To reduce homelessness in Utah, 2 experts say seismic changes are needed

To effectively reduce homelessness, there needs to be seismic changes in the approaches taken. That was the message of Randy Shumway and Joseph Grenny at a Solutions Utah town hall held on Thursday night.
Shumway, founder of Cicero Group and Utah Homeless Services chair, and Grenny, bestselling author, businessman and co-founder of The Other Side Academy, spoke to an audience of University of Utah students and Utah community members about what they think needs to happen in order for homelessness to be addressed.
Utah, like other states, has seen an increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the first time, according to a report from the state’s Office of Homeless Services. In 2023, 9,838 Utahns experienced homelessness for the first time, an increase of 9% from 2022. Four percent more people experienced homelessness multiple times in the year.
Shumway said a decade ago, 14% of people experiencing homelessness were considered chronically homeless. Right now it is over 27%, he said, adding no matter what we do, the percentage will hit the mid-30s in the next few years.
“Once a person becomes chronically homeless, society historically has experienced low single-digit success in helping them recover,” he said. “We are going to change that in Utah.”
Definitions, metrics of success and methods of helping all need to change, he said. Instead of seeing the solution as brick and mortar — building more shelters — he argued it has to be more holistic.
“This is not a bed crisis, this is a human crisis,” said Shumway. “And we have to, therefore, take a human first approach.” The focus of their remarks at the town hall was more on a strategic approach than a physical facility.
That, Shumway said, was intentional.
Trauma is a better word to describe what people experiencing homelessness are going through, said Shumway. Once someone starts living out on the streets, the amount of trauma they experience is “substantially worse,” he said.
On the streets, people face physical assault, sexual exploitation and drugs, Shumway said. “We have to come to their rescue.”
To do that, success needs to be defined differently, he said.
“As a state of Utah, we are no longer defining success as mere food and shelter,” said Shumway. “We are defining success as helping each and every individual realize the dignity that is inherent in each of us.”
Shumway said we need to start by bringing physical and mental health care to where people are. A successful model for this would involve bringing health care to people on the streets — he said this would result in higher participation in treatment.
In addition to this kind of treatment, he said there needs to be consistent compensation for caseworkers.
Also, Shumway said, we have to “kindly, humanely and very consistently enforce the law.” He said there is a drug problem in Salt Lake City that needs to be addressed.
“There’s no investment in the world that will overcome the petri dish that is built around lawlessness,” said Shumway.
When Shumway was at a shelter the other day, he said there was a drug deal happening on the other side of the fence. He said he ran and started yelling at them, and they took off.
“I was mad because you’re coming to the location where people are coming for rescue and you’re coming and exploiting them,” he said. “That’s not right.” Shumway said shelters need to be drug-free zones to protect people who go there for healing.
So, what are the legislative priorities that Shumway wants to see achieved?
While Shumway spoke about sweeping changes, Grenny drilled down to more of a micro level. He’s the co-founder of The Other Side Academy and The Other Side Village.
The Other Side Academy is a nonprofit organization that runs a residential program with transitional services for qualified students, including people experiencing homelessness. It’s a therapeutic community that focuses on peer mentoring and counseling, leadership training as well as vocational training. The Other Side Village is a planned tiny home community for people coming out of experiencing chronic homelessness.
Grenny said he thinks when it comes to homelessness, “we’ve diagnosed the problem in a way that is condescending, that is bigoted and that is deeply, deeply flawed.”
When we drive past unsheltered people experiencing homelessness, Grenny said we define the problem and then also come up with a very simple solution. He doesn’t think this works — and he also thinks the nonprofit sector is broken.
Nonprofits have both donors and clients, said Grenny. And nonprofits tend to end up deferring to the donors. A market system allows companies to die if they are not working well because customers can leave, he said. Nonprofits are different because donors can write checks to keep them around.
Then, Grenny said, we also define the issues with homelessness incorrectly. He said we see them only as an asset problem — a problem that can be fixed if you give other an asset like a car. But, he said, it’s better to treat it like a human problem.
“If someone’s going to freeze to death, you fix that. If someone’s going to starve to death, you fix that. But beyond that, you ought to be very cautious about how your intervention will affect human behavior, human choice and whether you’re actually deepening the problem,” he said.
Grenny said it’s important not to destroy people’s self-efficacy by solving all their problems for them. Instead, it’s better to engage in a sustained relationship with them to help them.
While it might be bureaucratically convenient to give them assets instead, said Grenny, it doesn’t get to the heart of the issue. He also said he thinks it’s bigoted to say that you can’t set high standards and expectations because they won’t be achieved.
“From The Other Side Village’s perspective, we believe that human beings grow by solving their own problems,” said Grenny. If we rely too much on bureaucracies, he said we “rob them (people experiencing homelessness) of the chance to develop a sense of dignity and self-respect.”
Grenny spoke about a man named Gideon who had lived in an encampment on North Temple until a few months ago. He came to The Other Side and started working at The Other Side Donuts. The donut shop entered a statewide donut competition and won the fan favorite award.
Because nobody fixed Gideon’s asset problem for him, he had to work and contribute, said Grenny, and learn how he needed to improve. “And now he gets to stand here as a human being, taking his rightful place in society. He had to earn that or it would have meant nothing.”
Grenny said the reason people become shelter-resistant is not just because shelters are often dangerous for people, but because “you and I keep solving their asset problems in a way that subtracts motivation.” And he said this motivation is what sparks real change.
Once the holidays pass, lawmakers will convene for the 2025 legislative session, where housing certainly will be part of the conversation. This has been a real focus of Gov. Spencer Cox during his first term in office and his focus on this issue seems set to continue.
Cox has an initiative to build 35,000 starter homes and has repeatedly urged local officials that they need to say yes to new housing developments.
Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, spoke to the Deseret News in the autumn about what to expect from lawmakers when the session starts. Clancy, like Shumway and Grenny, said the starting point is human dignity.
“We need to make sure that human dignity is our guide point,” said Clancy. “That everything we do is around helping people move along the continuum of care to find the next rung of higher dignity.”
Homelessness doesn’t look the same for everyone, said Clancy. So, there will be different solutions that are needed for different people. He said he’s looking at creating a Know By Name system to connect every person in the homeless services system with a case manager.
With this system, Clancy said he would like to see services integrated rather than siloed.
Clancy said housing was a piece of the puzzle, but not the entire puzzle itself. And sometimes he said we focus too much on housing and not enough on providing resources for people to help them address underlying issues such as mental health or substance abuse.
Utahns want to see the needle move, said Clancy, and he thinks that with some reform, the money spent could actually lead to better results.