Salt Lake police, unsheltered residents meet face-to-face to address homelessness cycle

SALT LAKE CITY — Inside a meeting room in downtown Salt Lake City, people living on the streets sat across from police leadership and city partners, sharing firsthand why they say the system meant to help them isn’t working.

The conversation, organized by Nomad Alliance, brought together a small group of unsheltered individuals and Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd for a candid discussion about the cycle of homelessness and incarceration.

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According to advocates, it’s a cycle that is both visible and costly.

Police said nearly half of their time is spent dealing with the same group of people experiencing chronic homelessness, often referred to as “high utilizers.” According to Nomad Alliance, that repeated cycle of arrest and release costs an estimated $64 million a year in police resources alone, not including jail or prison costs.

For many in the room, the issue wasn’t whether help exists, but whether it actually works for them.

One woman described a major barrier for couples experiencing homelessness, the lack of options to stay together while seeking treatment or shelter.

“Give us some couples shelters … couples treatments … I can’t tell you how many couples I know that would love to go,” she said. “The only thing holding them back is they can’t go together … they don’t even have phones.”

Others spoke about tickets piling up for low-level offenses, the difficulty of navigating services without reliable access to phones or transportation and the lack of available shelter beds.

Hector and his dog King sit with other homeless people outside of the St. Vincent de Paul Dining Hall and Weigand Resource Center in Salt Lake City on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Brice Tucker, Deseret News)

Participants shared a wide range of experiences, from people who recently lost housing to others who have cycled in and out of homelessness for years. Many people described running into the same barriers.

Redd acknowledged those challenges, and said officers are often placed in a difficult position.

“We’re going to enforce the law, but we want to help you at the same time,” Redd said. “If you want help, I’ll do everything I can to get you connected to services.”

A rendering for Utah’s new transformative homeless services campus, designed to provide around 1,300 beds, is pictured Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. The facility will be located on about 16 acres that Salt Lake City owns west of Rose Park, near North Salt Lake, and is expected to open in Salt Lake City in 2027. (Office of Homeless Services)

He added that while the department is working to build partnerships and connect people to resources, those services are not always sufficient to meet demand.

Both sides pointed to a lack of capacity, including not enough shelter beds, as a key issue. Without more options, some individuals said they are left with little choice but to remain in camps or return to the streets after release.

The event organizers’ goal was to bring those realities directly to decision-makers, with organizers emphasizing the importance of hearing from people with lived experience.

“Top-down strategies have failed for decades,” Nomad Alliance Founder Kseniya Kniazeva said in a statement. “Real solutions must come from listening to the people actually living this reality.”

For now, the conversation highlighted both shared frustration and a shared question: whether hearing directly from those affected can lead to changes that break a perpetuating cycle.