Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall holds a news conference outside City Hall in Salt Lake City to urge the Utah Legislature to support more funding for homeless services on Aug. 13, 2025. (Katie McKellar/Utah News Dispatch)
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall has issued yet another call to the Utah Legislature to more seriously consider funding requests to bolster the state’s homeless system.
The mayor held a news conference on Wednesday hours after the Utah Office of Homeless Services released its annual report — which showed an 18% increase in the number of Utahns experiencing homelessness on a single night in January, according to the 2025 Point-in-Time Count.
That number “should be heard as a battle cry,” Mendenhall said outside City Hall, “to bring more energy, focus and leadership to this issue by our state Legislature.”
“I want to be clear that I’m standing here before you today because I’m deeply concerned about the trajectory of homelessness in the state of Utah and in our capital city,” she said. “And once more, I’m extremely concerned by the lack of forward momentum from legislative leaders to address this growing statewide crisis.”
On Wednesday, Mendenhall pointed to the state’s newly released homelessness data as evidence that the state’s homeless system is facing growing needs. That report also showed the number of Utah children experiencing homelessness increased by 22% and the number of unhoused Utahns over the age of 64 rose 42%.
“To our state leaders, your partners are here. We are ready and willing to work with you. And the changes that are needed are clear,” Mendenahall said, noting that city leaders have made a proposal to increase homeless shelter capacity, but it lacks state funding.
“As your partners, we have a plan for 1,300 more shelter beds. We have made land available, yet as of today, we have only one-third of the capital funding needed to build the first phase, and not a penny of operational capital.”
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall (left) and Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd hold a news conference outside City Hall in Salt Lake City to urge the Utah Legislature to support more funding for homeless services on Aug. 13, 2025. (Katie McKellar/Utah News Dispatch)
‘Our citizens expect results, not finger-pointing,’ governor and legislative leaders say
In response to Mendenhall’s call, however, Utah’s top Republican leaders — Gov. Spencer Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper — issued a joint statement saying the state has invested hundreds of millions in homeless services in recent years. And they urged Mendenhall to “turn down the politics.”
“Over the past five years, the state has made the largest investment in homeless services in our state’s history, spending more than $266 million on addressing homelessness. That includes setting aside $25 million to build a transformative campus,” Cox, Adams and Schultz said.
They added that across the nation, “addressing homelessness is primarily a city and county responsibility, but in Utah, the state has stepped up as a committed partner, working alongside local governments and the private sector to find real solutions.”
“The state remains committed to enhancing public safety and maintaining order, but lasting solutions require collaboration and partnership from the city, county and private sector leaders,” they added.
While Cox, Adams and Schultz said they’ve been “encouraged” by newly-appointed Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd’s efforts to improve safety in Salt Lake City, “it’s frustrating to continuously take one step forward and two steps back with Salt Lake City.”
“The city needs to stay focused on its core responsibility of protecting its citizens, keeping streets safe and clean and making our capital a place Utahns can be proud of and visitors want to experience,” they said. “We urge Mayor Mendenhall to turn down the politics and keep working with us to find practical and lasting solutions to this complex issue. Our citizens expect results, not finger-pointing.”
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall (left) and Salt Lake City Police Chief Brian Redd hold a news conference outside City Hall in Salt Lake City to urge the Utah Legislature to support more funding for homeless services on Aug. 13, 2025. (Katie McKellar/Utah News Dispatch)
‘Salt Lake City is making good on our part’
This marks the second time in less than a month that the mayor of Utah’s capital city has called on the Republican-controlled Legislature to take city requests more seriously for more funding to more holistically address crime, substance abuse, affordable housing and homeless services.
Last month, Mendenhall said she was “disappointed” in the lack of progress from the Legislature to adhere to a list of recommendations she included the public safety plan she presented in response to demands from state leaders, who had grown frustrated with crime, drugs and illegal camping in Salt Lake City ahead of the 2025 Legislature.
The mayor on Wednesday again pointed to her public safety plan and the actions the Salt Lake City Police Department took to increase enforcement and address homelessness.
“Salt Lake City is making good on our part,” she said. “But the reality is, this is a humanitarian crisis. This is not something we can police our way out of. … Salt Lake City is taking enforcement as far as we can, and to little avail.”
