populated counties to play ball.
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“That’s why the statute was created the way it was,” he said. “And it’s not to bring a hammer down. That’s not the way we do this. But, you know, at the end of the day we’ve got to have a place for people to go.”
However, Niederhauser said he’s open to proposals to tweak the law. “We’re very open to statutory changes to make it better,” he said.
In the meantime, though, he’s expecting to get word soon from Davis County on implementation of its “code blue” plan, which state officials have approved.
“They’re working to move ahead,” he said.
Bill Tibbitts, deputy executive director of Crossroads Urban Center, a nonprofit that helps low-income Utahns, said the public outcry in Davis County is perhaps not surprising given there’s “never a community where everybody is really excited to have a shelter.”
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“But it’s really sad,” he said. “I mean, it’s just for 16 people.”
If anything, Tibbitts said the public outcry in Davis County “really reinforces the idea” that the state needs to step in — whether it’s to pressure local leaders to play even a small part in winter response, or to take charge on big projects like the 1,200-bed homeless campus.
“No matter where you build a shelter, there will be some NIMBY reaction,” he said. “And that’s why the state is having to take a bigger role.”
SALT LAKE CITY — The presence of federal immigration agents tracking immigrants has increased in Salt Lake County-area courtrooms since mid-February as have complaints about how they’re carrying out their duties.
United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents may have carried out operations at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City, according to Lacey Singleton, a public defender who’s regularly at the facility.
“Now it is like they are there all the time … They just basically hang out, and they’re either sitting in the courtroom, or they’re lurking in the hallways,” she said. They wear normal street garb, she said, but for regulars in the courtroom, “they stand out.”
Immigration enforcement action at courthouses around the country has become “a cornerstone” in the efforts of the administration of President Donald Trump to detain and deport immigrants in the country illegally, according to the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group. Since an arrest of one of Lacey’s clients around Feb. 12 or 13, she and others say, the practice has become more and more common in Utah.
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ICE didn’t respond to a KSL query seeking comment, but the practice aligns with the Trump administration’s push to crack down on illegal immigration. Agency guidance notes that the people ICE seeks may appear in courthouses to address unrelated criminal and civil matters, and that such facilities are typically secure.
“Accordingly, when ICE engages in civil immigration enforcement actions in or near courthouses, it can reduce safety risks to the public, targeted alien(s) and ICE officers and agents,” reads a May 27 memo on the matter.
Critics, though, say immigration agents’ efforts can be disruptive and could spur immigrants, otherwise trying to resolve their legal issues, to steer clear of court, jeopardizing their cases. As word spreads of the activity, it could also spur fearful immigrant witnesses and crime victims to steer clear of the legal system, Lacey worries.
Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera brought the issue up at a Salt Lake County Council meeting on Tuesday, saying her office has received “multiple complaints” about ICE agents’ activity in Salt Lake County courthouses, where sheriff’s officials, serving as court bailiffs, provide security.
U.S. agents have ratcheted up immigration enforcement action at Utah courthouses, prompting criticism from some. The photo shows attorney Lacey Singleton, center, questioning a suspected agent recently at Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City. (Photo: Salt Lake City Bail Fund)
Part of the problem, she said, is that the agents typically wear plain clothes and don’t identify themselves, not even to bailiffs. Another issue relates to the actual process of taking an immigrant into custody, which Rivera says should occur outside of public view with the suspects’ lawyers present.
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In one instance, she said, a bailiff heard a scuffle and thought someone was getting assaulted, only to find out it was ICE agents detaining somebody.
A bailiff and an ICE agent subsequently “got into a verbal altercation,” Rivera said. “We are addressing that issue, but I want you to understand, these deputies are put in a really tough situation, and in this situation, I understand how he could get to that point where he had no idea who they were, and he was trying to make sure that somebody wasn’t being assaulted at the time.”
