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Effective Date:Nov 8, 2026
SALT LAKE CITY - U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner held up Utah this week as the national standard for implementing the Trump administration's overhaul of homeless services, praising the state's treatment-centered approach in a video message to Gov. Spencer Cox.
The endorsement came as Utah leaders gathered Thursday for the Central Utah Homeless Summit at the University of Utah, the third and final in a series of regional meetings. Turner praised the state for pioneering a rejection of a long-time status quo that prioritized permanent shelter space, saying the administration has followed Utah's lead by opening up more than $4 billion in funding to elevate treatment options and pathways to self-sufficiency.
"We're proud at the federal government to ... lift you up as that example nationwide," HUD Assistant Secretary Ronald Kurtz told the summit audience after remarks from Cox.
Utah receives roughly $2.9 million in Continuum of Care funding, according to Kurtz, with another $16 million going to homeless services organizations in the state annually. Under the Trump administration, HUD has decreased the number of Continuum of Care recipients who are automatically reapproved, making grants more competitive.
Applicants can now request support for outpatient medical care, employment assistance, childcare and street outreach, not just for increasing the number of available beds. The shift aligns with reforms pushed by Utah's state homeless coordinator, Tyler Clancy, who has championed partnerships connecting police departments directly with social workers.
Attempts to limit grants for long-term, low-barrier housing have been stymied by the courts, and lawsuits continue to constrain HUD's ability to cancel existing grants or transform the Continuum of Care process. But the agency has redirected money to support the recovery-centric model Utah represents, and in August paired housing opportunities with a Department of Health and Human Services investment of $96 million into care systems for co-occurring disorders.
Turner pointed to Utah's reduction in homelessness last year as evidence that its approach works better than the Housing First model that has guided federal policy for more than a decade.
"HUD adopted Housing First as its North Star, but it proved to be a false star that only led us into shipwreck," Turner said. "Housing First failed ... Treatment First will succeed."
The administration's case rests on a set of numbers Turner and other officials have repeated in recent months. Since Housing First became the guiding criterion for Continuum of Care funding in 2013, spending has increased by 111 percent while overall homelessness has gone up 27 percent. During the Biden presidency, homelessness spiked 33 percent to 771,500 people on a single night in 2024, the highest count ever recorded. From 2013 to 2025, even as taxpayer-funded beds jumped by 151 percent, unsheltered homelessness grew nationwide by 36 percent and chronic homelessness by 81 percent.
Critics of the shift argue that the administration's reading of those numbers ignores the role of soaring rents in driving homelessness, and that Housing First programs have strong evidence behind them for the chronically homeless people they target. The legal challenges now working through the courts will determine how far HUD can go in rewriting grant rules that states and cities have built their systems around.
Cox delivered the summit's keynote address, emphasizing that homelessness touches every community in the state. "Addiction, poverty, and untreated mental illness in homelessness touches every community in the state," he said.
State Homeless Coordinator Tyler Clancy said the governor's vision rests on three pillars: the criminal justice system, affordable housing and emergency shelters, and mental and behavioral health services. The Legislature approved more than $40 million last year to support Cox's coordination efforts across courts, charities and reintegration initiatives, and this year made homelessness the governor's top budget priority with about $17 million in ongoing funding and $25 million in one-time infrastructure money - which Clancy called historic.
Organizers reported that homelessness in Utah has decreased by 2 percent, with unsheltered homelessness down 9.7 percent. Cox said the coordination effort is already producing results, including 40 percent fewer arrests among the population it serves, and the state plans to double the operation.
New interpretations of Supreme Court rulings have also allowed the administration to facilitate institutionalization of homeless individuals - an objective Cox has cheered. That push has raised alarms among advocates who say it threatens a long-standing government obligation to help seriously disabled individuals in their own communities rather than relocating them to facilities.
Kurtz said the federal changes make Utah a top contender for the revamped grant process, and the message to other states was implicit but unmistakable: jurisdictions that align with the treatment-first model are likely to fare better in the more competitive Continuum of Care process.
For housing agencies and homeless service providers nationwide, the summit was the clearest signal yet of where federal policy is heading. The $4 billion in redirected funding, the end of automatic grant renewals, and the expansion of eligible activities to treatment, employment and childcare services add up to a wholesale redesign of the federal role in homelessness - one that courts, Congress and statehouses will continue to shape in the months ahead.
