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Instead of the “treat and street” approach for homeless individuals, this facility will offer long-term care.

The facility will have various tiers to get each person individualized care and treatment.

The facility will be watched by advocates nationwide to determine if this model should be replicated.

This post is Part 4 of a series. Part 1 can be found here, Part 2 can be found here, and Part 3 can be found here.

On July 24, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to move those living in homeless encampments around the United States into treatment facilities with both mental health and substance use services (1).

This is my fourth and final article analyzing the executive order and how it is being implemented in Utah. I share facts about this new facility, as well as my personal experience, having lived outside for 13 months in 2006-2007 as a homeless person in Los Angeles, suffering from schizophrenia.

A national unmet need

One of the most tragic things I have encountered in the field of psychiatry over the years is the lack of care for many vulnerable people who are forgotten by our mental health system. Many experience a “revolving door” where they are either living on park benches or under bridges, transferred to hospitals for short periods of time when their psychosis becomes worse, and then picked up by police for petty crimes such as looking for food in trash cans. Then the cycle begins again, to go round and round, sometimes for decades.

What many members of this forgotten population really need is long-term care, or even indefinite care. It is heartbreaking to see people living on........

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