In Utah, Trump's vision for homelessness begins to take shape [View all]

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https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/10/30/utahs-homelessness-plan-aligns/

In Utah, Trump’s vision for homelessness begins to take shape
State officials promise large-scale involuntary addiction and mental health treatment at Salt Lake City’s edge. Critics see “a prison, or a warehouse.”
By Ellen Barry and Jason DeParle | The New York Times | Oct. 30, 2025, 7:00 a.m.

To glimpse the future of homelessness policy in the age of President Donald Trump, consider 16 acres of scrubby pasture on the outskirts of Salt Lake City where the state plans to place as many as 1,300 homeless people in what supporters call a services campus and critics deem a detention camp.

State planners say the site, announced last month after a secretive search, will treat addiction and mental illness and provide a humane alternative to the streets, where afflictions often go untreated and people die at alarming rates.

They also vow stern measures to move unhoused people to the remote site and force many of them to undergo treatment, reflecting a nationwide push by some conservatives for a new approach to homelessness, one embraced and promoted by Trump.

With outdoor sleeping banned, removal to the edge of town may become the only way some homeless Utahns can avoid jail. Planners say the facility will also hold hundreds of mentally ill homeless people under court-ordered civil commitment and the effort will include an “accountability center” for those with addictions.

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