SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The director of the nonprofit that’s leading homeless-reform in Utah’s Salt Lake County has announced where its new shelter for men will be located.
A shelter for single men will be built in South Salt Lake, The Salt Lake Tribune reported (https://bit.ly/2qP4yMG ) Sunday. Two additional shelters will be built in Salt Lake City: one for women only and the other for single men and single women.
The new shelters will replace The Road Home shelter in downtown Salt Lake City, which state and county officials are in the process of closing.
The nonprofit leading the charge is Shelter the Homeless, which also owns the closing downtown shelter.
Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams didn’t respond to a request for comment about the process of deciding where each population would be housed. Why South Salt Lake had been selected for the single-men-only shelter remains unclear.
“Our organization didn’t make that decision and therefore didn’t vote on that,” said Janell Fluckiger, executive director of Shelter the Homeless. “The subpopulation was a decision that was made that we did not make.”
West Valley City, South Salt Lake and Draper had all been identified as potential locations for the shelter.
Residents had feared if their town landed a shelter for single men, the area would become crime-ridden, similar to the Rio Grande neighborhood downtown.
County officials disputed that homeless men are a higher risk than women.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, https://www.sltrib.com
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