Tackling homelessness in Utah has been a difficult, complex and drawn-out effort. It’s been a campaign issue, a lawmaking and enforcement issue and a finger-pointing issue. Utah’s new state homeless coordinator, Tyler Clancy, knows what he’s getting into.
“I think sometimes it feels like boiling the ocean because you're simultaneously trying to take on affordable housing, economic security, the drug crisis, public safety, and the list could go on,” he said
Following an 18% spike in the state’s homeless population in 2025, lawmakers set aside over $40 million in the state budget to address it. This money can’t be spent until the beginning of the new fiscal year on July 1, 2026.
Over the years, Utah has tried several different strategies to address homelessness, including a “housing first” model that prioritized helping people secure affordable housing quickly. Now, the state is shifting to a Trump-backed “human first” framework, placing greater emphasis on mental health services over housing.
When the 2026 Point-in-Time report delivered a sliver of good news about a small decrease in Utah’s homelessness, state leaders said the approach was at the heart of the state’s progress.
The latest count recorded 4,512 Utahns experiencing homelessness on a single night in January, which is an overall 1.6% decrease from last year. The count also found that unsheltered homelessness was down 9.7% and chronic homelessness was down 6.7%.
“I think it's good news and more work to be done,” Clancy said.
The deputy executive director at Crossroads Urban Center, Bill Tibbetts, agreed with Clancy that there is still more work to be done. He was also relieved “not to see a double-digit increase.”
The new Point-in-Time count confirmed for Tibbetts what he has witnessed himself through Crossroads: the number of people experiencing homelessness is beginning to plateau.
“I would say that this report sort of confirms what I see in terms of who we see coming into our food pantry,” he said. “Which we're not seeing an increase like we have in past years, but we're not really seeing a decrease, that we are in more of a stable point.”
Based on some of the changes in laws around homelessness, Tibbetts said he is skeptical of the accuracy of some numbers in the new count.
Clancy pointed to the decrease in unsheltered homelessness as part of the expansion of emergency shelters across the state, particularly, he said, in the Salt Lake Valley. That’s a self-selecting group, as Tibbetts sees it.
“It's really easy to find the people to get an accurate count for the people in the shelter, because like those people check in,” he said.
Otherwise, changes in the law, like the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2024 on cities banning camping in public places, and Salt Lake City’s stepped-up enforcement, have led those experiencing homelessness to hide.
Tibbetts is hopeful next year’s data will show a bigger reduction in chronic homelessness thanks to several supportive housing projects across the state that are close to opening.
After the new fiscal year unlocks more budget dollars to fight homelessness, Clancy said it will be used for programs that align with Gov. Spencer Cox’s “three pillars.” Those focus on “accountability for ‘high utilizers’ in the criminal justice system, affordable housing and emergency shelter and then mental and behavioral health infrastructure.”
One plan is to partner with the state’s Division of Substance Use and Mental Health and Salt Lake County Behavioral Health Services to create housing projects with on-site 24/7 mental health professionals.
Utah has thrown a lot of ideas at the wall to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness.
Leading up to this year's legislative session, Republican lawmakers, including Clancy, who was a House representative at the time, championed a proposed 1,300-bed homeless campus. The project, set to be built in northern Salt Lake County, garnered concern over the planned involuntary commitment of “high utilizers” in the criminal justice system. Legislative session hype surrounding the plan died down when funding couldn’t be secured, and little has been mentioned about the campus since.
When asked what he would say to critics who fear that Utah’s plan is to simply arrest the homeless population away, Clancy said it was “not a fair assessment.”
“So for our approach, we're saying, ‘What can we do to prevent incarceration? What can we do to prevent that type of crisis and help get people back on the right track?’” he said.