People experiencing homelessness in Utah, or those who know someone in need, can call 211 to connect with housing and shelter resources across the state.
The administration's homelessness overhaul has been building for months. In August, HUD detailed its plans to redirect Continuum of Care funding toward treatment-oriented programs, arguing that the existing system measured inputs like beds rather than outcomes like recovery and self-sufficiency. The changes pair with the president's Great American Recovery Initiative, a faith-centered strategy that Cox made Utah the first state to adopt by executive action in September.
Utah's own experiment predates the federal shift. State policymakers have spent the past few years pairing new transitional shelter capacity with tighter coordination between treatment providers and law enforcement and less tolerance for public nuisance - a combination supporters call accountability with compassion and critics call criminalization of poverty.
Carol Hollowell, CEO of the shelter provider Switchpoint, told summit attendees that solving the problem requires the whole community. "When we look at working together and really coming up with solutions, it has to be everybody, all hands on deck to solve the problems or else we're going to be in a bigger crisis in the next go around," she said.
Utah's reported 2 percent drop in overall homelessness and 9.7 percent decline in unsheltered homelessness stand out at a time when most states are still posting increases. State officials attribute the improvement to the coordination model: police paired with social workers, courts linked to treatment, and shelters connected to longer-term reintegration services.
Skeptics note that point-in-time counts are imperfect snapshots and that methodology, weather and counting capacity can all move the numbers. The state's own officials acknowledge the system remains under severe strain, with shelters full and demand for behavioral health services far exceeding supply.
Still, the administration's embrace of Utah is less about statistical proof than direction of travel: Turner wants states competing for federal dollars to show they are moving people through treatment and toward self-sufficiency, and Utah is the working example he is taking on the road.
For homeless service organizations, the practical questions now center on grant design. With automatic renewals curtailed, providers that have relied on steady Continuum of Care funding must prepare competitive applications that reflect the new priorities: outpatient medical care, employment assistance, childcare and street outreach are all explicitly eligible, while long-term low-barrier housing faces new restrictions where the courts allow them.
The litigation challenging those restrictions remains live, and its outcome will shape how much of the administration's vision survives contact with the courts. In the meantime, HUD's messaging suggests states would be wise to study the Utah playbook - because that is what the department says it will be rewarding.
The summit itself was a state affair - the third and final regional meeting Utah has held this year - but the federal presence turned it into something larger. Kurtz's attendance and Turner's video message effectively nationalized the event, positioning Utah's coordination model as the template the administration wants replicated.
Whether other states can or should copy it is contested. Utah's homelessness population is smaller and more geographically concentrated than those of California, New York or Florida, and its political alignment between governor, legislature and service providers is unusual. States with larger unsheltered populations and entrenched litigation over encampment enforcement face a harder path.
What is not contested is the direction of federal money. With $4 billion in play and grant rules being rewritten around treatment and self-sufficiency outcomes, the states that move first to align their systems with the new framework will be best positioned when the next round of Continuum of Care competition opens. Turner made clear that, in this administration's view, the map has already been drawn - in Salt Lake City.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner held up Utah this week as the national standard for the Trump administration's homelessness overhaul, praising the state's treatment-centered approach in a video message to Gov. Spencer Cox.
The endorsement came at the Central Utah Homeless Summit in Salt Lake City, where HUD Assistant Secretary Ronald Kurtz told attendees the federal government is proud to lift up Utah as a nationwide example.
The administration has opened more than $4 billion in funding to elevate treatment options and self-sufficiency pathways, curtailed automatic Continuum of Care grant renewals, and made outpatient care, employment assistance, childcare and street outreach eligible activities. Turner said Housing First "failed" and "Treatment First will succeed."
Utah lawmakers have committed more than $40 million to Cox's coordination efforts, plus about $17 million ongoing and $25 million one-time this year. The state reports homelessness down 2 percent and unsheltered homelessness down 9.7 percent, with 40 percent fewer arrests among the population served.
Lawsuits continue to constrain HUD's ability to reshape the Continuum of Care process, but the summit signaled that states aligning with the treatment-first model will be best positioned in upcoming grant competitions.
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