As temperatures get colder, the debate over where to place a code blue shelter in Davis County is heating up.
Code blue alerts are issued when temperatures are projected to drop to or below 18 degrees Fahrenheit, including windchill, for at least two hours in a 24-hour period.
Under state law, Davis County is required to have 16 beds available during code blue events. However, the county’s task force has yet to finalize a plan to provide those beds.
Davis isn’t alone. Weber County is also still looking for a building to accommodate its needed beds.
A church in Fruit Heights recently withdrew its offer to host a shelter for Davis County due to community outrage.
Wayne Niederhauser, Utah’s state homelessness coordinator, said decision makers in Davis County are considering using three county-owned buildings, including one in Kaysville to meet its requirements. It could choose one facility or rotate through all three.
Kaysville residents spoke out against having the facility during the Nov. 7 city council meeting. Mayor Tamara Tran said she would like to do “everything in [her] power” to prevent a code blue shelter from opening. “We don't feel like Kaysville’s the right location to host a facility like this,” she said.
Niederhauser noted Davis County does not need a city’s permission to use a county-owned building as a shelter. He understands why “nobody wants this in their community” but “people become homeless” all across the state.
Utah’s 2024 point-in-time count, a census of people experiencing homelessness, recorded 65 individuals in Davis County on a January night.
A common theme throughout the Kaysville City Council meeting was concern about an increase in crime and drug use.
“There is a lot of fear and stigma around homelessness,” said Jennifer Wilking, chair of the political science department at California State University, Chico. Some research, she said, suggests crime increases around permanent shelters, like one study of shelters in Vancouver, Canada.
Davis County’s code blue shelter could be different.
Wilking studied a winter shelter in northern California that only opened at night and rotated between various locations. She found “no increased crime in the immediate vicinity around that rotating shelter.”
Her research, which is undergoing peer review, suggests the shelter’s small size, paid staff and tight controls — guests were not allowed to reenter if they left during the night — may explain the difference.
“Providing 16 beds, that's probably going to have [even] less of an impact” than the California shelter, which has 50, she said.
Niederhauser said Davis County has received state funds and appropriated county funds to pay employees to operate the code blue shelter. He said the county, not the state, decides the hours and rules for each shelter. That would affect how many lessons from Wilking’s research would transfer.
He said it’s not unusual for residents to oppose shelters due to “fear about what this is going to bring,” but the difference in crime around code blue shelters in Salt Lake and Utah counties last year was “negligible.”
Niederhauser said the state is supporting Davis County financially, and he expects them to have a code blue system running in the next couple of weeks. He added the state is working to educate the public to increase “understanding of those who are homeless.”
“This could be your uncle, could be your child.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
