Salt Lake County officially launched a behavioral health and justice project modeled on Miami-Dade County's decades-old mental health diversion program on Tuesday, bringing retired Judge Steve Leifman to the table alongside county and state leaders. The effort follows more than a year of consultation with Leifman, whose Miami reforms are credited with slashing recidivism and shrinking the county's jail population. Salt Lake County officials say full implementation could take up to a decade.
The launch comes as Salt Lake County's homeless population has started to shrink for the first time since 2019, according to reporting by KSL.com, which detailed the county's decision to draw on Miami's playbook. County Mayor Jenny Wilson said better collaboration among agencies can improve outcomes for people in crisis while reducing costs to taxpayers. Salt Lake County Council member Tyler Clancy, who was named the state's homeless coordinator to oversee strategy across Utah's three Continuums of Care, said Tuesday's program launch marks the latest step in addressing what he called a complex situation.
Leifman founded Miami-Dade's Criminal Mental Health Project in 2000 to divert nonviolent defendants with serious mental illness away from jail and into community treatment. The program's results are striking: according to a National Association of Counties report, recidivism among participants with serious mental illness fell from roughly 75% to 20%, the average daily inmate population dropped from 6,777 in 2005 to 4,710 in 2014, and the felony diversion program alone saved more than 15,000 jail days. A study in the journal Psychiatric Services found the program generated an estimated $12 million in annual cost avoidance through a 45% lower jail population and the closure of one county jail facility.
Miami's Physical Symbol of Reform
Leifman spent more than two decades pushing for a physical home for that vision: the seven-story Miami Center for Mental Health and Recovery, built to replace the notorious ninth-floor psychiatric ward of the former Pre-Trial Detention Center, according to WLRN. Miami-Dade's jail system had long been criticized as Florida's largest de facto psychiatric facility, the outlet reported. State and local officials from Utah toured Miami-Dade County in 2022 to study the model firsthand, per the seed reporting.
Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall has acknowledged that Salt Lake County and Miami-Dade share similarities but also key differences, the report notes. Miami-Dade funds its homeless housing and services through a dedicated 1% Food and Beverage Tax on qualifying establishments with over $400,000 in annual gross sales — a mechanism that generated $36.2 million in fiscal year 2023-2024 and is projected to reach $43 million in 2026, according to Miami-Dade County budget documents. Eighty-five percent of that revenue supports homeless housing and services, while 15% funds domestic violence centers, and the tax has also triggered matching federal dollars from a now-discontinued program.
No Miami-Style Tax in Utah
Salt Lake County has no equivalent dedicated tax. Instead, local and state leaders must piece together funding through county bonds, state legislative appropriations, and local tax adjustments, the report states. The county approved a tax increase tied to bonds associated with the program in 2025, and officials say they must continue creatively piecing together funding as the plan advances.
The 25 recommendations developed with Leifman's group, known as the Leifman Group, are structured around the Sequential Intercept Model, according to Salt Lake County Mayor's Office planning documents. They call for upstream trauma prevention, early behavioral health screening, rewritten 911 dispatch scripts to ask about emergency mental health episodes, expanded co-responder teams, and improved data sharing across agencies. The recommendations followed dozens of stakeholder interviews and a multi-day countywide summit, county planning documents show.
Officials may also implement screening for children with trauma and provide early assistance, and they say people with co-occurring behavioral health conditions should not be disqualified from receiving help. Utah officials still need to improve how existing data is shared, a gap the Council of State Governments Justice Center attributes partly to federal and state privacy rules like HIPAA and 42 CFR Part 2, which have historically restricted information-sharing between healthcare providers and criminal justice agencies. That same analysis found Salt Lake County faced fragmented interagency coordination and insufficient supportive housing capacity even before recruiting national experts.
Building on Existing Local Projects
Salt Lake County has already begun improving its housing stock for people with severe mental illness. In March 2025, the county opened the Featherstone Boarding Home, a 30-unit facility offering supportive housing and Assertive Community Treatment teams, half-funded by the State of Utah to support a court pilot program, as per Hoodline. Last February, Valley Behavioral Health broke ground on Homefront Community Housing, a 68-bed permanent supportive housing and residential treatment facility in Salt Lake City's Euclid neighborhood that combines ground-floor treatment with housing near transit lines.
Statewide, the numbers offer some encouragement. Utah's Office of Homeless Services reported 4,512 people experiencing homelessness in its January 2026 Point-in-Time count, a 1.6% decrease from 4,584 in 2025 and the state's first year-over-year decline since 2019, following an 18% spike recorded between 2024 and 2025. Salt Lake County's homeless population fell by roughly 1%, or 24 individuals, to slightly over 2,800 people in 2026, while chronic homelessness statewide dropped 6.7% and unsheltered homelessness dropped 9.7%, according to the same KSL.com analysis of state data.
A Podcast Clip Adds Unwanted Attention
The rollout coincided with unwanted national attention after comedians Shane Gillis, Mark Norman and Ari Shaffir called Salt Lake City bad for homeless people on a podcast this month, with Gillis saying he saw homeless people chasing him and friends after arriving in the city. The clip spread on social media over several days, and local and state officials reportedly saw it. Clancy said he believes policing has improved since Gillis's last Salt Lake City performance, adding that public safety and helping people recover must be pursued together.
Salt Lake County and Salt Lake City leaders met with Governor Spencer Cox and other stakeholders this week as Leifman joined meetings on implementing the county's recommendations. Wilson said the commitment shown across party lines, and the shared concern for the work, has been reassuring. With county officials estimating the program will take about 10 years to fully implement, the effort marks the beginning of a long-term test of whether Miami's model can translate to Utah's very different funding and regulatory landscape.
