Before the Harris Community Village was a hybrid apartment complex and homeless shelter in Tooele, Utah, it was an elementary school.

Harris Elementary School permanently closed in 2018, and the property was quickly scooped up by the Tooele County Housing Authority. 

Now, the repurposed school provides 66 units of permanent housing for low-income households, which sits next to a 44-bed shelter. 

The Village is also home to seven family rooms, a community kitchen, an emergency food pantry, and 24-7 childcare. 

Most of the services are provided by contractor Switchpoint, a nonprofit that supports people experiencing poverty and homelessness.

According to affordable housing lender RMCRC’s website: “All of this culminates in a warm, inviting community for those who are struggling and provides a springboard for them to overcome poverty.”

In both the permanent apartments and emergency shelter residencies, tenants are provided support and case management services, so long as they abide by an agreement with the housing authority and Switchpoint. 

Switchpoint does not allow drugs or alcohol in its facilities, which does not make it a “low barrier” or easily accessible facility for people needing emergency shelter while also navigating addiction. 

“We hold people accountable to try to better themselves while they’re here,” Jeff Quayle, Switchpoint’s real estate development director, told Utah News Dispatch. “And if they don’t want to do that, then we ask them to move along.” 

But in a small city like Tooele, which is located in a rural area about 35 miles west of Salt Lake City (where a majority of Utah’s homeless services are located), the school-turned-shelter fills a need for people who are ready to stay sober, improve their lives, and achieve self-sufficiency.

Kenna Morrison, a Harris Community Village resident, moved into the emergency shelter units after living in her car and encampments for over a month. She had relapsed after 13 years of sobriety.

“Those people are doing great things,” she told Deseret News about the people behind the Village. “It means a lot. It really does.”

Morrison grew up in Tooele, and some of her childhood friends even attended the school that is now the place she calls home.

“It’s wonderful here,” she said. “This is like the Ritz of the Ritz of homeless shelters. We have three meals a day. We’ve got warm showers, warm beds. Everything is just nice.”

The freshly renovated facility still maintains its bones as an elementary school, including a kitchen and cafeteria that serves 500 meals a day (including about 300 for Meals on Wheels community members, according to Utah News Dispatch). 

Its all-in-one approach is the first of its kind in the area, one that even garnered the support of Governor Spencer Cox, when he hosted a ceremonial bill signing to celebrate a number of homelessness and behavioral health bills passed by the Utah Legislature in 2024. 

Gov. Cox told reporters that renovating old elementary schools and combining shelter and housing in one central location is an idea that should be replicated across the state.

“I think this is a wonderful model,” the governor said at the event, “and one we’ll be talking to more counties about.” 

Although the Village is a milestone in eradicating homelessness in Tooele, it did come with a hefty price tag. The project cost an estimated $31 million — paid for using funds from the state, Tooele County, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a myriad of other private donations, according to Switchpoint.

But if it can be replicated, Switchpoint executive director Carol Hollowell told Utah News Dispatch, it should.

“It doesn’t have to be a school,” she said. “It could be any kind of empty building. If you look at how much empty space there is from empty malls, office spaces, warehouses, it could be any kind of empty space that could be converted into a great campus.”

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Header image courtesy of BHB Structural