Salt Lake City Council members temporarily evacuated their meeting Tuesday night after a group of raucous activists and concerned community members packed the chamber, calling on the body to take an action they cannot do: keep The Road Home’s emergency downtown shelter open through the winter.
That decision rests with the state, which owns the building and has said it plans to shutter it once all three of the new homeless resource centers in the Salt Lake City area are fully operational this month.
But amid capacity concerns within the new resource centers as the winter months grow colder, speakers during public comment at the meeting Tuesday night worried that the closure of The Road Home would negatively affect some of the community’s most vulnerable people — and could even result in deaths.