You Choose: Reasonable Solutions or Community Disgrace
Salt Lake City streets are riddled with more potholes today than when oxen hauled wagons around town in the late 1800s. Native sights at Liberty Park include junkies who milk needles at Rice Pavilion. Further into the park’s interior, blue smoke billows from a stone fireplace. Originally intended for family picnics, the hearth is now regularly covered by tarps to trap warmth for neighboring tents.
Downtown sidewalks slant asymmetrically toward curbs that crumble into streets that collapse into themselves.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall sanctions raids of the unsheltered in the name of sanitation — as if tactics of abatement resolve filth or homelessness. Tents appear, disappear and reappear as far east as Trolley Square. (I’m old enough to remember when the only sleeping bags to speak of on our streets unrolled on the parade route the night before the Days of ‘47 Parade.)
The City Council drones on about “affordable housing,” but their solutions are soberingly few. Property taxes continue to skyrocket. Landlords raise rents accordingly.
I purchased my first home in Central City in 2001. Today, I’m in my fourth downtown residence — immediately next door to my second and only a few blocks from my first and third.
I love Salt Lake City: our broad streets and attractive foothills, refugee community and growing diversity, local arts and literature, street fairs, farmer markets, the University of Utah and our mature underground music scene.
I stand in awe of the Wasatch, the Oquirrh, and what remains of the Great Salt Lake. Our wondrously beautiful state deserves a clean and thriving and progressive capitol — one that sets standards for other cities to follow instead of offering substandard living. There is so much to preserve here, so much to fix and build upon, so much that Mendenhall has proven she can’t get done.
In May of 2007, I saw then-Mayor Rocky Anderson debate Sean Hannity at Kingsbury Hall. I say “debate” because of Rocky’s fact-based, well-studied responses to each of Hannity’s bombastic claims and ridiculous arguments. Salt Lake needs a mayor with compassion and intelligence and grit, someone who embraces dialogue and transparency. We deserve a leader who champions those who lack privilege. We require a mayor capable of addressing tough issues before the problems of our city outgrow anyone’s ability to fix them.
I recall participating on a Zoom City Council meeting in 2021. I’d spent an afternoon measuring the depth of curb tops to gutter around my Central City/Liberty Wells neighborhood to raise awareness about a real infrastructure problem. The council’s reaction to my report: humorless, self-certain, drab, unresponsive.
“What a waste of time,” I thought afterward, believing still that civic engagement should represent time well-spent.
I voted for Mendenhall based upon a hope that she’d pull us from the wreckage her predecessor, Jackie Biskupski, left behind. Now, thanks to Rocky Anderson’s re-election bid, we can vote for more than hope.
Rocky has a plan to cap property taxes, increase green space and green energy and generate truly affordable housing. He has alternatives to raids on the homeless. He’s more a political activist than politician, more a humanitarian than bureaucrat, and more a problem solver than grandstander. Maybe he’ll even figure a way to re-curb our walkways and fill all those holes.
Sounds like I’m stumping for him, but I’ve never met the man. What do I know about Rocky? His work, his success, his vision. If I’m stumping, and no doubt I am, it’s for the future of our great city.
By Calvin Jolley | Special to The Tribune
Downtown sidewalks slant asymmetrically toward curbs that crumble into streets that collapse into themselves.
Mayor Erin Mendenhall sanctions raids of the unsheltered in the name of sanitation — as if tactics of abatement resolve filth or homelessness. Tents appear, disappear and reappear as far east as Trolley Square. (I’m old enough to remember when the only sleeping bags to speak of on our streets unrolled on the parade route the night before the Days of ‘47 Parade.)
The City Council drones on about “affordable housing,” but their solutions are soberingly few. Property taxes continue to skyrocket. Landlords raise rents accordingly.
I purchased my first home in Central City in 2001. Today, I’m in my fourth downtown residence — immediately next door to my second and only a few blocks from my first and third.
I love Salt Lake City: our broad streets and attractive foothills, refugee community and growing diversity, local arts and literature, street fairs, farmer markets, the University of Utah and our mature underground music scene.
I stand in awe of the Wasatch, the Oquirrh, and what remains of the Great Salt Lake. Our wondrously beautiful state deserves a clean and thriving and progressive capitol — one that sets standards for other cities to follow instead of offering substandard living. There is so much to preserve here, so much to fix and build upon, so much that Mendenhall has proven she can’t get done.
