On a recent evening, Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, walked in the dark calling out, “Male, over 25; female, 18 to 24.”
Homeless people rarely have the privilege of having an audience with the president’s right-hand man — much less, one on their own turf. But that’s exactly what happened on a recent evening when McDonough and a crew consisting of Secret Service agents, White House staffers and San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee took part in the point-in-time count of homeless people living across America. (Within 90 minutes, the team counted 144 people in eight square blocks around San Francisco’s city hall.) The participation of a high-ranking Cabinet official drew attention to this little-known tool that provides essential direction for governments and service providers. It also brings focus to a population that’s often hidden out of sight, forgotten on vacant doorsteps, under freeway overpasses and in emergency shelters.
“What I see here, what we just walked through, this is a problem. But this is the same sort of challenge we face all over the country,” McDonough says. “The numbers tell the story. And that’s why this count is so important.”
WHAT ARE POINT-IN-TIME SURVEYS?
Here’s the formula: Sometime during the last 10 days of January (with a few exceptions), thousands of volunteers fan out across towns and cities across the U.S. to take a census of unsheltered street people. Equipped with clipboards and flashlights, they’re often assigned a small geographic area to avoid duplicates. The counts began in 1983 in 60 municipalities, as an increasingly visible population became homeless due to poverty, drug use and the closure of state-run mental institutions. Standardized methods for the counts were firmed up in 2005 and have since been refined. Along with figures from homeless shelters and transitional housing, numbers from the point-in-time count are submitted to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). From there, the data gives a local and national snapshot of the homeless population that guides service providers, Congress, HUD and other agencies.
HOW OFTEN ARE THEY CONDUCTED?
HUD requires shelters to submit their data every year, but point-in-time surveys only happen biennially, usually in the odd-numbered years. Many large cities, however, choose to complete the census annually to keep abreast of the latest trends. “When we get an accurate count, the numbers tell us what to do,” Mayor Lee tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “Data drives action. That’s what this night is all about.”
[ph]
IS THERE MORE TO THE SURVEYS THAN JUST COUNTING PEOPLE ON THE STREETS?
Since the federal government introduced its long-term plan to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2015, as well as youth and family homelessness by 2020, HUD has requested detailed data on those subpopulations. Some surveys require nothing more than approximate age and gender, but others, like Los Angeles’s survey, consists of a seven-page questionnaire asking things like, “Where have you been spending most of your nights?” “Do you have ongoing health problems or medical conditions?” and “How many times have you been housed and homeless?”
In Connecticut, for the first time, volunteers will ask the homeless about their specific housing, medical and employment needs to add to a registry. “In the past, each program kept its own waitlist for housing and other important services…Under that old system, providers and public officials had no way to gain a global view of the total needs to end homelessness in their community,” Lisa Tepper Bates, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, writes in an op-ed. A “community-wide by-name registry,” she adds, allows nonprofits “to target the right kind of assistance to the right person.”
[ph]
HOW DO VOLUNTEERS FIND THE HOMELESS?
It’s not easy. Organizers target known homeless encampments, but there’s always the chance of missing some. Because of its huge area, Los Angeles has been one of the leaders in improving its methodology. To supplement a count that takes place over multiple nights — from the posh neighborhoods along the ocean (some of which had their first count this year) to deep into the San Gabriel Valley — the city also conducts a random telephone survey of the “hidden homeless,” which added an additional 18,000 to the 36,000 people already counted on the street or in shelters.
Even if volunteers are able to locate people they suspect to be homeless, answers are not always forthcoming. (“None of your goddamn business” is how someone rebuffed two women who work for the Department of Veteran Affairs in D.C. when they asked him.) Many cities equip volunteers with gift bags and resource lists, small incentives that may prod someone to answer a few questions.
WHAT DO OFFICIALS EXPECT FROM THIS YEAR’S RESULTS?
A year ago, HUD reported that 578,434 people were homeless on a given night, a 2 percent decline from 2013. Exact figures from last month’s count won’t be known until municipalities release them later this year, but so far, experts aren’t optimistic about another decrease. (Already-released figures in Seattle show an alarming 21 percent jump from last year.) Why? Gentrification is driving up rent and decreasing the number of vacant apartments up and down the West Coast, says Katy Miller, regional coordinator for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Add to that lingering poverty and unemployment from the recession, a dearth of affordable housing and limited mental health care infrastructure, and it’s suddenly clear why so many are losing their homes.