Video from last week, posted to social media by the Salt Lake City Bail Fund, shows Lacey walking past a suspected immigration agent at the Matheson Courthouse, asking for identification but getting no reply. The Salt Lake City Bail Fund, critical of ICE activity, sends observers to the Matheson Courthouse to monitor the agency’s activity.
“That’s a problem because it’s like, who are you?” Lacey said. “For all I know, you’re some random dude who is just, like, off the street and participating in kidnapping people.”
Video supplied to KSL shows an incident outside Riverton Justice Court on Wednesday — four apparent immigration agents in plain clothes wrestling on the ground with an apparent suspect they were trying to take into custody.
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“Don’t resist,” someone off-camera says in Spanish while filming the incident. “Son, don’t resist. Calm down. They’re going to hurt you more.”
The woman asks for his name and contact info after the agents cuff him and take him to a nearby car, while another man on the scene shouts at the officials and berates them. “You guys are disgusting,” the man says.
Anna Reganis, a public defender with the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association, like Lacey, said immigration agents detained a man at Salt Lake City Justice Court on Wednesday. She didn’t witness the actual detention, but heard the aftermath.
“All of a sudden, in my courtroom, we could hear from the lobby blood-curdling screams,” Reganis said. She went to the main lobby, finding a woman holding her infant baby “just inconsolably screaming and crying.” Turns out the woman had gone to the courthouse with her husband, and he had just been detained by immigration agents.
Read more:
Lacey maintains that the people the ICE agents seem to be pursuing aren’t the most hardened of criminals, which the Trump administration said would be the focus when the crackdown started. Reganis echoed that, noting that those with business in the Salt Lake City Justice Court face relatively minor offenses.
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“Myself and my co-workers all had a bit of a wake-up call because we kept telling ourselves that this wasn’t going to happen at the justice court because all of our cases are class B and C misdemeanors and infractions,” she said.
The Salt Lake City Bail Fund launched training sessions late last year for volunteers to serve as courthouse observers, particularly at the Matheson Courthouse. Liz Maryon, who helps oversee the effort, foresees another round of training to get more help. “We’re currently working on expanding our capacity so that we can be there every day,” she said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
SALT LAKE CITY — Iranians in Utah said Sunday they were celebrating and grateful for U.S. military action against Iran after nearly 47 years of the Islamic Republic regime.
They expressed hope for a future that might bring greater freedom to the people of that country.
“Thank you, Mr. Trump, for helping us,” said Kathy Vazirnejad as she sat inside Persian restaurant Zaferan Café. “The 21st of March is our New Year. For our New Year’s, we do exchange presents and I think President Trump gave us the best gift as any for this year in attacking this government and killing all of those people.”
Vazirnejad moved from Iran to Utah in 1984, graduated from the University of Utah, and obtained U.S. citizenship.
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She said the regime was oppressive and “vicious.”
“They’re just a devil,” she said. “I mean, it’s a government that kills its own people.”
Though she has continued to return to Iran to visit family, she said those visits had become increasingly tense and uncertain, even though most Iranians opposed their own government.
“I have a dual citizenship, Persian passport and an American passport,” Vazirnejad explained. “It’s hard. Each time I go there to the airport, I’m showing them my Persian passport and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, if they see I’m very active in my social media against the government?’”
Numerous other Iranians shared similar stories of their departure from their homeland, including Ramin Arani, who once served for two years in the Iranian army at the age of 18.
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“It was right after the Iran and Iraq war and I was part of the team that was cleaning the war zone basically in terms of unexploded shells and land mines and all that,” Arani explained. “I put my life on the line for the sake of my country, although I was not treated as a first-hand citizen.”
Arani said when he left Iran, he migrated to the U.S. and graduated from the University of Utah with an engineering degree.
“Every day, I appreciate the opportunity that was provided to me,” Arani said.
He said for decades, Iranians didn’t believe the day would come when much of the Islamic Republic’s leadership would be taken out in military strikes.
