Utah
How many Utah children spent a night at a homeless shelter last month?
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SALT LAKE CITY — The total number of people accessing homeless services rose by 10% in Utah in June, and the number of people exiting the system fell by 45%, according to the homeless data dashboard.
The data indicates that more people have started accessing homeless resources and have remained in the system longer, showing an increased need overall.
June’s numbers at a glance include:
- 7,932 people accessing shelter services — 4,509 being single adults; 297 being unaccompanied youth; 3,040 being persons in families and 123 considered unknown.
- 1,600 exiting the system — 425 persons in families; 991 single adults; 96 unaccompanied youth and 89 unknown.
- 3,954 homeless.
- 2,744 newly homeless.
- 680 housed within the month of June.
Of the families experiencing homelessness in June, 461 were children who spent at least a single night in a homeless shelter. The number is just a fraction of an increasing problem experienced by low-income families with children in Utah. Last year there was a 30% rise in homelessness for families with children with 65% of those families never having experienced homelessness before, according to a Crossroads Urban Center report.
“It makes a lot of sense because having a kid is always an economic event. And young parents are more likely to not have accumulated assets to cover that type of economic event. And, unfortunately, there is some evidence that a disproportionate share of homeless youth are parents,” said Tibbitts. “There are a lot of young people who were homeless when they became pregnant, who remain homeless during the pregnancy.”
Despite common misconceptions of what homelessness looks like, the most common time for an individual to experience homelessness is during the first year of life. The second most common time for an occurrence of homelessness is between 1 and 6 years old, according to the report.
“I think that there’s a lot of the energy around homelessness that has tended to focus on people who are unsheltered because that’s the people who are seen as being homeless,” said Crossroads Urban Center Executive Director Bill Tibbitts. “Up until last year, most of the time, families with kids had a place indoors and so the focus has not been on children.”
But homeless advocates like Tibbitts have noticed a rising number of children sleeping in cars or tents due to the surge in need. A former employee of a family shelter who now works with Crossroads Urban Center reported having to turn away families with children for the first time since 1998.
“They’d always found ways when they had the giant warehouse, always found ways to rearrange them to make space for kids,” said Tibbitts. When the shelter was converted to a family shelter with a fixed number of beds, it complicated access, he added. Around 68 families had been turned away during that time.
The Utah Homelessness Council voted in June to dedicate $3 million to building a second emergency shelter for homeless families in Salt Lake County, in what Tibbitts called a “huge step” in keeping people sheltered in winter months.
The hotel where the shelter will reside has been purchased and is subject to approval. While the shelter is a step in addressing immediate needs, families should not be residing in a congregate family shelter for two years, Tibbitts added.
“Instead of building 150 units we’d say we’d like to see 200 units built on this really targeted housing and I think that there’s a need for that,” Tibbitts said. “I think something that Salt Lake City has come to realize in the last couple years is that they need to put a bigger priority on just having family-size apartments built.”