But it’s not all bad news. Expect some bright spots in the declining numbers of homeless veterans, which has already dropped one-third from 2010 to 2014, thanks in part to First Lady Michelle Obama. Mayors across the country responded to her call to end veteran homelessness this year — a goal that’s well within reach, as New Orleans has demonstrated. The chronically homeless population should also decrease as well, continuing the 21 percent decline from 2010 to 2014. As Salt Lake City has shown, putting the homeless into housing can bring these numbers close to zero. Look for the common-sense solution of “Housing First” to once again prove its effectiveness when totals debut.
HOW ACCURATE ARE THE FINDINGS?
Many in the field believe the counts far underestimate the actual number of people experiencing homelessness. For one, the count occurs during the bitter freeze of late January, when many homeless aren’t living on the street. The calendar assumption seems to be that the homeless will be more likely to enter the shelter when it’s cold outside and thus be counted, but they could also take refuge in a vehicle or seek protection in a church basement. The head counts are “hit or miss,” says Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a homeless rights group. “Those whom they could see, they counted,” he writes in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Point-in-time counts are a minimum number, always. They undercount hidden homeless populations because homeless persons are doubling up with the housed or cannot be identified by sight as homeless.” A quick look at other studies support Boden’s claim, including data released by the U.S. Department of Education, which reports that the number of homeless students has nearly doubled since the 2006-07 school year, to 1.2 million.
[ph]
WHICH GROUPS ARE OFTEN MOST EXCLUDED FROM THE CENSUS?
Point-in-time surveys do provide a snapshot taken at roughly the same time, a HUD official notes, which can “benchmark progress” with some confidence every two years — assuming that the face of homelessness is not changing. Some advocates fear that the largest new population of homeless — families who’ve lost their homes in the recession and are bouncing between couches, cheap motels and other temporary residences— are not being identified since they don’t “look homeless” to survey volunteers.
In addition to families, youth are most often among the undercounted, Boden says. Unaccompanied homeless youth are referred to as an “invisible population” because they’re particularly difficult to count. Studies attempting to estimate the total range from 22,700 to 1.7 million, a huge disparity. To improve count accuracy, HUD has partnered with a number of other agencies for a program called “Youth Count!” Since 2013, these groups have tried to attract youth homeless into shelters for the one-night counts with free meals and activities. They also approach homeless youth earlier in the day, when they’re likely easier to find at hotspots for young people like malls or recreation centers, LGBT-focused agencies and schools.
Unfortunately, while this system counts those down-and-out on the streets, it does little to track those who are grappling with housing insecurity — the very people which may be counted among this country’s homeless during the next point-in-time survey.
[ph]
Tag: Salt Lake City
Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah is entering the final stretch of its 10-year plan to end homelessness, but that doesn’t mean the state’s work is over.
The number of chronically homeless individuals has dropped from 1,932 in 2005 to 539 last year. If numbers continue to decline this year, the state will reach what’s known as a “functional zero,” meaning that Utah will have housed all the chronically homeless who will accept it and have the capacity to shelter the rest. Just like the “functional zero” economists use to calculate unemployment doesn’t include the baseline of people switching jobs, Utah won’t include in their data the minority who refuse housing, says Lloyd Pendleton, the state’s homelessness czar. “We can’t force them into housing. That’s called jail,” he notes.
Despite the Beehive State’s success, a larger population always teeters precariously on the brink. Utah’s total homeless population has grown 12.5 percent — from 11,275 to 12,685 — over the last decade. These individuals will need somewhere to stay when a landlord evicts them, when parents scream that they’re not wanted or when an abusive spouse makes them fear for their safety. So achieving functional zero doesn’t mean that Utah’s homeless shelters can close up shop tomorrow.
“We’ve demonstrated [Housing First] works. We have achieved remarkable results. Now we’ve really got to amplify and fortify our existing service delivery,” says Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, Salt Lake City’s emergency shelter.