In May of 2007, I saw then-Mayor Rocky Anderson debate Sean Hannity at Kingsbury Hall. I say “debate” because of Rocky’s fact-based, well-studied responses to each of Hannity’s bombastic claims and ridiculous arguments. Salt Lake needs a mayor with compassion and intelligence and grit, someone who embraces dialogue and transparency. We deserve a leader who champions those who lack privilege. We require a mayor capable of addressing tough issues before the problems of our city outgrow anyone’s ability to fix them.
I recall participating on a Zoom City Council meeting in 2021. I’d spent an afternoon measuring the depth of curb tops to gutter around my Central City/Liberty Wells neighborhood to raise awareness about a real infrastructure problem. The council’s reaction to my report: humorless, self-certain, drab, unresponsive.
“What a waste of time,” I thought afterward, believing still that civic engagement should represent time well-spent.
I voted for Mendenhall based upon a hope that she’d pull us from the wreckage her predecessor, Jackie Biskupski, left behind. Now, thanks to Rocky Anderson’s re-election bid, we can vote for more than hope.
Rocky has a plan to cap property taxes, increase green space and green energy and generate truly affordable housing. He has alternatives to raids on the homeless. He’s more a political activist than politician, more a humanitarian than bureaucrat, and more a problem solver than grandstander. Maybe he’ll even figure a way to re-curb our walkways and fill all those holes.
Sounds like I’m stumping for him, but I’ve never met the man. What do I know about Rocky? His work, his success, his vision. If I’m stumping, and no doubt I am, it’s for the future of our great city.
By Calvin Jolley | Special to The Tribune
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In July, state Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Salt Lake City, authored an email paid for and distributed by Erin Mendenhall's mayoral reelection campaign. "The constructive tone Erin has set has finally created a real partnership in confronting the statewide homelessness crisis," he said.
The idea of "partnership" between the incumbent Salt Lake City mayor and state legislators obscures the statistics of Utah's 2023 Annual Data Report on Homelessness. The Deseret News reported that it "showed a 96% increase in people experiencing chronic homelessness since 2019 and a 10% jump, year over year, to 8,637 people experiencing homelessness for the first time."
Square these numbers with a recent re-election ad by Mendenhall, boasting that Salt Lake City's two homeless centers can increase capacity by 50 beds apiece, plus another 200 beds during "Code Blue" events when temperatures are 15 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. The majority of overflow beds aren't even in Salt Lake City, but other places throughout the county.
Paucities. Out-of-city solutions. Arbitrariness.
Anything below 32 degrees is freezing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) indicates that extreme cold varies, meaning we can experience it at temperatures above freezing. Fifteen degrees—well below freezing—is an odd number that appears to mean something.
I invite Mayor Mendenhall or state homeless coordinator Wayne Niederhauser to spend a couple nights outside this winter and report back to the public. What is the difference between 15 and 17 degrees? Or between 17 and 20?
Last winter, unhoused SLC residents died at unprecedented rates. Richard Markosian of Utah Stories reported that the city's count is likely low, and The Salt Lake Tribune revealed that at least a dozen people had died due to exposure. Winter descends, and Mendenhall touts a long-term strategy. But, as reported by the Deseret News, she now lacks funding.
A strategy without funding? At best, this is wishful thinking. And at worst? Another winter with our incumbent as mayor.
Instead of ideating and enacting solutions, Mendenhall is on record saying that sanctioned encampments aren't the city's responsibility. Mendenhall ultimately flip-flopped on the topic, changing her campaign message. "[M]y administration and staff ... are working daily ... on a safe, structured sanctioned campground," she now claims, while continuing to condone raids on the houseless.
Of the abatements, Mendenhall said in June: "We participate in those because it's inhumane for a city to allow [unhoused residents to live in] public spaces that were never fit for human habitation." This is a classic example of punishing the victim.
Sen. Blouin claims that Mendenhall's work has "resulted in direct investment in reducing the impacts of homelessness." Huh? I've deliberated over what his words, when cobbled together, mean. A deconstruction of the sentence reveals it describes nothing.
Moreover, our streets showcase the opposite of Blouin's sloganeering.
People are forced from one unlawful camp to the next because there's nowhere to go. These folks require shelter, hospitalization and/or rehabilitation. Instead of meaningful reform, Mendenhall humanizes the cyclical abuse of government-sanctioned abatements—a mean-spirited act that includes stealing from the poorest among us.
In a KSL NewsRadio report, Rocky Anderson—former two-term mayor and candidate for reelection this November—talked about the previous winter: "We had people on our streets dying of the freezing cold, getting frostbite and having their fingers and their toes amputated," he said. "That is an absolute crisis, and it was ignored."
