Hundreds of homeless people in Salt Lake City have mysteriously vanished over recent weeks and residents are baffled as to why.
Following a police operation conducted in mid-August, Utah’s capital city has seen its down and out dwindle dramatically.
Homeless shelters and temporary housing facilities which once offered relief to the destitute in the downtown area are now empty, according to Sgt Brandon Shearer, who seems equally perplexed as he searches for homeless camps during helicopter patrols.
Hundreds of homeless people in Salt Lake City have left the community and people are baffled as to why (Pictured: Randy Rigby President of the Utah Jazz serves food at a shelter, Nov 2016)
Salt Lake City police chief Mike Brown (pictured left) said that the added boost of law enforcement has helped clean up the town
‘I don’t know,’ Shearer told The Guardian when asked where the homeless have gone. ‘That’s a good question.’
While coastal city’s like Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York have carried the brunt of the homeless crisis in America for decades, Salt Lake City also faces challenges in trying to house the less fortunate.
Homeless shelters like the Road Home in Downtown Salt Lake City have been left empty virtually overnight
Over the past few years, growing homelessness in Salt Lake was partly exacerbated by rising rent costs and stagnant wages. The result saw about 2,200 people in the region go without shelter on any given night, according to The Guardian.
City officials say that many are victims of circumstance, consigned to living on the streets due to economics conditions, mental health issues or opioid addictions.
As a result, the city saw violent crimes staring to rise. Just over the past few months, a police shootings and three unrelated murders have been reported in Salt Lake City.
What followed was an initiative by city officials to boost law enforcement by enacting a two-year $67 million-public safety plan.
Rising crime in Salt Lake led officials to enacting a plan to boost law enforcement and conduct sweeps, resulting in 1,200 arrests
Residents, however, are baffled at how quickly the homeless population in Salt Lake City dispersed
‘You throw 150 cops in there, it’s going to ruin the party,’ Salt Lake City police chief Mike Brown told The Guardian.
As a result, more than 1,200 people through July and August were arrested, over half on drug charges. An estimated 900 were later released back to the street.
But what has baffled city officials and residents is how stunningly sudden hundreds of people have decided to leave in such a short amount of time.
Some believe that as the city invests more in law enforcement and less in relief, the homeless population has been forced to disperse to other places.
‘It’s not doing what they want,’ said Brema Jones, a homeless woman, told the newspaper. ‘It’s not helping druggies, not getting them into rehab. Everybody is spreading out.’
‘The rhetoric from the mayor and policy workers was ‘We’re trying to help,’ local activist Michael Clara said. ‘Well, you should help them downtown. Don’t scatter them and then try to help.’
Not everyone, however, is opposed to the boosted police presence in the city.
‘They’ve cleaned the place up,’ said Zach Curry, a homeless man who has been living in Utah’s capital city for the past 10 years.
‘People were committing suicide on drugs left and right. It was getting a bad rep for Salt Lake City.’
Curry said that although the police action is tough on some individuals in the city, he insists ‘it’s got to be done. That’s what a lot of us think about it.’
According to The Guardian, the homeless population is welcome to come back if they choose, but law enforcement has no intention of relenting on its operations.