What steps will the state’s task force take to address the broader issues surrounding homelessness?
[ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph]
READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
[ph]
Meet the Courageous Man Who Has Housed 1,393 Chronically Homeless Individuals in Utah
Lloyd Pendleton is the most efficient man in Utah. By the hour, he ticks off small achievements in a pocket planner, marking progress toward long-term goals. His mind routinely calculates volumes and outputs; he thinks in returns on investments. When Pendleton speaks, you begin to suspect he’s just sifted through a file cabinet’s worth of data. But then, he tosses in one of his signature colorful aphorisms, and you realize, nope, that’s just Lloyd.
After retiring from high-ranking positions at Ford Motors and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Pendleton began a second career in Utah’s Department of Workforce Services, a seemingly unglamorous government job in Salt Lake City. “I retired on a Friday and went to work with the state on Monday,” he says. As a pet project of sorts, Pendleton set an ambitious goal: To functionally eliminate chronic homelessness across Utah within 10 years. Nine years later, as Utah’s homelessness czar, he’s on track to reach that milestone by year’s end.
“He gets things done” is how his colleague Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homelessness coordinator, describes her state counterpart.
Raised on a ranch at the far western edge of Utah, Pendleton’s early experience working the land gave him a dogged work ethic and a quiet-the-bells directness. He admits he once thought street people panhandled because they were lazy. “I used to tell the homeless to get a job, because that’s all I thought they needed,” he recalls.
But later, through the Mormon Church, he was tasked with restructuring struggling food pantries, emergency shelters and other charities across the country. After working directly with the homeless, including a year on-site at Utah’s largest shelter The Road Home (then known as the Travelers Aid Society), Pendleton had a “major paradigm shift.” Viewing the homeless as his brothers and sisters, he realized that when they suffered, so did the entire community. “We’re all connected,” he now says.
Pendleton’s years of bolstering charities earned him credibility from many nonprofit executive directors. When they knew he was considering retirement, several service providers and then-Gov. Jon Huntsman began lobbying the L.D.S. Church to “loan” Pendleton out to head up the state’s nascent homelessness task force. The church agreed, and Pendleton did the job part-time for two years before committing to being its full-time director in 2006. “We got Lloyd involved before he realized,” one executive director says.
Described by one Salt Lake City social worker as a “voracious reader and researcher,” Pendleton started by signing up for conferences on the latest strategies. While at one in Chicago in 2003, he learned about the 10-year plans to end homelessness taking shape around the country, and he heard the buzz about an innovative idea called “Housing First.” Two years later, after a conference in Las Vegas, Pendleton started chatting up a fellow passenger on the airport shuttle: Sam Tsemberis, considered the originator of the “Housing First” model.
Tsemberis explained how Pathways to Housing (the organization he founded in New York City in 1992) threw out drug tests and waiting lists — the old trappings of getting someone “housing ready.” Instead, the homeless were moved into apartments in Manhattan and Westchester County, N.Y., within two weeks. “You’re curing the housing problem first. You cure the person later,” Tsemberis explained. After its first five years, 88 percent of tenants had stayed in the program’s housing — double the rate for the city’s step-by-step rehab programs. “Recovery starts when you have something you care about, a place where you can go,” he added. Pendleton took an instant liking to Tsemberis and together, they convinced Utah lawmakers and foundations to take a chance on “Housing First.”
Just because it worked in New York City, however, didn’t mean the program would be a fit for Utah. During one tense early meeting, a contractor worried about his reputation almost backed out of building 100 units. As Pendleton listened, a thought came to him: why not test a small pilot program consisting of 25 of the toughest, most distressed people? The idea partially came from a truism he learned on the ranch while chopping kindling for their wood-burning stove: “Chop the big end of the log first.” In other words, if you can house the most chronically homeless, you can house anybody.
The task force gathered the best case managers, convinced landlords across the city to participate and handed over keys to 17 people. “I felt the sweat on my forehead, and I know others did too,” recalls Matt Minkevitch, the executive director of The Road Home, a Salt Lake City shelter. “You’d give each other a casual smile and say, ‘We’ll work through it, okay?’ But they couldn’t hear your stomach growling, hear you praying under your breath,… and just hoping, hoping that you don’t hurt people and damage all these important programs.”
