Crossroads Urban Center is an organization that provides food and clothing to people who are often homeless. Recently, they released a report on child homelessness in Utah.
“In the last three years, there have been 461 children aged six and younger, who received homeless services in Weber County. And that's not surprising if you know that national level data shows that the time of life when a person in the United States is most likely to become homeless is during the first year of life," said Bill Tibbits, the Associate Director at Crossroads Urban Center.
He hopes this report will draw attention to families who are particularly vulnerable during the pandemic.
Tibbits is also concerned about children whose families face residual homelessness.
“There's a lot of research about the negative impacts of homelessness, on children's health, on children's mental health, on children's educational attainment, and all of those things become worse when children are homeless longer work, when that experience repeats, so that every time that they're able to start feeling like life is normal again, they're back sleeping in a room with a bunch of people they don't know.”
Tibbits said increased rents are to blame for homeless problems.
“When you have families that were already struggling to make ends meet, when their rent goes up 10% a year and their wages don't, you just have more families getting closer to the edge," Tibbits said.
Tibbits hopes this report will encourage Weber County to have an affordable housing aid commission, which could bring some of the state's efforts to the local level.
In Salt Lake County they are considering using unused government properties for family supportive housing projects.
Tibbits said Weber County could consider doing the same thing.
