Californication of Utah: Utah's Homeless Problems and Drug Epidemic

Silicon Valley along with California's tech boom has brought millions of jobs to the area and has minted thousands of millionaires.

But the downside to the boom in wealth is a growing scarcity of dwellings is driving up real estate prices to stratospheric levels. There is also a countervailing trend that emerged: a rapid growth in the homeless population, which now exceeds over 161,000 people in California. Today, nearly a quarter of the nation’s homeless population resides in California.

Utah Stories examines whether Salt Lake City with its booming tech economy and massive growth in real estate prices along with rapid growth in our homeless population is experiencing a "Californication": are we witnessing the disappearance of our middle-class and watching our city become clearly divided among the very rich and poor?

In this multi-part series we will also be examining how, where and why a six-hundred percent increase in state spending on homelessness in the past five years has only resulted in a huge overall increase in our homeless population. What do city and state leaders attribute this rapid increase in Utah’s homeless population to and where is all of this money going?

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