The first night, Pendleton recounts, one man placed all his belongings on the bed and curled up on the floor to sleep. The following few nights, he dozed outside, near a dumpster. Finally, after several days, he moved in and slept on the bed. Housing isn’t “rehabilitation,” Pendleton noted, “because so many of them were never habilitated to begin with. You are creating new lives for them.” With the exception of one person who died, all the tenants remained in housing 21 months later.
Pendleton isn’t striving for prestige or fame in solving an ill that blights much of urban America. He just likes ideas that work, and he wants to see them take root, regardless of who sows the first seed. “Housing First” isn’t unique to the Beehive State, but Pendleton’s precise methods are a primary reason why Utah’s rates of chronic homelessness are so low. The fingerprints of his orderly approach can be spotted all over the 10-year plan: its clear articulation of vision, its far-reaching collaboration and its experimental pilot projects.
According to Pendleton, every action must answer this question: Does this help the homeless into housing or not? “If you don’t have a crystal-clear vision about the homeless situation, then you just muddle along. You get poor results. You’re not getting people housed,” he says.
For Utah to solve such an intractable social problem, it also had to find support beyond the traditional partnerships. Pendleton’s résumé helped win the involvement of the business community and the L.D.S. Church, one of the most influential forces in the region. Their monetary contributions and participation in programs like job placement meant even “more and more people carrying the load with the county, city and state,” Pendleton tells the Deseret News. And once the strategy had been distilled, all those agencies focused their individual expertise on a specific aspect of the problem.
Despite playing different instruments, “We have been pretty much on the same sheet of music in the symphony,” Pendleton says of the collaboration.
To meet the goal Pendleton first dreamed of a decade ago, Utah still needs to house approximately 539 chronically homeless and 200 homeless veterans, according to the latest comprehensive report — far fewer than the 1,932 chronically homeless on the streets when he first started.
Pretty good for an “encore career,” don’t you think?
READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Crystal Spencer desperately needed a home for her three little girls. A single mother in her thirties, Spencer had lost her job at a Utah gas station and, in the twilight of the Great Recession, couldn’t find work elsewhere. Notices stacked up from her landlord, utility companies and bank.
“It was overwhelming. I just couldn’t keep up,” Spencer recalls. “I moved out because I knew I couldn’t do it.” She loaded her daughters — just babies at the time — into the back of her Dodge Durango and went to The Road Home, an emergency shelter just west of downtown Salt Lake City. As Utah’s largest shelter, its interior consists of a stripped-down dormitory. Plastic-covered mattresses on bunk beds can sleep more than 200 men each night, and its bathroom stalls, as a safety measure, don’t have doors. Spencer’s family had the small privilege of staying in a room closed off from the main beds, but she said it was “very uncomfortable” not having any privacy. Fearful of who was coming in and out the shelter, she never let her girls wander from her side.
In any number of American cities, Spencer would be required to jump through bureaucratic hoops — prove you’re sober, get a job, never miss a meeting — before her family would receive assistance. But in Utah, “Housing First,” an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, now prevails. Because of it, Spencer quickly moved to a two-bedroom apartment at Palmer Court, an old hotel renovated into 200 units and opened by The Road Home in 2009. In the 13 months since, she’s caught up on all her debts and is on a waiting list for a Section 8 housing voucher. She decorated the apartment with framed pictures of her daughters — Sandra, 4, a nimble athlete fond of doing handstands on the living room recliner; Sierra, 2, a gregarious dancer and singer; and Phoenix, 1, a quiet observer — and the paintings they made at the on-site Head Start classroom.
“It was very difficult being homeless…[My kids] didn’t really understand what was going on. They still don’t,” Spencer says. “Right now, I am trying to go forward with my life, so I can move out and get a place of my own. The only thing I see myself doing is taking care of my kids. Hopefully, in my own house.”
