Utah sees slight increase in homelessness, but there’s a bright side

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — More people were sleeping on Utah’s streets and shelters in 2023 compared to the year prior, and Utah’s rapid growth may be partly to blame for the increase.

According to a report released by the Utah Office of Homeless Services on Friday, the number of people experiencing homelessness saw a slight increase in almost every metric.

The report shows that the number of Utahns who became homeless for the first time in 2023 — approximately 9,838 people — increased by 9% in comparison to 2022. Other metrics also saw an increase, such as the number of people who were homeless on a single night in January and the amount of people accessing emergency shelters and transitional housing.

“That is something that concerns us because we want to work on more prevention issues and prevent people from experiencing homelessness for the first time,” State Homeless Coordinator Wayne Niederhauser said.

The report claims that Utah’s rapid economic and population growth has made the underlying problems that perpetuate homelessness worse by straining resources, such as affordable and deeply affordable housing and behavioral health systems.

However, the data also reveals some positive indicators of Utah’s homelessness situation.

While there were more people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2023, the number of those who were unsheltered on the streets went down as shelters roughly doubled the number of beds available.

“Our unsheltered population went down, and I think that’s the first time in many years that we saw an unsheltered population go down,” Niederhauser said. “So we know that that’s working.”

The rate of Utahns who are homeless per capita also remained stable. Utah’s rate of homelessness is 11 per 10,000 people — significantly lower than the national average, according to the report, which recently raised to 20 per 10,000 people.

Additionally, 2023 saw improvement when it comes to helping people transition out of homelessness and remain housed over time. According to the study, the “number of people returning to homelessness within two years of exiting the system to a permanent housing situation decreased from 30% in 2022 to 25% in 2023.”

The long-term housing projects also saw success last year as 93% of people housed in the projects either remained there or found permanent housing elsewhere.

The Utah Office of Homeless Services said its goals are to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring by putting programs in place to address the root causes of homelessness, such as addiction, mental health, and affordable housing.

“We don’t control who comes into homelessness … but we want to work on systems with the legislature with other entities, like cities and counties, to work on preventing people from coming into homelessness at all. Making homelessness rare to begin with,” Niederhauser said.

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