Legislation to update the Utah Homelessness Council, require more detailed data gathering on homelessness and remove some limitations on unsanctioned camping enforcement during a code blue alert advanced in the Utah House on Friday.

The bill is being proposed by Provo Rep. Tyler Clancy, who presented the bill to a House committee, where it received unanimous support.

The bill has two main components — replacing the current 29-member Utah Homelessness Council with a Utah Homeless Services Board consisting of nine voting members, and requiring more data collection on homelessness plus yearly reports on that data. It also allows municipalities to enforce no-camping ordinances, even during a code blue alert during the winter.

‘Data-driven’ strategies in addressing homelessness

A significant bill component addresses what data on homelessness is gathered and how progress toward reducing homelessness is measured and requires a detailed yearly progress report.

More effective data and “getting to the heart of the issue” will lead to improved policy decisions, Clancy told the Daily Herald on Friday. He added that much of the data currently used comes from a 2021 legislative audit.

“The fact of the matter is a mother fleeing domestic violence with her two children, that’s going to be a dramatically different policy intervention than someone who’s been living unsheltered, maybe using heroin or meth for the past five years,” he said. “They both need our help, but it’s going to look different and that’s what we want to measure.”

Moe Egan, with the Other Side Village, said during public comment that the bill would bring more oversight and accountability and create “data-driven” strategies to address homelessness.

“Accountability means tracking the success of the services, not just the distribution,” he said. “It means ensuring that individuals who receive support are also receiving guidance on how to maintain sobriety, manage mental health, gain employment and integrate into our communities as contributing members — drug-free, crime-free and employed.”

Former legislative auditor James Behunin, who headed the 2021 audit Clancy referenced and is the interim executive director of the Pioneer Park Coalition, said that while the Legislature addressed most of the recommendations from the 2021 audit, this bill completes that work.

“We are completing all those mechanisms we called on a few years ago to make this a more data-driven system,” he said to the committee while presenting the bill with Clancy.

Some of the specific data points the bill requires the board to track are the number of individuals who are homeless for the first time, ones who exited homelessness but returned, and where individuals who have exited homelessness go. It also requires data collection on how many people are accessing homelessness services.

For the data gathered, the board must create a yearly report to be presented to the state and local homelessness councils. State and local homelessness councils also will be required to establish goals to make progress in reducing homelessness.

Reshaping the Utah Homelessness Council

Currently, Utah has a 29-member Utah Homelessness Council made up of city mayors, philanthropic leaders, legislators and more. Clancy is proposing a remake of the council, changing it to the Utah Homeless Services Board, comprising nine voting members and one nonvoting advisory member.

The new board will contain the state homelessness coordinator, philanthropic leaders, the Salt Lake City mayor, appointees by the Utah Association of Counties, a Utah Homeless Network representative and an appointee from the Shelter Cities Advisory Council, another board created by the bill.

The Shelter Cities Advisory Council’s purpose is to make recommendations to the board on improving services for unsheltered individuals throughout the state.

Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner spoke in support of the bill, specifically noting that the updated board structure will give more representation to cities and counties outside of Salt Lake County.

“This would really be a more holistic approach for Utah County and counties of the second class to have a say in how the state spends that money,” Powers Gardner said. “Right now, most of those resources or most of the advice they’re getting is coming from Salt Lake County and as we tried to work together to solve this problem, it’s more important that we have representation across the board.”

Part of the responsibilities of the board would be to update the state’s plan for reducing homelessness, recommend best practices for administering homeless services and addressing substance abuse, develop metrics measuring the effectiveness of services and develop goals to reduce homelessness.

The legislation also would allow municipalities to enforce a camping ordinance during a code blue alert — when temperatures drop below 15 degrees — even if no shelter beds are available. Under legislation passed last year, municipalities were prohibited from enforcing no camping ordinances if no shelter beds were available.

Clancy said this is to allow cities or counties dealing with “public safety or public health issues” to enforce ordinances without being prevented from doing so by the state.

During press availability on Friday, Utah House Speaker Mike Shultz spoke in favor of Clancy’s bill in speaking on homelessness issues.

In the committee meeting, Clancy expressed that “we need more boots on the ground” in reducing homelessness.

“We need people to learn names,” he said. “We need people to look someone in the eye and share with them that we believe in them and that there’s something better on the other side of this. But we also need effective systems and this is what this works to address.”

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