Utah’s initiative isn’t just for hardworking moms like Spencer: it’s helping veterans haunted by war, the mentally ill, alcoholics and drug addicts. “Homelessness itself turns out to be a big barrier to all kinds of things, whether it is trying to get a job or trying to get an education or stop a drug addiction,” Steve Berg, vice president for programs and policy at The National Alliance To End Homelessness, tells Mic.
As the decade-long plan initiated by then-Gov. Jon Huntsman wraps up this year, the Beehive State’s “Housing First” program has already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by this time next year.
Media coverage ranging from The New Yorker to The Daily Show has pointed out that “Housing First” is a no-brainer. In reality, however, it’s been a herculean task 10 years in the making.
When the plan rolled out in 2005, Utah counted 1,932 chronically homeless adults. These individuals composed only 14 percent of the state’s total homeless population, but they were consuming the majority of agencies’ scarce resources. For instance, The Road Home found that the small group of chronically homeless used 60 percent of the shelter’s beds, according to executive director Matt Minkevitch. “Once we saw that, we really wanted to move forward.”
In Utah, a homeless person relying on shelters and soup kitchens costs the community $19,200, while the expenses of permanent housing and case management run just $7,800. For some, the price of law enforcement and medical expenses is astounding: One chronically homeless individual in Salt Lake City, for example, racked up $563,000 in emergency room charges in 2010; another had hospital bills that almost topped $1 million over three years.
Liz Buehler, Salt Lake City’s homeless services coordinator since 2013, says the state jumped into action when service providers realized they couldn’t rely on “diminishing resources” from the federal government. “If you put someone in a house, it’s half the cost of that person receiving services in the shelter. So why not put them in housing?” Buehler asks. “It’s not only giving them security, you can also help more people.”
Housing First’s backers are quick to note that they’re not giving away apartments for free: the new tenants have to abide by lease agreements (a handful have been evicted) and contribute $50 or 30 percent of their income to rent each month (whichever amount is greater).
For every 10 chronically homeless people housed through the program, eight are still in rapid rehousing units and one has moved on to other stable housing.
Minkevitch, a former hotel manager who migrated to the nonprofit sector to help “the weariest of travelers” at The Road Home, says the state’s success has taken even the most experienced caseworkers by surprise. “I know people who have been in this field for years, in this line of work for like 20 years, and as they were talking about clients, their eyes would light up like at Christmas,” he says. “They’d just laugh like it was the funniest, most beautiful joke, sitting here right under our nose all this time: we’d always known if a person has a home, they’re not homeless.”
READ MORE:
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
Part 4: Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
The Bay City’s Latest Plan to Combat Homelessness
San Francisco is a city of paradoxes. Walking around, you can see evidence of the booming tech scene and expensively-clad citizens, yet it also has a chronic homelessness problem. But the City by the Bay finally thinks it may have a solution by combining the needs of both the homeless and corporations: tax breaks for community projects.
With 6,436 homeless people and 3,401 living on its streets, according to the Human Services Agency, San Francisco has to be inventive. And that’s where this new initiative comes in. As more and more tech companies, (like Twitter) move to the area, San Francisco is hoping that its new “community benefit agreement” will encourage these businesses to stay and improve the city.
Through the initiative, tech companies will receive multi-million dollar tax breaks if they set up residence in a troubled neighborhood and invest a portion of those tax breaks into improving it.
While some remain skeptical about the amount of money that a company will actually put towards a neighborhood, this program offers unique possibilities for great change. For instance, many tech companies will set up micro-apartment communities for their employees; if created for homeless people, there’s the potential to drastically reduce the problem.
Salt Lake City is a model for this type of project. Ten years ago, the Utah city started a program to combat homelessness through these micro-apartments communities. Apartments were set up outside of troubled neighborhoods, and residents were quickly placed into them, removing them from the negative influences.
In each housing complex, on-site counseling was available. These counselors helped residents beat drug addictions, find jobs and diagnose and treat mental diseases. The result? Salt Lake City now only has about 400 homeless persons.
Although there are differences in cost of living and other factors between Salt Lake City and San Francisco, there is possibility for replication and improvement.
For Matt Minkevitch, who runs Road Home, the main nonprofit homeless agency in Utah, these houses serve as a stepping stone.
