As Utah has garnered national attention for Republican state leaders’ eagerness to fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” Gov.
The site of a future homeless services campus at 2520 N. 2200 West in Salt Lake City is pictured with I-215 in the foreground on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
As Utah has garnered national attention for Republican state leaders’ eagerness to fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” Gov. Spencer Cox says their vision for a yet-to-be built 1,300-bed homeless campus in northwest Salt Lake City is a “top priority.”
Plans for the campus are still taking shape. But the state’s top homelessness leaders have proposed including hundreds of beds for people who are civilly committed — or court ordered into mental health treatment. They also envision an “accountability center” or a “secure residential placement facility” for substance abuse treatment as an alternative to jail, where people who are “sanctioned” to go there would not be able to leave voluntarily.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Pushing back against criticisms from some Democrats and homeless advocates likening the proposal to a “prison” for the homeless, Cox on Wednesday said state leaders are intent on trying something new — because, he said, so far current efforts to reduce homelessness haven’t worked.
“Look, everything we’ve been doing has been a complete and abject failure,” Cox told Madison Mills, a reporter at Axios who questioned the governor about state leaders’ approach to homelessness during a summit focused on housing issues.
“This isn’t just, you know, holding people against their will. It’s getting them the help and the support that they need,” Cox said.
The governor also balked at a quote in a New York Times article published Wednesday in which a woman experiencing homelessness compared a rendering of the homeless campus to a “concentration camp.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
“This idea that it’s, you know, compared to Nazi Germany … I just, I don’t understand that level of thinking,” he said. “It’s just crazy to me. I mean, as if, you know, Hitler were to, what, round up people who are dying on the streets in their own filth addicted to drugs and giving them the support they need? Like, there is no comparison — at all.”
The ‘sea change’ happening in Utah
Earlier this year, the governor said a “sea change” in Utah’s homeless system was coming — one that emphasized cracking down on camping and drug use while also increasing drug and mental health treatment. But at the time he also acknowledged the state would need more jail and treatment beds to make it happen.
Wednesday, Cox said “compassion” is not “allowing people to die on our streets” and letting public places become unsafe for them and others. “There is no compassion in that, at all.”
“So what we have to do is provide the services that people need, and we have to hold people accountable,” he said. “This is the social order. You don’t get to just camp wherever you want to camp. That can’t be a thing.”
A conceptual rendering depicts what state leaders envision for a new “transformative campus” meant to house and rehabilitate people experiencing homelessness. (Courtesy of the Utah Office of Homeless Services)
In the past, as state and local leaders have tried to crack down on public camping, it’s often resulted in pushing people experiencing homelessness around rather than into shelter. For years, the state’s homeless shelters have been maxed out. The planned 1,300-bed homeless campus has been proposed to also bolster the state’s homeless shelter capacity during a time when the state’s homeless population continues to rise.
Advertisement
Advertisement
“If you don’t have a place to stay, then we will give you a place to stay. That’s what we’re doing,” Cox said. “What we’re talking about is a small group of people who are unsheltered and who won’t take help, won’t go to a shelter, and are breaking lots of other laws. And that very small population, we have to help them. … When you’ve got a needle in your arm or you’re on meth or fentanyl or whatever it is, you can’t make rational decisions.”
Cox said today’s laws “don’t allow us to help people get to a point where they can do that,” and that needs to change.
What will Utah do to fulfill Trump’s executive order?
Trump’s executive order directs the U.S. attorney general to “seek, in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States’ policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.”
The order also directs the attorney general to assist state and local governments “through technical guidance, grants, or other legally available means,” to implement “maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment, and ‘step-down’ treatment standards.”
It’s not yet clear how Utah will specifically act when it comes to civilly committing more people. But in answering a call from Cox and top Republican legislative leaders urging action to “fulfill” Trump’s executive order, the Utah Homeless Services Board recently wrote in a letter it would “coordinate with the White House” to explore “becoming a pilot for the rest of the country on how to deploy an exhaustive treatment-focused intervention that is dignified, humane, and efficacious.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
Though Utah’s plans are still taking shape publically, Cox said there “are a lot of blue state governors who are looking at what we’re doing right now,” and he argued that finding a new approach to homelessness is “not a red state, blue state thing.”
“Everybody knows what they’ve done has been a failure,” Cox said. “Go to any major city in this country, and you will see how we’ve failed as a society and how we’ve failed to protect the most vulnerable amongst us.”
But there are still many details surrounding the so-called “transformative” homeless campus that need to be sorted out — including how the expensive project will be funded. It’s expected to cost more than $75 million to build, plus north of $34 million a year in ongoing funding to operate.
Some, including Democrats and homeless providers, have expressed concerns that for the homeless campus to be a success, it will require even more money — and need to be fully funded. And they’ve said if Utah’s current homeless shelters and other resources like deeply affordable housing, substance use treatment, mental health treatment, and jail capacity were funded more substantially, perhaps the state wouldn’t have as acute homeless problems as it does today.
A person and a dog lay in the grass outside the City-County Building in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
Republican state leaders including Cox, however, have said they want the state’s homeless system to move away from “Housing First” policies that they say “lack accountability.” Currently, federal “Housing First” grants are prioritized to providers who use that approach, which national homeless advocates have defended as an evidence-based and effective solution to homelessness.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Housing First is an approach that calls for providing housing without first requiring the person to address other problems such as mental health issues or substance abuse, as other approaches to homelessness do. Advocates say providing supportive services to address such problems is easier in a safe and stable housing situation.
But earlier this year, the Utah Legislature passed a resolution — sponsored by Rep. Tyler Clancy, R-Provo, whom Cox on Thursday appointed as the state’s new homeless coordinator — urging the federal government to change federal homelessness regulations.
That included a request to “rescind housing first policy mandates to permit flexibility” for housing options that “meet the diverse needs and preferences of families experiencing homelessness, including sobriety, goal-setting, and accountability.”
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Advertisement
Advertisement
It’s possible Utah leaders may rely on some amount of federal funding to help build the homeless campus — but that remains to be seen. Otherwise, state leaders will need to prioritize funding in the state budget.
How will the campus be funded?
When asked about funding for the homeless campus after Wednesday’s housing summit, Cox told reporters he’s “in talks with the Legislature right now.”
“We know it’s going to be a tight budget year, but this has to be my top priority. It is my top priority,” he said. “We’re also working with the federal government and hopeful that they’ll see the wisdom in this, and they expressed interest in helping these types of projects.”
The governor said the campus could be a “collaborative project together” with the federal government. But if not, “I’m going to be looking at my budget — where can we cut back? What can we do?”
Advertisement
Advertisement
He said he doesn’t think the state has the option to do nothing.
“We have to get this right,” he said. “We’ve been failing for so long and I’m not willing to give up.”
Cox acknowledged, however, that without money, the effort could hit a dead end.
“Nothing happens,” he said, “if we don’t get the funding.”
Source: Utah News