It's understandable folks don't know how government works. We don't teach meaningful civics classes anymore—they're too "woke," apparently.
It gets frustrating, though, watching fully grown adults yell at the wrong people. Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall received so much abuse over the city's unhoused population—usually from elitist NIMBYs who gag at the sight of poverty, but also from well-meaning folks who really have no idea where to direct their ire.
Salt Lake City does what it can with what it has. Mendenhall and her director of homeless policy, former City Council member Andrew Johnston, toil endlessly to make the situation better with the tools at their disposal.
But dealing with homelessness isn't a problem the city is equipped to solve. It must use its budget for other things, too, like roads, parks, snowplows, protecting the watershed, fire service, waste and recycling, libraries—which have been turned into warming or cooling shelters—and a whole lot more.
It's actually Salt Lake County's Health Department that oversees the camp abatements the city gets blamed for. Did you know the city has a team of social workers that tries to get folks sheltered before an abatement? But some of these folks, whether they're dealing with addiction or mental health issues or something else entirely, simply can't afford the help they need.
Why? Because our Legislature won't expand Medicaid. Officials would have an easier time helping the unhoused if the Legislature accepted the federal dollars on offer and expanded eligibility. Salt Lake City is fighting the symptoms, but the Legislature is where we should be aiming our ire. They're the ones actively making the underlying issues worse and taking away the tools the city might use to address them.
Did you know the Legislature made it illegal for cities to set a different minimum wage than the federal one? Did you know they did the same thing to prevent Salt Lake City from establishing any system of rent control for affordable housing? These tools would help keep people in their homes instead of on the streets.
We're growing, and the city wields the sticks it can to force developers to include "affordable" housing. It's just not enough. And it's because the Legislature has taken away all of the city's power tools and replaced them with plastic Fisher-Price facsimiles. There's a delicate dance our city government walks—go too far and the Legislature will undermine and overturn it, every single time.
Most of Salt Lake's representatives in the Legislature are on the level. I can call them and ask them to fight until I'm blue in the face, but it's not going to add to their ability to do anything. They're too outnumbered by lunatics.
Maybe we can direct our anger at those who are actively doing harm, instead of yelling at those who are doing their best in a bad situation.