“The idea is, we don’t want people to just live in this shelter,” Minkevitch tells San Francisco Gate. “We want to make it as comfortable as possible, but we want them to move on to housing — on to better lives.”
DON’T MISS: Ever Wondered What To Say To A Homeless Person? Here Are 5 Things to Say And 5 Things Not to Say
More Diversity Doesn’t Have to Mean Decreased Social Mobility
Not only can Salt Lake City boast of its beautiful scenery, but it can also tout that it’s one of the best places in America for a low-income child to have a chance at becoming an economically-secure adult.
The Utah city (along with San Jose, California) has a social mobility rate comparable to Denmark, a country with one of the highest rates of relative mobility in the world. Poor kids in Salt Lake City have a 10.8 percent chance of zooming from the bottom fifth in income to the top fifth. (In contrast, Atlanta and Milwaukee have lower social mobility rates than “any developed country for which data are currently available,” according to the 2013 study by economists at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley.)
Salt Lake City’s secret, writes Nancy Cook for the National Journal, was “less economic segregation, a good public school system, strong family stability, a reliable social safety net, and less income inequality. Areas with less urban sprawl and less racial segregation also performed better in the rankings.”
But Salt Lake City has become a different place than the one captured in the aforementioned study, Cook notes. The majority of people in Utah’s capital city used to be Mormon, but according to the Salt Lake City Tribune, the religious group is no longer the majority. This matters because the Church of Latter-day Saints makes a point of providing a wealth of services for its members and encourages families to stay together.
City officials are working to maintain their social mobility rate even as the population becomes more diverse and income inequality rises. Rosemarie Hunter, the director of The University of Utah’s University Neighborhood Partners, says, “Thirteen years ago, the university looked at its data and realized that two ZIP codes in the city had virtually no students coming to the university. That was a huge red flag.” So Neighborhood Partners began to visit the west-side neighborhoods that weren’t sending kids to college, forging partnerships with businesses and community leaders to help get these kids on the right track toward higher education.
Additionally, the Salt Lake City School District has opened community centers serving the poor and offering dental services, medical care, and education.
Natalie Gouchnour of the University of Utah told Cook, “This state has a good network of taking care of people in need. Part of that comes from the Mormon culture, but part of it is just the ethos of the state.” Pamela Perlich of the Salt Lake Bureau of Economic and Business Research agreed with her, saying that her city has “the tradition and wherewithal to do something” to stop social mobility from decreasing.
With Utah setting an example with its housing-first program to end homelessness and its progressive attitude about immigration reform, it has a good chance of maintaining its status as a great place for people of all income levels to live.
MORE: Utah is On Track to End Homelessness by 2015 With This One Simple Idea
Why Salt Lake City May Become the New Leader in Public Transportation
Salt Lake City seems like an unlikely candidate to be a pro-public transportation city. Cars are king in the capital of Utah, where city blocks are long and streets are an unusually wide 132 feet — a measurement Brigham Young allegedly described as enough room to turn a wagon team without “resorting to profanity.” With much of the majority-Mormon city shutting down on Sundays, pedestrians struggle to transverse the Rocky Mountain-backed landscape.
Which is why Robin Hutcheson, a new executive-board member of the National Association of City Transportation Officials, is becoming something of a Salt Lake City rock star: She’s instrumental in diversifying transportation options in the metropolitan area of 1.2 million to include bike lanes and a commuter rail line. And the measures she’s taking could provide a crucial blueprint for other urban centers.
Atlantic Cities profiled how Hutcheson is harnessing Salt Lake City’s increasing friendliness to public transportation. She’s been head of the transportation planning division of Salt Lake City since 2011, and is a biker, runner, and all-around public-transit devotee. With the help of state and city investments into public transportation, more pedestrian-friendly streets, and business and church cooperation, Salt Lake City has self-adapted to the idea of reducing reliance on cars.
The reason doesn’t just lie in ease of movement, it’s about the environment, too. Salt Lake City suffers from visible smog, and has been named one of the ten worst cities in the U.S. for short-term particulate pollution by the American Lung Association. “As the air-quality issue has risen in the public eye, people are accepting that we need to do more than just say we’re going to do better,” Mayor Ralph Becker told Atlantic Cities. “It’s about people being able to move around in their city without having to use their car. How do we get from where we are today to having a city where people easily get around, can drive if they wish, but that isn’t their only or necessarily their best option?”