What do meaningful political partnerships really look like? They look like Anderson's relationship with Latter-day Saints and non-LDS communities, his positive associations with Republicans and his forthright engagement with the media, Capitol Hill and the public.
Anderson is transparent. He's empathetic. This past winter, he personally drove a frostbitten victim to the emergency room. Between The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News, there exist many articles that report on his commitment to bipartisanship.
Following the 2002 Winter Olympics, Anderson endorsed now-Utah Sen. Mitt Romney for Massachusetts governor, and Romney in turn endorsed Anderson's reelection campaign. As reported by the Deseret News, the Alliance for Unity was a "brainchild of two political opposites, industrialist Jon Huntsman Sr. and Salt Lake Mayor Rocky Anderson." The program brought together civic, business and religious leaders of all faiths and political backgrounds to bridge divides in the community.
A 2003 Deseret News article about the Joseph Smith Memorial Building's 10th anniversary quotes Gordon B. Hinkley—the late president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—praising then-Mayor Anderson's leadership. Anderson also received the 2019 Leonard Weinglass in Defense of Civil Liberties Award from the American Association for Justice.
Humane results through dialogue, constructive collaboration, partnerships unrestricted by political or religious affiliation as well as humor, sensitivity, transparency and seriousness. These rank among the man's documented strengths as a public servant.
Our collective humanity deserves solutions for our city's houseless—not senatorial marketing puffery in "Paid for by Mendenhall" advertisements. We need representation that understands the difference between brinkmanship and positive change.
I'm disenchanted with Sen. Nate Blouin and the other supporters of Mayor Erin Mendenhall, not because they don't see what I see—but because what they describe isn't what I see.
Calvin Jolley lives in Salt Lake's Central City neighborhood. His credits include The American Book Review, MAYDAY Magazine by New American Press, Context South, 15 Bytes, Otis Nebula, and The Salt Lake Tribune. He is an issue voter who has no formal political affiliation with Rocky Anderson's campaign for mayor.
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HOW MAYORAL CANDIDATE ROCKY ANDERSON WANTS TO DEAL WITH—AND HELP—UNHOUSED UTAHNS WHO RESIST SHELTERS
"First, immediately, and I would do this within two months or sooner after I become mayor, I would put together sanctioned camps — and there would have to be a separate one for families — and include in those camps optional shelter that is low- or no-barrier, where people can come and at least get out of the elements.
At those sanctioned camps — which would include parking for trailers, campers, trucks, wherever people are living — I would make certain that everybody has access to toilets, showers, laundry facilities, a community kitchen and food, and we could participate with churches and volunteers in the community, and homelessness advocates. We put an end [to unsanctioned camping], but we have a humane, decent alternative." – Rocky Anderson 
"Mayor Anderson was there to witness and record the raid when he noticed the man was not wearing shoes. He asked him why he was only wearing socks and the man replied he couldn’t wear shoes because of the condition of his feet. Anderson looked at his feet and immediately said, 'Get in my car. I’m taking you to an emergency room now.' "
"With the spirited, committed leadership of Luann Clark, the Citys Division of Housing and Neighborhood Development (HAND) has aided thousands of Salt Lake City residents in obtaining proper housing. In the past seven years, HAND has utilized nearly $30 million from a variety of local and federal sources to make available nearly 2000 units of affordable housing and over 350 units of market-rate housing. The projects HAND has completed include a unique project at our Veterans Hospital that provides transitional housing for homeless veterans; the remarkable Bridge Project on the west side, which provides affordable living and office spaces for artists and cultural organizations; the Jefferson Apartments, which provide low-income housing one block from a TRAX line; and Sunrise Apartments, a 100-unit housing development for chronically homeless people." - Rocky Anderson, 2007 State of the City Address
"Anderson added Wednesday that he would stop "cruel" police raids and evictions of homeless people from camps "until there are alternative options for them," instead calling for "secure sanctioned camps" much like Haven for Hope in San Antonio among other reforms."
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"The opening of the shelter—financed with city, county and state funds—stands in contrast to Atlanta, where in advance of the 1996 Summer Olympics, police arrested 10,000 homeless people. Homeless advocates complained that the tactics were intended to scare the homeless away or cajole them to lay low during the Games. Officials there also offered free one-way bus tickets under a clean-the-streets program euphemistically called, 'Project Homeward Bound.'
