A four-story apartment building assembled piece by piece over about four days now houses roughly 30 people at The Other Side Prep School, a Salt Lake City program that teaches life skills to people experiencing homelessness. The dorm-style structure sits on the organization's campus at 6th East and 1st South, offering private and shared living spaces along with common areas and meeting rooms where residents work toward independence.
Tim Stay, CEO of The Other Side Foundation, walked through the new building with FOX 13 News Utah this week, showing off a structure that was built modularly in Spanish Fork before being trucked to the site and lifted into place by crane. According to the outlet, the building's sections went up over roughly four days, and about 30 people were already living there when the crew toured the campus.
From Street Life to Structure
The program uses a structured residential setting to help participants develop the skills and routines needed for independent living. That work begins before residents move into housing of their own and is intended to support longer-term stability.
Shared common areas and meeting rooms are part of that approach, giving residents places to interact and work with others rather than living in isolation. The building is one component of The Other Side's broader program, not a stand-alone solution to homelessness.
How the project fits the broader response
According to Salt Lake County's homelessness action plan, the county's goal is for homelessness to be brief, rare and non-recurring, supported by coordinated housing, behavioral-health, workforce and shelter services. The Prep School building addresses the housing component for people enrolled in that program, but the county framework treats housing as one part of a wider service system. Modular supportive housing also has precedent beyond Utah. The City of Toronto says a three-storey modular building completed in 2020 provided affordable rental homes with support services to 56 people exiting homelessness, although that project differed from Salt Lake City's program housing. For local comparisons, Salt Lake County explains that its annual Point-in-Time count is a single-night snapshot used to help plan services, not a measure of everyone who experiences homelessness over a year.
A Graduate Now Guiding Others
Melissa “MJ” Hepworth graduated from the Prep School about a year ago and now helps new participants adjust to campus life, including people arriving from the streets or homeless shelters. She described the program's purpose as transformation and said it challenges residents to recognize their potential.
Hepworth said support from other people helped her change her own life and can do the same for participants who are still finding their footing. “We teach people that they're really capable of so much more,” she said.
The Other Side Prep School operates under The Other Side Village, a nonprofit focused on helping people transition out of chronic homelessness and into permanent supportive housing. The new building expands the organization's on-campus housing capacity, while the program's education, accountability and community-based services are intended to help residents move toward greater stability.