Enter Hutcheson. Her initiatives include a new low-cost transit card called the Hive Pass that allows holders unlimited access to buses, light rail within the city, and commuter trains for only $360 a year. Others, like the rail line connecting Salt Lake to Provo that opened in December 2012, caused public transit ridership in Utah to rise an astonishing 103 percent. TRAX, the city’s light rail system, saw its ridership increase 6.8 percent last year and a current plan calls for two more lines to open by 2015.
Meanwhile, Hutcheson and her team have also been working hard to make Salt Lake a more welcoming city for people on bicycles and on foot. Last December, a streetcar line with a walking and biking trail alongside it opened in the rapidly-developing Sugarhouse neighborhood. The city also has a seasonal bike-share and are designating new bike lanes in town. Salt Lake has been granted a budget for bike and pedestrian capital improvements that will be about $3.5 million for 2014-2105, a marked increase from just under $500,000 in 2009.
With Hutcheson making a positive imprint all over Salt Lake City, so is her city’s chapter of the Women’s Transportation Seminar (WTS), which she founded. The organization itself was established in 1977 for the professional advancement of women throughout the transportation industry — from road engineers to airline pilots. Her perspective on public transit is partially shaped by WTS, which believes that women have an unmatched lens into what commuters need. For instance, they have an acute sense of the dangers of a long wait at a dark bus stop, or traffic patterns when driving children back and forth between activities.
With or without her WTS foundation, one thing is for certain: Hutcheson’s work in Salt Lake City is likely to have reverberations in cities across the country.
While Washington Dithers Over Immigration Reform, a State Gets Down to Business
Were officials in Washington, D.C. elected to argue and name call or were they sent to our nation’s capital to get things done? In recent years, it definitely seems that they’ve been more interested in the former rather than the latter.
That’s especially true when it comes to the topic of immigration, which is something that has many people — from business owners seeking visas for highly-skilled employees, to those looking for temporary workers to harvest crops, to people who were brought to the U.S. as children and have no other country to call home — clamoring for reform.
Utah decided that it couldn’t wait on immigration reform from the Federal government, so its legislature passed two common-sense laws itself.
One law allows undocumented immigrants to stay in Utah and work legally provided that they pay a fine, demonstrate some English proficiency, and pass a background check. Another Utah law allows state residents to sponsor undocumented immigrants — giving them the legal right to live and work in the state.
According to the Deseret News, Republican Senator Curt Bramble of Provo said that these laws, “demonstrate that elected officials can come together and address in a responsible manner immigration.” The only problem? Utah passed these laws three years ago but it needs federal approval to implement them, because the U.S. government is solely responsible for immigration.
Utah has delayed implementing these laws until 2017 in the hopes they’ll see some movement on federal immigration reform by then. In the meantime, state citizens have put together The Utah Compact, a document endorsed by a wide range of people and organizations in Utah with the goal of elevating the tone of discussion around immigration reform. It reads, in part, “Immigrants are integrated into communities across Utah. We must adopt a humane approach to this reality, reflecting our unique culture, history and spirit of inclusion. The way we treat immigrants will say more about us as a free society and less about our immigrant neighbors. Utah should always be a place that welcomes people of goodwill.”
Now if only the Federal government would be as hospitable as the state of Utah.
MORE: Utah is on Track to End Homelessness by 2015 with This One Simple Idea
Can Ancient Native American Traditions Heal Today’s Vets?
For centuries, many Native American tribes held traditional rituals when their young men returned from battle to help reintegrate them into society. Today, some are performing these ceremonies to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Utah filmmaker Taki Telonidis of the Western Folklife Center in Salt Lake City is shooting a documentary about these traditions and their effects on returning vets, many of whom come home with “invisible drama,” he told the Elko Free Daily Press. Telonidis is documenting the traditions of warriors among the Blackfeet tribe and the work of one Shosone-Paiute medicine man who conducts sweat lodges for all interested veterans at the George Wallen Veteran Affairs Center in Salt Lake.