Logan City passes anti-camping ordinance
Logan’s unhoused population could soon face criminal charges for sleeping outside after the city passed a new anti-camping ordinance on Sept. 2. This ordinance was created in response to House Bill 421 requiring homeless shelter cities in Utah to establish a camping ban if they want to continue to receive funding from the state for homeless services.
“Logan has been getting about $88,000 from the State Homeless Shelter Cities Mitigation Fund,” said Amy Anderson, Logan City Council member and chair of the Bear River Local Homeless Council. “In order to continue to receive that $88,000, we were required by law to have an ordinance that prohibits camping.”
According to Anderson, Logan uses the HSCM fund to support CAPSA, a non-profit domestic violence shelter and rape recovery center, and the Bear River Association of Governments, or BRAG.
“[BRAG] provides most of the social services for our community, as opposed to cities or the county providing them,” Anderson said. “BRAG uses those mitigation funds for homeless outreach, which is basically providing funding for case managers and others to go and meet the homeless where they are to help identify where they can get resources.”
BRAG is also responsible for conducting the annual Point-in-Time Count of people experiencing homelessness in Cache County during the last few days of January. According to Anderson, this count helps provide data about the extent of the homelessness crisis in the area while also serving as a way for cities to provide resources to their unhoused populations directly.
“Once you know where someone is and you can talk to them and you can identify what services they might be eligible for or what they need, then you can hopefully help address that for them,” Anderson said. “Overall, I think the ability to help fund direct outreach to individuals is more important than perhaps the individual or two who might be setting up camp somewhere for a limited period of time.”
While BRAG and CAPSA can provide resources to the local unhoused population by getting them into contact with a case manager or providing them with temporary shelter options, Logan does not have a permanent, year-round homeless shelter.
Jayme Walters, board president of the William A. Burnard Warming Center, said the need for a year-round shelter in Cache County is big.
“Over the past few seasons, we’ve seen an increase in guests,” Walters said. “Last year, we served 206 unique individuals, and towards the end of the season, we were seeing about 40 people a night.”
The center is currently only able to provide temporary overnight assistance to the unhoused population in Logan during the winter months.
According to Walters, work toward making the shelter available year-round will require aid from the community and funding.
“It’s going to take a building and a location that meets our clients’s needs, and currently, we don’t have the capacity to do that,” Walters said. “However, we are starting to have conversations within the community about what that might look like and where it might be.”
While the center does receive funding from the state, they will not be receiving funding from the passing of the anti-camping ordinance.
“The concern from our organization is that this ordinance makes basic survival, like sleeping outside or trying to keep your belongings nearby, a criminal act,” Walters said. “A Class B misdemeanor can mean jail time, fines, and it’s adding to their criminal record, and that’s making it harder for people to get out of the situation that they’re in.”
Anderson and Walters said some of the best ways to help support homeless services in Logan is to volunteer and/or donate.
“We don’t want to see homelessness criminalized, and we need to be focusing on more resources to help people get their needs met versus making survival a crime,” Walters said.
For more information on homeless services in Logan, visit capsa.org or wabwarmingcenter.org.