Utah’s New Treatment Facility: When Mandated Treatment Works

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 second post 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.

Why we need this facility

In order for this executive order to take effect and positively impact our communities, it is up to the individual states to act. One of the first states to come forward with a plan, perhaps even a radical plan, is Utah, building a facility to house 1,300 people in Salt Lake City near the airport. This includes separated services to those with mental illness, those addicted to substances, and people who do not suffer from mental illness or addiction, looking to rebuild their lives.

When considering the potential benefits of this facility, I remember how my mind was once devastated by schizophrenia, preventing me from working the easiest job, or accepting help from family and friends. I was not an “economically homeless” person who was struggling to pay bills or to find a new job. I was part of the “chronic homeless” population who cannot work due to mental illness that disrupts thinking, reasoning, and dependability. There were many people in my life who would have happily let me stay with them when I was homeless, but I was too paranoid of these people. This horrible period of time in my life lasted four years, including 13 months outside.

Finally, on March 3, 2007, I was picked up by police and taken against my will to a psychiatric hospital. Looking back, I question why it took so long to get me the help I needed to regain my health and rebuild my life. With antipsychotic medication, stable housing, and support, I returned to college, graduated with honors, and today I serve as president of the CURESZ Foundation.

I do not feel my homelessness was a crime. It was a bad decision, and a decision resulting from my unstable mind, from my untreated schizophrenia. I wish a social worker had approached me while I was living outside and offered me services, though I doubt I would have accepted them. But if that hadn’t happened, having the police involved (or having them involved earlier), forcing me off the streets and into a treatment facility would have been for the best. It could have saved me from possible rape, assault, and the terrible life I had “chosen,” living rough outside. We should not allow the chronically homeless to rot away on park benches and under bridges when medical help might enable them to integrate into the community.

Mandated care

I have heard it said that forcing the homeless into treatment facilities, sometimes with mandated medication, denies them their human rights. In my opinion, persons with schizophrenia deserve the same kind of treatment they would receive for other medical problems, such as a heart attack or a broken bone. But it is common for people with schizophrenia to have no awareness that they are ill (this is called anosognosia), which leads to bad choices such as refusing help. We do not ask our loved ones with dementia if they would like to take medication or not, or if they would like to be homeless or not, because their rational thinking is functionally impaired. So why do we ask those with schizophrenia?

I hear reports of the homeless losing limbs from frostbite, while living outside in freezing weather. I imagine that these people wish that someone, even police, could have intervened and saved them from pain and disability.

A facility offering compassion

I have expectations that this new facility in Utah can offer a high standard of care, enough staff to accommodate patients, and a facility that is clean and comfortable. It is imperative that they are accountable to the highest of standards with cleanliness, kindness, comfort for residents, and adequate staffing resources, for as long as they are open.

I also believe they can offer excellent care because we see it every day in other populations.

Children are not allowed to be homeless. If I should see a child sleeping outside underneath a bridge, or on a park bench, I would call the police without hesitation. I would be confident that the child would be taken to a facility where they would receive housing, food, clothing, education, medicine (if needed), and have all of their other needs met. This is what we do for our children and teenagers. I do not worry that they will be taken to a facility where food is scarce, with poor conditions and where they might be abused.

At the same time, the developmentally disabled in our country generally are not abused or neglected in group homes and facilities, and many live happy and fulfilled lives in the housing set up to give them their best chance at a good life.

Even as we firmly trust in our facilities that care for children and those with intellectual disabilities, we need to rebuild trust in new facilities to take care of those who cannot care for themselves and those who are unable to recognize that they are very ill due to substance abuse and mental illness. The homeless epidemic throughout our country indicates that what we have been doing is not working. There is need for another plan for those who have fallen through the cracks of the system, evidenced by their living rough outside. Many like myself have the potential to fully recover on the medications that they are refusing and not being mandated to try.

It is my desire that this new facility in Utah will be able to offer the highest standard of care to the homeless who are ill and in desperate need of services. I do believe that they intend to try. Time will tell.