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Following President Trump’s lead, in 2025, Utah proposed a new “campus” to involuntarily detain and treat as many as 1,300 homeless people. There is little reason to think this planned re-institutionalization would improve the lives of the detainees—the evidence of long-term benefits of involuntary treatment for substance use and mental health disorders is mixed, at best, whereas the deprivation of liberty is undeniable. But Utah had no choice, Governor Spencer Cox explained, because “everything we’ve been doing has been a complete and abject failure.” Not true.
Also in Salt Lake City, just six miles south of the proposed campus site, literally right on the other side of the airport, is “The Other Side Village.” It is a peer-run community of tiny homes where chronically unsheltered people choose to live, after successfully completing a 6- to 12-month preparatory course in sobriety, responsibility, and life skills. They obtain employment in one of the organization’s social enterprises or with an outside employer and must pay rent for their homes. After an initial infusion of mostly private donations, the community will be self-sustaining.
The following text about The Other Side Village is adapted from my upcoming book.
While 430 homes are planned, the community is still early days. Around 10 people had moved into their homes in May 2025 when I spoke to Moe Egan and Robbie Myrick. Like all the staff, Moe and Robbie have lived experience with homelessness, addiction, mental health, and incarceration. And all of the staff live on the campus. If someone tells Moe they can’t do it, Moe is quick to pull out his mugshot from 1999 and say, “Look at this guy, if I can do it, you can do it. And we all have our before and after shots.”
Everyone who enters The Other Side Village program is assigned a peer “coach.” In the prep program, each coach has only five or six mentees. The ratio goes up to 10 mentees per coach after people graduate into their homes. This allows for “very high touch” tailored coaching directed toward “whole-person change,” Robbie explained. It could be anything from help getting a GED (high school equivalency degree), to exploring art, to managing difficulty being in crowds. Coaches look for challenging moments to build coping skills little by little and sit with struggling mentees through their darkest hours to inspire hope: Just “make it to your pillow tonight” and “start again tomorrow,” as Robbie puts it.
Housing is not free. Residents—called “neighbors”—must pay between $250 and $500 each month for rent. Jobs are available at several social enterprises run by The Other Side Village or its sister organization, The Other Side Academy (for criminally involved individuals without mental health challenges). Moe gave this example: “We’ve got people that were on the streets eight months, a year ago, that now get up at three o’clock in the morning. They make donuts, deliver donuts, and work in our donut shops. It’s a human-first issue.” With work comes dignity and empowerment. Housing vouchers without life skills don’t address the underlying causes of homelessness, Moe explained.
Not everyone makes it through the prep school, but 80 percent have so far. Those who do not were voted out by the other participants and staff because it is a democratic community. Every person counts equally. The success stories are remarkable. One person with a very low IQ from multiple traumatic brain injuries now works a full-time job and pays his own rent.
Another person who had been a patient at a psychiatric facility for eight months without speaking or leaving their room was completely unrecognizable to the staff when they visited the facility again. Notably, Robbie reports that with mental health medications, the problem they see is often too many meds, rather than too few. There may be medication to sleep and medication to wake up. Sometimes, a new support network can eliminate the need for some medications. A strong community can counteract the “soft bigotry of low expectations,” as Moe put it.
I asked Moe if any success stories surprised even him. He told me about the time he “pretty much pulled” a long-time heroin user “off their deathbed” and carried them to a detox program, not knowing “if they’re going to make it or not.” The program said the person was too sedated, so Moe had to take them to an emergency room first before taking them back to the program. “Four days later, they called me and said, ‘Moe, what do I do from here?’ Just blew me away and I said, ‘I’m on my way to pick you up,’ so I’ve learned there’s not one person you can write off.”
Postscript: In the 2026 session, the Utah legislature wisely allocated $1 million for The Other Side Village and nothing for Governor Cox’s proposed “campus.”
Some of this post is adapted from my forthcoming book, Through the Fire: How People with Mental Illness Are Empowering Each Other (Prometheus Books). Copyright © 2026 by Fredrick E. Vars. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
