Resources for the unhoused in Logan

Bonnie Hickan’s fleece blanket was decorated with bright pink and green butterflies, and she sighed as she draped it over her thin air mattress. After collapsing on her bed, she rubbed her bare feet together, running fingers through her gray hair as she laughed with her friend, Jasmine Sage.  

The two unhoused women met each other after Hickan sat next to Sage on a Smith’s bench, the pair becoming fast friends. With both women nearing their early seventies and both being unhoused since the summer (Hickan since June, and Sage since July), they noted how their friendship made Logan’s cold nights bearable.  

“We lucked out with the people that we meet,” Sage said, smiling and covering her bare feet and legs in a small trash bag to keep away bugs and keep in warmth.  

Sage and Hickan are two of the hundreds estimated to be unhoused in 2023, according to Utah’s Point-in-Time count. Each January, social work volunteers and workers with the Bear River Association of Governments, or BRAG, assess the amount of unhoused individuals in Cache County. 

In 2023, the county’s official “homeless” count was that 152 individuals were either staying in emergency housing, transitional housing (including domestic violence service providers), or an uninhabitable location, such as a car or a park.  

“Logan City in particular is a really low-income area, and that means that with the context of the housing market, and the cost of goods and services and wages, we just have a lot of households, students and broader community alike, that are really vulnerable to homelessness,” said Jess Lucero, the department head of USU’s social work program. 

Sage noted how she’s felt like the community has rallied around her and Hickan — over the past few months of living outside Smith’s, she’s received several containers of food and drinks from those walking in and out of the grocery store. Just last month, Hickan received the air mattress from a stranger.  

BRAG has also changed the women’s lives for the better, Sage said. She or Hickan could have the options to stay in emergency hotel rooms until BRAG can help them find more permanent housing.  

On Oct. 2, Sage said she’ll be looking into a new apartment that could accommodate her disabilities. Within the next few days, Hickan said she’ll be moving to either Massachusetts or Pennsylvania, where she can hopefully find housing there — even though she’s spent most of her life in Logan.  

As a nonprofit organization, BRAG works to find places of permanent residence for unhoused people in Logan, whether that be through paying for the resident’s initial security deposit, finding affordable apartments, working with landlords to have available units when an individual is unhoused or giving emergency funding after an eviction.  

CAPSA exists as another resource for many victims of domestic violence, Lucero added; however, it cannot act as a permanent shelter for all unhoused individuals, as there needs to be enough room for those who have been victims of abuse.  

However, despite the help that BRAG gives, there is still no permanent shelter for unhoused individuals. 

Nicole Burnard, a USU alum and director of the Willaim A. Burnard Warming Center, said when people don’t see tents or people on the streets and sidewalks, there’s less awareness of the problem. 

“Homelessness looks different here — it’s not as visible as it is in bigger cities,” Burnard said. “Because it’s such a small community, someone who’s experiencing homelessness can feel very stigmatized, and so they wouldn’t necessarily want people to know that they’re unhoused.”  

Hickan agreed. “I think people don’t want to face that this is a problem,” she said.  

BRAG human services director Lucas Martin said he and the rest of the organization are working to continue providing resources for unhoused residents, even if currently, there isn’t enough funding for a permanent shelter in Cache County.   

“We will continue to pursue additional funds to try and increase what’s available for rapid rehousing programs to help pay for deposit and rent control to stabilize families transitioning,” Martin said.  

While Cache County doesn’t have a permanent shelter, Burnard said the warming shelter — which she established last year — can especially help unhoused individuals sleep in a warm bed during Logan’s bone-chilling winter months.  

Unfortunately, despite the warming shelter’s benefits, it only begins operation in December; therefore, a permanent unhoused shelter would be the most beneficial for Logan residents, Burnard said.  

“We definitely could use a resource center that would be able to provide not only shelter for people, but also ongoing case management and assistance,” Burnard said. “Job applications, social service applications — provide the sense of community and connection for folks who don’t have a support system here.” 

However, to establish a permanent residential service, Lucero noted that “there’s a lot of steps to establishing a resource like that.”  

“Right now, there is not a definitive plan for the creation of a homeless shelter. Our focus right now has been more supporting the organizations that exist, and then identifying housing opportunities as best we can, because most of the individuals that we’ve identified that are homeless, usually it’s because of eviction or lack of being able to find a place to stay,” said Amy Anderson, the chair of the Bear River Homeless Council. “We really have not perceived a chronic homeless problem here that like you might see and in some of the larger cities across the state.”  

Burnard said one way for students and the Cache County community to help the housing crisis would be to remove the stigma around the unhoused community.  

“What’s most important is for community members to educate themselves and to really take a look at their own stereotypes or ideas that they hold about people who are in that situation,” Burnard said. “Understand that any one of us could experience living without shelter at any time, if we were to lose a job or you know, lose our physical health or not have access to financial resources or a support system.”  

Lucero agreed, saying, “The best way to prevent homelessness is to just divert it initially.”  

BRAG works towards this by providing help with security deposits and other financial resources to disabled, elderly and low-income residents. 

“Humanize that and connect it either to your own experience or to see what could be,” Lucero said. “That in itself sometimes can reduce some of the othering that happens around the issue.” 

Lucero noted that many USU students experience homelessness. Although, it can be difficult to officially count how many are unhoused, as many may not be staying in emergency shelters, transitional housing or parks, but will instead try to find places with their friends.  

Many students may “couch surf,” Anderson said, making it difficult to track which students are unhoused and how to give them resources — especially if many don’t want to discuss their situation.  

To currently help unhoused students and other struggling Logan residents, Anderson said she and the others in Logan’s Local Homeless Council are working on “refining and revising our strategic plan” in order to be in compliance with the state targets of funding for unhoused individuals. With these increases in funding, she hopes more money can go towards nonprofits like BRAG.  

“I think that it’s just so critical that students, the USU students, learn as much as they can about the issue, see how they can put the issue in focus and also in context of their life, and those around them — and then work hard to try to create a different narrative in our communities and in our state,” Lucero said.  

Burnard said students can work with Logan’s local government to create zoning ordinances that may make room for a permanent shelter.  

“As far as what students can do, they need to vote,” Martin said. “We need representation. We need to understand what the challenges are and be aware of some things we can be actively doing to address them.”