“I believe we are watching history unfolding,” Arani said. “Potentially, the course of history is about to change.”
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What that change looks like exactly remains largely uncertain, though there has been much discussion about potential regime change or the Iranian people taking matters into their own hands.
“Regime change is, you know, a be-careful-what-you-wish-for,” said Amos Guiora, a University of Utah law professor and Middle East analyst with family in Israel. “I say, ‘regime change,’ I get the phrase, but how it comes about, time will tell.”
Guiora questioned how long the U.S. intended to stay involved and what the endgame truly is.
“There’s an expression in Hebrew, if I may—zbang ve’ga’mar’no—which means ‘it ends just like that’—that’s not how these things end and obviously there are political calculations,” Guiora said.
He said he feared for the potential loss of life if boots-on-the-ground are ultimately required.
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“(If) any of these things turn into a war of attrition, that would be horrible,” Guiora said.
Guiora, however, said he saw the obvious benefit of different leadership in Iran.
“You know, a shah-like Iran that would not be focused on the support of terrorist organizations and committing acts of terrorism—I think that would be a win-win for the world,” Guiora said.
Arani said if regime change does happen in Iran, he would like to see a constitutional monarchy take root like those in Great Britain and elsewhere in Europe.
“Sweden, Norway, these are all systems that are democratic, or I call them semi-democratic and they still have a monarch, which is a continuation of their culture,” Arani said.
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Arani talked of the rich and proud long history of Iran, dating back thousands of years, and he believed there is much of that to share with the world today.
“The culture of Iran that is hidden underneath the layers of history I’m talking about, it’s all about light,” Arani said. “Iranian culture, the real one I’m talking about, is all about appreciating life, not ‘death to this,’ ‘death to that.’”
Vazirnejad believed as many as “85 percent” of Iranians supported the return of the shah’s family to Iran to lead, and she predicted a future where Iran is a partner with the U.S. and Israel.
She suspected that maybe one in five Iranians who left Iran because of the regime might consider returning permanently to the country under new leadership.
“It’s going to be very good,” she said. “Hopefully, we are celebrating the New Year with (the Islamic Republic) gone and hopefully by next year, the New Year’s 21st of March, we all go back to Iran, at least to visit.”
George returned from a right ankle sprain that kept him out six straight games.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The crowd reacts as Utah Jazz guard Keyonte George (3) hits a 3-point shot at the Delta Center this season.
Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy didn’t need to see much from his young point guard in his return.
“Making shots, missing shots, it’s not anything that’s in question for me,” Hardy said about Keyonte George. “I just want to see him exert himself physically and competitively.”
In that case, mission accomplished.
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After missing nine games in the last month with two different ankle sprains, George returned against the Pelicans on Saturday.
The Jazz lost 115-105.
George’s numbers were fine, scoring 17 points on 4-of-11 shooting in 23 minutes. But Hardy saw enough mobility from George to make him comfortable moving forward.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Utah Jazz Center Mo Bamba sits next to Keyonte George and Jazz forward Jaren Jackson Jr. on the bench in NBA action between the Utah Jazz and the New Orleans Pelicans at the Delta Center on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026.
“I thought he made some athletic plays in small spaces. I was more concerned with his willingness to slam on the brakes,” Hardy said. “And I thought he had a couple possessions where he did, where he really pushed it athletically.
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“He’s like any player, he’s frustrated. He feels like he should have made a few more shots,” he continued. “But that’s not what I was watching.”
George was on a restriction of 20-24 minutes and he wants to be cautious in the days ahead. Utah plays Denver on Monday before heading on the road.
“Feet are the most precious thing for any athlete. So I want to make sure I feel good, not feeling off balance or nothing like that,” George said. “Just want to be cautious with the ankle injuries and stuff like that.”
But for his return, it was good enough.
“I feel like my pop was there. I didn’t want to force anything,” he finished. “I just wanted to play the game. I feel like I did a decent job tonight.”
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