Salt Lake City instead is putting out the welcome mat. 'We respect the human and civil rights of everyone, including the homeless, during these Olympics,' said Mayor Rocky Anderson, a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. 'We won’t be doing roundups or anything like that. This community is very caring toward the homeless.' " 
"Former Mayor Rocky Anderson vows to open [an approved, sanctioned homeless camp] or more camps with toilets, showers, laundry facilities, food and caseworkers in an attempt to quell street camping."
"What utterly inhumane, wasteful, cruel practices. And this is coming straight from Mayor Mendenhall. The buck not only stops with her: we know that this policy is driven by her. And yet she'll go out in the most hypocritical fashion and talk about how much she loves the homeless." - Rocky Anderson, interview on Utah Stories podcast
" 'In short, there’s an enormous, deadly Catch-22 crack in the system through which mentally ill people freezing to death are falling,' . . . 'It is the responsibility of our elected officials and employees whose jobs entail providing mental health services to mentally ill homeless people to provide a solution to this dilemma,' Anderson wrote."
"Hale was living out of a tent when a chance encounter with former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson over the summer sparked a shift in her living conditions. Anderson, who is seeking to recapture his seat at City Hall and is campaigning heavily on homelessness issues, introduced Hale to officials from The Point, a low-income housing development at 2333 W. North Temple for seniors and veterans run by Switchpoint, a nonprofit homelessness services organization. Last month, Hale moved into her new place, paying $450 a month with utilities included. It’s a price modest enough to be covered by the Social Security she started collecting last spring when she turned 65."
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"Mayor Rocky Anderson addressed the AMSA in a meeting held Thursday afternoon outside the Park Building. 'In Utah about 4,000 people are homeless every night,' Anderson said. 'What you are doing is absolutely inspirational. It’s great to see more and more young people that are stepping up on social issues.' "
" 'This is going to be remembered in history as a real turning point for how we work with those who are chronically homeless,' said Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. Eighty of Sunrise's 100 apartments have been leased, with the others expected to be filled in May. Residents will begin moving in April 5."
" 'The next person who dies of exposure on the streets of Salt Lake City will be a result of there being no plan, no implementation and no overflow shelter to provide for the safety of the people who are homeless in our city,' Anderson said."
"'We cannot have one more homeless person dying on the streets of Salt Lake City,' Anderson said as he led a protest outside of current Mayor Jackie Biskupski’s office Friday afternoon. 'We have no plan in Salt Lake City for when the shelters are at capacity and people are out in the cold.' "
"Former Mayor Rocky Anderson is calling for a sanctioned campground . . . 'If [the unsheltered homeless] preferred to be in tents then you could get that sanctioned campground, but I also think there are plenty of warehouses, there are plenty of places that we could find, like the courtyard in San Antonio, you could put pads down on the floor. They could have lockers where you can store your property. But right now, what happens: you pitch your tent, you are trying to find a place where you can exist, you have a job, then you get a warning that they are going to raid, they are going to take your property if you are not there to get your stuff out of there so you can’t go to work.' " - Rocky Anderson
"[W]e need to commit to get rid of all the encampments spread throughout the community, and, with that, some of the criminal element. But, you don’t do that unless you’ve got alternatives. That’s why we’ve got the situation we have now, those alternatives haven’t been provided. When the road home shelter was closed, it was a disaster in the making. . . [The "resource centers" are] all full, and they ended up with almost four hundred fewer beds among these resource centers that cost so many millions of dollars to build and to operate than were available with 1,100 beds at the Road Home shelters." - Rocky Anderson, City Cast Salt Lake podcast
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Throughout 2022 and 2023, Rocky has been filming and recording the stories and experiences of people experiencing homelessness in Salt Lake City. This playlist contains only some of interviews and footage Rocky has filmed. As Rocky continues filming, more interviews and footage will be added to the playlist. There are also videos of Rocky discussing the homeless crisis, solutions, and relating issues. Thank you to all of the people who have shared their experiences, hopes, and heartaches with Rocky as he campaigns for SLC Mayor with the goal of implementing real solutions for homelessness that benefit not only those experiencing it, but that benefit SLC residents, visitors, and businesses alike.
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“We’re just going to have to tell developers ‘you can not come into our community and destroy affordable housing displacing people without providing adequate replacement.’ And I would say what’s adequate is providing more than what’s being destroyed—according to some formula that we can develop. But we’ve always got to be making progress, we’ve always got to be taking advantage of any opportunities to provide greater affordability in terms of housing in Salt Lake City.”
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EFFECTIVE MEASURES TO IMPROVE SALT LAKE CITY’S
RESPONSE TO THE HOMELESSNESS CRISIS
Rocky Anderson
IMMEDIATELY
Protect people from becoming homeless in the first place.
