The Other Side Village is building tiny cottages in Salt Lake City as part of its program to help people who’ve been chronically homeless. The organization also runs businesses to create jobs for residents. Jennifer Ludden/NPR hide caption
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Jennifer Ludden/NPR
MURRAY, Utah On a weekday morning, about two dozen formerly homeless men and women file into a small room at The Other Side Village near Salt Lake City.
“How have you felt since our last meeting?” asks Melissa Hepworth, a fellow resident here who tells the group that she’s felt “challenged with a little bit of shame.”
The people in this meeting have all been chronically unhoused typically living outside for eight to nine years with significant addiction or mental illness. They are among the hardest to help, and that’s exactly who the Village has targeted since it opened two years ago.
“Once you’ve forgotten how to work, forgotten how to engage with other people, forgotten how to solve human problems, forgotten how to manage finances, it takes a lot of work to restore some of those abilities,” says Joseph Grenny, a co-founder of The Other Side Village.
Across the country, much-needed housing and treatment programs for the unhoused are in short supply. There’s also heated debate over which should be a bigger priority, with President Trump calling for forced treatment.
This ambitious project in Utah offers short-term housing, rehab and mental health treatment, along with a kind of training program. People start in a prep school that teaches life skills for those who may have lost them. They must get and stay sober and are also required to work.
The Village runs businesses to help create jobs for that. After six to 12 months, fellow residents vote to decide when someone is ready to “graduate.” At that point, they can move on to their own place, in tiny cottages the Village is building for permanent housing.
“We believe that human beings change when they’re in an environment that expects something of them,” Grenny says. “When we succeed in doing hard things, we start to feel good about ourselves.”
There are coaches who’ve been there themselves
The conversation at morning meetings is meant to build community, because supporting each other is a big part of the therapy here. Resident Patricia Jean Martin says it feels like starting a new life with people she can “actually trust, be honest with, be accountable with.”
Patricia Jean Martin on the terrace of her shared apartment at The Other Side Village. She says living there feels like starting a new life with people she can finally trust. Marisa Pealoza/e.g. hide caption
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Marisa Pealoza/e.g.
But that process can also be intense. “You do have to listen to the feedback, and just work on it and change your behaviors,” she says. “And if you don’t, you will be kicked out.”
To help with that change, there are coaches who know exactly what people are going through.
“I was introduced to drugs by one of my mom’s boyfriends, probably around nine or ten years old,” says coach Jackie Tress. After that came a car wreck and prescription pain pills, and then things really spiraled. Eventually she lost her house and daughter, living for years on the street and in and out of jail.
“Every time I got arrested I would think, all right, this is it, I’m done. And I would be provided resources,” she says. “But as soon as I hit the street, I would go right back to what I knew.”
Coach Jackie Tress at the prep school common area. She stands next to the photo of herself when she first exited homelessness. Jennifer Ludden/NPR hide caption
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Jennifer Ludden/NPR
Things changed when she went through The Other Side program herself, and could not believe one of the directors had also been homeless and addicted. “Because I only saw the woman that was in front of me,” she says. “She just had such purpose and grace and I’m like, OK, if she can do it, I can do it.”
To drive home this transformation, the common area of the prep school has photos of Jackie and other coaches when they first exited homelessness. She looks exhausted in her photo, with red marks on her face and deep bags below her eyes nothing at all like now.
“Not something usually available to people who are homeless”
The Other Side began a decade ago as training to reintegrate people with a long history of crime and other troubles. But Grenny and other co-founders saw a growing need for a separate program to specifically address chronic homelessness.
That’s defined as when someone with a disability, including addiction or mental illness, has been without housing for at least a year straight, or repeatedly over several years. The number of chronically homeless people in the U.S. hit a record high last year of more than 150,000, mostly living outside.
“Trying to recover from substance abuse, and you’re homeless and you’re on the street or you’re in a shelter, it’s very tough,” says Dennis Culhane, who researches homelessness at the University of Pennsylvania.
Typical shelter-based programs may only house people at night, leaving them essentially still homeless during the day, he says. There’s little structure, certainly no jobs, and dropout rates are high. Meanwhile there’s very little residential rehab, and it’s usually for people who have private insurance or can pay out of pocket.
So the Utah program “is not something usually available to people who are homeless. It’s pretty unique in my mind,” he says.
For the lucky few who can get it, federally subsidized permanent supportive housing also offers treatment for addiction and mental illness. But it’s optional not mandatory and Culhane says while that works for most, it’s not for everyone.
“I did a study in supported housing in New York City,” he says. “And about 30% of the people wanted to be in a clean and sober environment. So I think we need every option possible.”
Still, Culhane says The Other Side Village model is expensive and may be hard to scale up, especially since the sober and work requirements bar federal funding.
The program aims to eventually become self-sufficient through the businesses it runs. But to launch, it has raised money from donors and gotten several million dollars in state funding. It’s also leasing a large patch of city-owned land for a dollar a year.
Creating community and jobs for the long term
In a wide open dirt field on that land in Salt Lake City, The Other Side Village CEO Preston Cochrane stands near rows of new tiny cottages. There are 60 completed so far, where the first graduates from the prep school moved in less than a year ago. The plan in the next few years is to double prep school enrollment and build hundreds more cottages.
“We have coaches that live on site as well, just like the prep school,” he says. There’s also a neighborhood council and regular resident meetings. “It’s a supportive community. For many of them it becomes their family.”
There’s an income limit, but otherwise people can stay here as long as they want.
A health clinic is also under construction that will include mental health services and dentistry, and there will be a grocery store. Both places will offer jobs for residents.
Cochrane says that “100% of the folks who live here maintain a sober lifestyle. They pay rent and they work.”
Jennifer Davis loves her tiny cottage home, and her job a short drive away at The Other Side Donuts. The store and the donuts are whimsical and full of color. “People are like, ‘Oh, wow,’ and they gasp,” she says. “It’s a bright spot.”
Resident Jennifer Davis is the wholesale logistics manager at The Other Side Donuts. “It proves to myself that I can have a career again, I didn’t ruin it all with my choices,” she says. Jennifer Ludden/NPR hide caption
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Jennifer Ludden/NPR
Davis once had a professional career and owned a condo but says she spent years lost, without housing, family or friends. She’s now the donut store’s wholesale logistics manager and says she’s grateful for the chance to start over.
“It proves to myself that I can have a career again. I didn’t ruin it all with my choices,” she says. “I can do a great job. I can be a professional leader.”
