For more than a decade, Utah has wrestled with the same question facing every major American city: Why do billions of dollars in homeless services produce more tents, more addiction, more deaths, and more despair on the streets? The reigning philosophy known as Housing First promised that the answer was simple. Give people housing without requirements, and stability will naturally follow. But the longer cities embraced that model, the worse things seemed to get.
Salt Lake business owners watched crime rise outside their doors. Outreach workers grew exhausted cycling the same people through detox, shelters, and the street again. And at the policy level, leaders insisted that more housing and more funding would solve the crisis if the state just kept pushing harder.
But ten years ago, a group of Utah leaders quietly began proving something different. Their approach did not begin with housing. It did not revolve around case management, diagnoses, or government funding streams. It began with a question most systems avoid asking:…