Salt Lake County camping cleanups come under scrutiny and spark conflict as winter approaches

As they prepared Wednesday afternoon for the Salt Lake County Health Department to conduct a cleanup at their encampment the next morning, the campers at Taufer Park were frustrated.

In a few hours, they knew county officials would descend on the area, police in tow, and ask them to move their tents and clear up their belongings while the officials picked up garbage and searched for needles and biowaste.

The campers worried they’d lose some important items in the process. But they also knew that in a matter of days or weeks, the next cleanup could push them out, again, of wherever they took refuge if they left this park strip.

“They keep chasing people around,” Cheryl Fasthorse, a camper who’s been on the streets for nine years, said during an interview from her tent Wednesday afternoon. “They just move to another camp, to another camp, to another camp.”

Read more: https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2020/09/10/salt-lake-county-camping/
(Salt Lake Tribune)