Utah’s Unbuilt Mega-Shelter Signals US Homeless Policy Shift

In 2015, Lloyd Pendleton, then the director of Utah’s Homeless Task Force, delivered a powerful TED Talk about the state’s pioneering use of the “Housing First” model in getting people off the streets of cities such as Salt Lake City. The approach prioritizes low-barrier shelters — giving people rapid access to permanent housing, without preconditions or demands about sobriety or drug use, then connecting them to social services like addiction treatment.

The son of a highlands cattle rancher, Pendleton was initially skeptical of the idea; he said he’d once sneered at the urban homeless as hobos who made bad choices. But ...