“It’s not normal to see someone sleeping on the sidewalk in a sleeping bag with a needle sticking out of their arm.”

That sentence should not be controversial. In a sane society, it would barely need saying. But in Utah — where politicians, nonprofits, consultants, and bureaucrats have spent more than a decade congratulating themselves for “addressing homelessness” while the streets of Salt Lake have become more dangerous, more drug-soaked, and more morally disorienting — it lands like an indictment. And it came not from a crank, a talk-radio host, or a downtown business owner at the end of his rope, but from Tyler Clancy, Utah’s newly appointed homeless coordinator.

That matters because if Clancy is serious — and after sitting down with him, he appears to be — then he represents something Utah’s homelessness system has not had in a very long time: someone willing to say the obvious out loud. The old script is dead. Everybody knows it, but almost nobody in power has wanted to admit it. 

For years, Utah’s homelessness policy has been built on a polite fiction — that if we build enough units, distribute enough funding, and avoid being too “judgmental,” the crisis will gradually resolve itself. That story was easier to maintain when Utah was receiving national praise for “solving chronic homelessness.” It is much harder to sustain now, when the conditions on the ground tell a very different story.

Magnolia Apartments opened to help alleviate homelessness, but the results were not all positive.

Part of that failure became painfully clear over the last four years. By most accounts, former homelessness coordinator Wayne Niederhauser was a decent man and a very nice guy. But one person close to him described his tenure as that of “a tiger without stripes”— someone with the title, but not the appetite to challenge the sprawling network of nonprofits and service providers receiving millions in taxpayer dollars. That lack of accountability has had real consequences. Multiple former and current residents have told Utah Stories that of the roughly 60 original tenants who moved into Magnolia when it opened, about 20 have since died — most, they say, from accidental drug overdoses. 

If those accounts are even close to accurate, they should have triggered a public reckoning. Instead, the system kept moving, protected by good intentions, insulated from scrutiny, and largely unbothered by outcomes that would be considered a scandal in almost any other context.

That is the machine Clancy is stepping into, and unless he is willing to confront it directly — not just coordinate around it — his role risks becoming one more layer of management over the same failures. The reality he inherits is not complicated in the way policymakers like to suggest. It is visible, immediate, and increasingly impossible to explain away. 

Open drug use, fentanyl addiction, untreated mental illness, rising disorder, and a growing sense among both the public and the homeless themselves all indicate that the system is not working. Complexity exists, but it has also become a convenient shield for cowardice. It is the language people use when they want to avoid saying what is plainly in front of them: Utah has spent years managing visible human collapse while calling it compassion.

The Lie Utah Told Itself

For years, Utah’s approach to homelessness rested on a narrative few in power were willing to question. It sounded compassionate. It polled well. And it avoided uncomfortable truths.

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Driving out past the town of Delta on a gravel road for a couple of hours, we almost turned around. Following a rain storm, the road is wet and muddy but still decent. Jesse Fisher is worried we’ll get stuck, but we plow through giant puddles of water, and as the clouds lift, we reach the homestead community of Riverbed Ranch, consisting of 1250 acres of reclaimed desert.

Almost like an oasis, Riverbed Ranch is home to 40 families who decided to depart city life, municipal taxes, congestion, air, light and sound pollution, and live in a place among chickens, goats and cows on self-reliant homesteads. 

Describing Riverbed Ranch as “bucolic” would be inaccurate at this point. Sometimes there are purple flowers in the valley, but currently it is a desert — still beautiful, but most of the properties in the sprawling valley are still works-in-progress. But the scale of the valley and witnessing in person the first brand new town to break ground in Utah in 75 years is quite remarkable. 

A few of the 2.5 acre plots consist of a trailer and a fence. Some plots have nice little homes that appear very homemade; others have more complete homes with nice fencing, with nicely organized pens for different animals, orchards and organization. 

