Chronic Homelessness – Utah

Posted on May 13, 2011 by townsend

• Number of homeless in Utah keeps dropping, By Patty Henetz, May 11, 2011, Salt Lake Tribune: “Utah’s homeless population shrank by 8.2 percent between January 2010 and this January, Lt. Gov. Greg Bell and other state officials announced Wednesday. The number of chronically homeless, defined as those who have been homeless for more than a year, dropped by 26 percent. Bell attributed the drop to Utah’s Housing First Initiative, a collaboration between government, nonprofit and private agencies that has built hundreds of units in permanent supportive communities since 2005 and is planning still more…”
• Chronic homelessness continues on a downward trend in Utah, By Wendy Leonard, May 12, 2011, Deseret News: “Chronic homelessness in Utah is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Numbers are down for the sixth straight year as the state’s Housing First initiative continues to prove itself. ‘What is surprising to me is that people are willing to give up the freedom of the streets,’ Pamela Atkinson, an well-known advocate for the homeless in Utah, said Wednesday. For years, homeless people were offered treatment for whatever ailed them and caused them to be without a home, ‘but now we know they need housing first,’ she said…”