The mayor said Salt Lake City police are on pace to set records for total arrests this year, “thanks in part to increased proactive policing by our officers.” She also noted that overall citywide crime remains at or below a 16-year low.
“We are enforcing our laws,” she said, “but the sad reality is that without more mental health treatment, more shelter beds, more permanent supportive housing and more capacity in our jails, too many people remain on our streets.”
Mendenhall said it should come as no surprise that the state’s homeless population is increasing “due to financial and economic pressures” along with a longstanding housing shortage and home and rental prices that have skyrocketed over the past five years.
“There are simply not enough options for housing, shelter beds, treatment centers or social services to meet the demand in this state,” she said.
The 2026 Utah Legislature’s general session is scheduled to convene on Jan. 20. Acknowledging that’s months away, Mendenhall said the need is “startling,” so she’s issuing the call now.
“I’m telling you now, in the middle of our warmest months, that the situation is dire,” she said.
Funding for winter shelter beds expected to run out in April
Mendenhall said local leaders have already started trying to prepare for this winter’s emergency shelter response, but they’re anticipating a lack of funding to open enough beds, which she said “should be upsetting to all of us.”
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“There won’t be enough beds,” she said, adding that counties are submitting winter response plans for state approval, but “I’m very doubtful that those beds will be available. So we almost assuredly will have people on the streets with no option of space to go.”
Mendenhall, who sits as a voting member on the Utah Homeless Services Board, said the Utah Office of Homeless Services “does not have funding to continue those beds” beyond April, though that office has kept about 900 winter shelter beds open into this summer “because they had the funding from the Legislature to do so.”
But beyond this coming winter season, the money will dry up — unless lawmakers approve more.
“So come the end of the winter shelter season, everyone who’s in one of the 900-plus beds that were created this year would be out on the streets,” she said. “And the impact in our downtown core, throughout our neighborhoods and parks and trail system, of 1,000-plus people flooding out with no option of places to go is very alarming.”
There’s not enough money to build homeless campus, mayor says
Mendenhall also reiterated her warning last month that “progress has stalled” in the effort to create a 1,200- to 1,600-bed homeless campus “due to inadequate funding to build and non-existent funding to operate a new campus shelter.”
“This is unacceptable,” she said. “I’m calling on our state leaders to recognize the crisis at hand. Step in to join your willing partners in local government, and lead the passage of legislation that will invest both the capital and ongoing operational funding for a new shelter space.”
Efforts to site and build that homeless campus are still ongoing, but state officials don’t expect it to be built in time for the coming winter. Last fall, the Utah Homeless Services Board set a deadline of Oct. 1, 2025 for the campus to be built, but State Homeless Coordinator Wayne Niederhauser said the siting process is taking longer than expected.
“We are working hard,” Niederhauser told Utah News Dispatch earlier this week, but he said it could be a matter of months before state leaders can finish environmental evaluations on properties they are considering — something he said must be done before state leaders decide whether to move forward with eminent domain powers granted by the 2025 Utah Legislature specifically to site the homeless campus.
Niederhauser, however, acknowledged the “need is huge.”
“We appreciate the acute need, the serious need of this,” he said. “So we’re not letting grass grow under our feet. We’re working hard to find a pathway.”
The Utah Office of Homeless Services is also working on drafting funding recommendations to include in Gov. Spencer Cox’s budget proposal that’s usually issued in December. But in recent years, the Utah Legislature has only funded a fraction of what the governor has requested for homeless services.
For 2025, Cox initially sought $128 million for homelessness, but in the end lawmakers funded $50 million in additional state spending for emergency shelter, including $25 million for “low barrier shelter.” Some of that was used to keep winter shelter beds open, while some is also supposed to be used to site and build the new homeless campus.
But that’s not enough money to both build and fund ongoing operations for the new homeless campus, Mendenhall warned, urging lawmakers to appropriate more.
She said over the coming months, city leaders will work with the Utah Office of Homeless Services, the courts system, and Salt Lake County officials will be working to “bring legislative requests that are needed to right the wrongs in the system that exist today.”
“But,” she said, “there are no wheels on the bus that we present unless the state moves us forward. We must see action from legislative leadership and our governor to create the change that we know is not only possible, but is desperately needed.”
