As part of the state, Salt Lake County and City combined battle to help the homeless, a new bill has been introduced that will require cities, towns and counties that don’t have a homeless shelter to pay for homeless rehousing efforts in places that do.
HB462 by Rep. Steven Eliason, R-Sandy, says that $3.3 million a year will be collected to non-homeless governments each year in sales tax that otherwise would have gone to them.
No entity will have to pay more than $200,000 in sales tax.
But if, for any reasons, the bill’s complicated formulas, based on the entity’s population, don’t collectively add up to $3.3 million, then more money will be taken from each so the Housing Reform Restricted account is made full.
As reported previously, Operation Rio Grande is costing around $67 million, with the monies now coming from the state and Salt Lake County and City.
That money will run out sometime in 2019 – when several new homeless shelters in Salt Lake City and County will open and The Road Home large shelter on Rio Grande Street in downtown Salt Lake City will close.
HB462 is an effort to make non-homeless cities, towns and counties – whose own homeless may well be helped by the anti-homeless effort – pay for some of the future cost.
Eliason did not return messages asking for comment.