Some homes under construction even appear upscale and modern, where the inhabitants are indeed living as modern homesteaders, not seeking “luxury retreats” like so many other empty homes in Utah being built in hot tourist destinations such as Moab and Park City.

We start by speaking with Tom and Kathy Barnes, whose homestead is a model for order and function. Turkeys walk around in their pen, excited for feeding time. Beside the turkey pen is another pen for chickens; one for goats, and another for pigs. All of the pens are connected to a large barn. By the look of their operation, the Barnes appear to be seasoned professionals.

Indeed they are. Tom and Kathy raised their eight children “on a teacher’s salary,” homesteading in Payson, Utah on ten acres, reaching the point where the only store-bought items were toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste and cashews. Most everything else, including fresh fruits, vegetables, milk and meat were raised themselves.

Tom had just finished feeding his three hungry pigs when he took a moment to talk to me.

“What are the advantages to living on a homestead?” I ask. 

“Listen,” he says. “You can hear a pig eating … Once in a while we will hear a fighter jet pass over but that’s it.” 

The Barnes are calm and content in their semi-retirement. They set up their homestead at Riverbed Ranch five years ago. They already knew homesteading and they realized even in retirement they could help the other inhabitants here, those with less experience, learn how to take on the demanding but satisfying lifestyle.

“It’s basically like an extended family,” says Tom. “We are all like-minded out here. We are all going to help one another when our neighbors need help.”

Tom says he and most of his neighbors are members of the LDS Church, and that most of the city’s LDS members are a part of a ward which makes up their “ward family.” “Out here,” he says, “everybody is our extended family. So we all know we are going to help one another and learn to get along … Like early pioneers in a small town. It’s very much the same thing.

A wild goose chase?

“We could live out here like it was 1849, but we have all of the conveniences of modern society, so why not take advantage of the best of both worlds?”

I wonder how adaptable these modern pioneers are. Raised on a homestead, would these folks ever want to join the modern world again? The Barnes kids are mostly choosing city life, but their kids and grandkids love visiting them, running around free-range. Tom adds, “One of our sons is starting his own homestead in Piute County.”

We drive around on the hard gravel roads and get a sense of how all of the residents here justify the hard-scrabble, off-grid life, which requires living off pumped well water, solar power for electricity, and propane for heat. 

We are aiming to get a sense of the  bigger reason why all of these people are out here, far away from freeways and Walmarts. Are they all latter-day preppers?

With its reinvigorated downtown and close proximity to mountains and river pathways, this northern Utah city is enjoying a renaissance. Ogden’s stock of affordable housing — compared to other metros along the Wasatch Front — currently draws people in for a closer look. 

Utah leaders have spent years talking about affordable housing.

Governor Spencer Cox has repeatedly emphasized the need for more attainable housing, with a goal of creating tens of thousands of starter homes priced below $300,000. Yet despite broad agreement that housing affordability remains one of the state’s biggest challenges, one proposal designed specifically to encourage the construction of smaller, more affordable single-family homes failed to advance during the most recent legislative session.

The question raises an uncomfortable issue: if Utah agrees there is a shortage of starter homes, why are those homes still so difficult to build?

According to attorney and real estate professional Asha Klarich, much of the debate comes down to how communities want to grow and who gets to make those decisions.

House Bill 184, known as the Small Lots and Starter Homes Amendment, was intended to reduce regulatory barriers and allow smaller homes to be built on smaller lots. The proposal would have created a process for builders and homeowners to seek exceptions to local zoning requirements and construct homes on lots as small as roughly 5,400 square feet.

The idea was straightforward. Smaller lots generally mean lower land costs. Lower land costs can translate into lower home prices.

For many first-time buyers, that sounds far more appealing than another apartment building or densely packed townhome development.

“I think most people would prefer a smaller home on a smaller lot than apartment-style living in a high-rise,” Klarich said during a recent discussion about housing legislation.

The bill ultimately failed.