We can achieve tremendous progress as we all come together—government entities at all levels, the business community, philanthropists, and churches—to attain a far better quality of life for residents, visitors, members of the homeless community, and businesses alike.
Please watch and share with friends and colleagues the video linked here, which addresses the crisis facing our entire city and the necessary solutions: www.rocky4mayor.com/2g.
- Eliminate encampments in parks and elsewhere throughout the city by providing a temporary secured sanctioned camp, remote from neighborhoods and businesses (e.g., the former Wingpointe Golf Course), with decent toilets, showers, laundry facilities, storage lockers, three nutritious meals each day, mail service, transportation, and professional outreach/case management workers to transition people out of homelessness.
- Provide comprehensive professional outreach and case management throughout the city for every homeless person on the street, in shelters, or in permanent supportive housing to transition them (depending on their current status) into a sanctioned camp, shelters, treatment, employment, and/or transitional or permanent housing.
- Enforce laws, with diversion from jail to effective treatment whenever possible, implementing the principles of restorative justice to solve problems (e.g., mental illness and drug addiction treatment) rather than maintain the status quo or simply to punish. There should be more focus on the demand side in enforcing drug laws to dry up the market for drugs and eliminate dealers. Return the duties of Salt Lake City Prosecutor to Salt Lake City, with full accountability on the part of the mayor and the administration.
- Provide adequate, vastly improved secure 24/7-all-year overflow shelter space (non-congregate if possible), with property lockers, so that unsheltered homeless people are never again left out in the sweltering summers or freezing winters (causing deaths and frostbite/amputations of fingers, toes, and feet) and avoiding negative impacts for residents/families and businesses throughout the city. Instead of scurrying each year to develop a winter overflow shelter (which traditionally has been inadequate, leaving many people without options other than being on the streets in the bitter cold), and instead of spending millions of dollars on temporary overflow measures, the primary focus (while making sure unsheltered homeless people are afforded shelter from the elements) should be on investing in permanent housing, where the investments will have long-term benefits.
- Provide adequate shelters—away from residential neighborhoods and in close proximity to other homeless services--that are vastly improved and welcoming to homeless people (i.e., safe, clean, without bed bugs, secure, with a respectful environment, and with property lockers); with effective facility and case management; effective transition to treatment, housing, and jobs; accountable to the public, with reporting of metrics of success; and with close proximity to other homeless services (eliminating “scattered sites”) to get unsheltered homeless people off the streets, protect them from the elements and crime, and transition them to housing, jobs, and appropriate treatment.
- Provide adequate residential and out-patient mental health and addiction treatment (for which the County must be responsible, since it receives the funding), including facilities for arrested people who would benefit from mental health and addiction treatment.
- Provide more cost-effective permanent supportive housing, with accountability for tenants, respecting the interests of residents and the neighborhood.
- Provide housing with wrap-around services, like Alliance House, for people with serious mental health and addiction disorders.
- Create a campus where all homeless services—including case management, legal services, a kennel, childcare, mental health and addiction treatment, and job training and placement—will be in close proximity to each other. (A model is Haven for Hope in San Antonio, Texas. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FzfI6gPB0k)
Protect people from becoming homeless in the first place.
- Require that developers relocate people displaced from existing affordable housing by developments.
- Provide abundant mixed-income non-market affordable housing at all income levels. (Quit depending on the neo-liberal “market” approach, where government subsidizes private developers instead of building excellent mixed-income housing itself.)
- Provide subsidies or low- or no-interest loans to help during financial crises for those at risk of becoming homeless.
- Provide accessible, affordable, and safe childcare so people can work to maintain their housing.
- Provide access to food pantries that focus on healthy nourishment.
- Provide adequate and accessible residential and out-patient mental health and addiction treatment.
- Advocate for a higher minimum wage, reform of eviction laws, and ability of municipalities to enact inclusionary zoning ordinances.
- Coordinate with prisons, jails, hospitals, and mental health facilities so no one will be released without housing.
We can achieve tremendous progress as we all come together—government entities at all levels, the business community, philanthropists, and churches—to attain a far better quality of life for residents, visitors, members of the homeless community, and businesses alike.
Please watch and share with friends and colleagues the video linked here, which addresses the crisis facing our entire city and the necessary solutions: www.rocky4mayor.com/2g.
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Speaking to the Salt Lake City Council and Mayor, Rocky blasts the cruelty and ineffectiveness of the City's inept response to homelessness.
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