Imagine a cold night in January. January 24, 2024, to be exact, about 3 a.m. Temperatures were hovering in the low 20s. Snow blanketed the ground. There was a thin frost covering the chainlink fences by the pickleball courts in City Park. All was quiet near the banks of Poison Creek, save for the occasional whoosh of a car climbing Deer Valley Drive.
A block away, I was fast asleep in my bed, my little dog curled up like a warm croissant beside me.
Meanwhile, local volunteers were out there in the dark, counting how many people were unsheltered. It’s called the Point-in Time Count. It’s an annual undertaking when communities across the country try to measure the unmeasurable: How many people in just one night have nowhere to go.
Flash-forward to last weekend. A neighbor in my building came home at 3 in the morning and found a man asleep in the stairwell. I imagine he’d wandered through the alley, seen the fluoroescent lights of the hallway and just came inside to get warm. In a moment like that, numbers from a census count feel less like data and more like a beating heart.
The cops came. They told the man he had to go. My property manager said the man was so mad, he spit tobacco juice all over the walls in the stairwell. The story lingered in the air the next day along with the smell of disinfectant.
Honestly, I don’t blame the guy. I’d be spitting mad, too, if I didn’t have a place to go. Not so much at the cops. Or at the cold. But at the futility and desperation of it all.
Last January, local Point in Time outreach coordinator Heather Hogue reported there were fewer than 10 new unsheltered people. As she told KPCW, “Summit County is a hardy place. … The people we know are unsheltered are camping. They’re hard to find. They don’t want to be found. They don’t want to be disturbed, and they’re very good at staying hidden.”
That last line stays with me. It’s such a stark reminder that even here in Park City — a place of such abundance that a million-dollar property seems like a steal — there are unhomed people surviving outside in tents. They’re very good at staying hidden. I wonder if they prefer invisibility because visibility itself can be dangerous.
When I lived in Paris, human need hit you right in the face. Like, literally. I was smacked to the ground one night by a crazy man running down the street while I walked home with a friend.
“Crack addicts,” she muttered as she helped me up. “They’re all over the city.”
The unsheltered — sometimes entire families — rolled mattresses out onto the sidewalks at night. I remember one time seeing a mother calmly reading a bedtime story to her kids right there on the street. And people like me hurried by on their way to the Metro, the gym, Tinder dates, warm plates of food, home.
Here in Park City, where the median income is about $137,000, hardship seems to disappear behind the sparkling veil of prosperity. It can be hard to believe it exists at all. But it does — in varying degrees:
Like a nurse who moonlights as a part-time ski patroller.
An optometrist who drives for Uber as a side hustle.
A server at the Boneyard juggling two other jobs just to make ends meet.
A Park City Mountain liftie who lives in a two-bedroom apartment with 11 other resort workers.
An older widow who worries about where she’ll go when she can no longer afford to stay in her Old Town home.
These are the neighbors who work hard and still struggle. Their hardiness and resilience keep them going — not to mention our whole community.
If we look closely, we can see need and abundance co-existing on the same glittering streets. Air, food, shelter, water, clothes, stability — they’re are all on the lowest rung on the hierarchy of human needs. Awareness without judgement, seeing the unseen, is the first step up toward reaching our full potential.
But it often seems that we’re lacking there as well. Local leaders endlessly debate height limits and zoning ordinances while dozens of families wait for affordable housing. The federal government argues over SNAP benefits amidst a shutdown while our most vulnerable kids and older adults go hungry. The rest of us continue on with our lives, wondering in disbelief: How can this happen here?
This week is the annual community fundraiser: Live PC, Give PC. The one-day event is organized by the Park City Community Foundation and helps dozens of local organizations and neighbors. In this time of government cutbacks, we come together to help our whole community thrive. It’s a powerful reminder that just one day can make a huge difference. And that there are 364 others where generosity works just as well. Compassion should never be seasonal.
And kindness can happen in all kinds of ways. Like our city officials proposing increased funding to the Christian Center of Park City for food distribution. Or the restaurant Mumbai House offering to feed anyone who’s hungry, no questions asked. Or the young man at Fresh Market who quietly pays for a stranger’s groceries. All gentle reminders that awareness is its own kind of giving.
The days are getting shorter now. The darkness of this particular morning is all-enveloping. It’s cold and rainy as I write this — as gloomy a morning as it gets. I sit in my warm studio, my dog snoring softly at my feet, the only light a moony glow from my laptop. I imagine somewhere out there, maybe right across the street near the banks of Poison Creek, someone is sleeping in a tent, hidden from view.