DAVIS COUNTY, Utah — Davis County is asking the state legislature for $30 million to create a homeless shelter.
Last year, a bill passed mandating certain counties create Code Blue responses, as well as make beds available for unsheltered people.
Davis County’s task force wants to build a site that has an emergency shelter plus permanent supportive housing, Davis County Commissioner Lorene Kamalu said.
“We want to get at the drivers of homelessness and not just try to put a band-aid over the challenge of homelessness that doesn't even do anything. We want to have outcomes and people exiting the emergency shelters and becoming more stable,” she said. “Sometimes there's a concept that if you build it, they will come. Well, it's really important for people in Davis County to know that we're not building something for people outside of our county to somehow then magically show up here. We are striving to stay upstream, and preventing homelessness, and for those who are experiencing homelessness to make it rare, brief and non-recurring, which is the State goal.”
Currently, the task force is looking for a property where this shelter could go, but hasn’t yet been able to identify any spots that make sense.
“We have to comply, if that's the way it's going to be,” said Sunset Mayor Howard Madsen. “We'll have to find something, but it's going to take some time.”
So far this year, the county has been distributing hotel and motel vouchers to unsheltered individuals on Code Blue nights.
