It was a wet winter morning as Anna Davidson climbed into an Ogden Police Department pickup with Sergeant Darick Fisher. A few winter coats and toiletry bags sat in the backseat. They pulled out of the police station and drove north.
A yellow patch on the back of Fisher’s vest read “Community Police,” while Davidson, a social worker, wore a green patch with the word “Advocate.” They’re part of a team that helps people find and keep stable housing.
On the far end of a large parking lot, Davidson recognized a van that a client was living in. She asked Fisher to drive over, and they got out.
Davidson had already connected the man with other social workers who worked with him to resolve some legal issues, and she helped him apply for SNAP and Medicaid.
“Doing all right with everything else?” she asked through the van’s open door. “Food stamps came in, all that kind of cool stuff?”
“Yeah,” the client said, smiling.
They set up an appointment to go through the next steps for getting him back on his feet.
Davidson started as the first homeless advocate with the police department in 2019. Now she’s one of three.
Helping people find housing is a slow process, she said. It takes several check-ins and requires addressing basic needs like food, clothing and identity documents, which are key to accessing public benefits. Then there’s the matter of which programs someone might be eligible for and whether they’re ready to receive help.
“It has to be driven by their ability of where they're at, and then we can kind of figure it out from there,” Davidson said.
The client living in his van would need a housing voucher because he did not have an income, Davidson said. But this is a long process — the waiting list for a Section 8 voucher, for instance, is four years with Weber Housing Authority and two and a half with Ogden Housing Authority.
“I think the quickest I've ever housed someone has been a couple of weeks,” Davidson said. “But that's because when they came across me, they had already had a voucher in hand and were just unable to find a landlord that was willing to work with them.”
People living on the streets can have a knee-jerk reaction when they see law enforcement, said Jon Graff, executive director of the Homeless Veterans Fellowship. But he sees the Ogden Police Department’s advocates as different.
“Because they see the advocates on a regular basis, they do have that trust in them,” Graff said. “They do know that they're not there to hammer them, that they're there to say, ‘Hey, look, what's going on? What can we do to help you out?’”
The advocates refer people to organizations like Graff’s. His staff doesn’t have the bandwidth to seek out additional people to help, so he said referrals are a big help.
“Then when they encounter somebody who's a veteran, or who they think may be a veteran, then they can direct them directly to us so that we can help them out faster,’” Graff said.
Weber County has Utah’s second-highest homeless population, according to data from the 2025 Point-in-Time Count. It grew 5.5% from 2024 to 2025, much lower than the statewide 18% growth.
Ogden police still enforce trespass and camping laws, even as advocates connect people with resources. Camping citations related to homelessness rose from 243 in 2024 to 421 in 2025, while homelessness-related trespassing citations saw a smaller increase of 273 to 287.
The department strikes a balance between assistance and enforcement, Fisher said.
“When we make contact with people and they're in violation of something, we'll refer them to the advocates, but also we still have to hold them accountable.”
Officers usually educate someone about the laws and available resources. Still, if the individual continues to violate the law, they will issue a citation and hope the person can find a resolution in homeless court, Fisher said. That’s a program at Ogden Justice Court where certain individuals can resolve nonviolent misdemeanors by accessing social services, rather than receiving traditional punishments.
As enforcement has increased, so has the Ogden Police Department’s outreach service. They helped 115 people secure housing in 2025, up from 75 the year before.
Davidson credited the growth to grant funding that paid for some clients’ first month’s rent and deposit, plus the addition of a third advocate, who joined in the fall of 2024. She said it also makes a big difference that the program has built a reputation in the community. Clients refer their friends.
“We just were able to meet more people and, like, identify their needs, or these were folks that we knew that had been in homelessness since our program started, and we were able to advocate for them to be able to get that next voucher that was coming forward,” she said.
As they drove around town, Davidson got a call from a man who was worried about his sister. He remembered Davidson from her previous job.
“I am the lady that used to own a restaurant, yes,” she told him.
Davidson spent 20 years running Jessie Jean’s – first in Roy, then Ogden. Customers could pay it forward for folks to get a free breakfast.
That work led to her sharing ideas with former Police Chief Randy Watt on how to better serve people experiencing homelessness.
“Chief Watt was like, ‘Do you want to work for me? Do you want to try and figure this out?’” Davidson said, and the homeless services advocate program was born.
Following the program’s success, the Ogden Fire Department rolled out a homeless medical advocate and mobile clinic to decrease non-emergency calls.
The staff of the Lantern House in Ogden, the area’s largest homeless shelter, sometimes joins the police department’s advocates for street outreach, said Program Manager Kacie Short. Each team can learn from the other.
Having advocates embedded in the police department brings other benefits, she said. They’re more familiar with the legal system, can approach individuals on private property and are sometimes on the scene in tense situations.
“They're able to meet people more in spaces of crisis, whereas our street outreach team wouldn't be dispatched to a call like that,” Short said.
At the end of the day, helping someone find a place to live feels good for Davidson. But clients often need case management for stability.
After making the rounds looking for potential new clients, Fisher and Davidson stopped by a client’s apartment. The woman hadn’t answered her phone in days, and Davidson was worried.
She knocked, but the woman didn’t answer, so she left a voicemail and a note on the door.
Often, Davidson said, getting someone into housing is when the real work begins.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
