SALT LAKE CITY — The sun is high and hot, with no promise of going down for another eight hours as a freshly painted camper is carefully backed along the curb at Liberty Park.

Scattered across the park, beneath the towering sycamore trees, are groups of people experiencing homelessness, seeking refuge from the sun's rays. Shortly after the camper's arrival, volunteers quickly get to work setting up under the limited shade. Tables are placed, chairs popped open, coolers are filled with water and ice pops, a grill is turned on, along with a speaker that begins to play upbeat music.

A woman who is currently unhoused arrives on her bike. She greets the volunteers, retrieves water from the cooler and informs them she'll be back for a shower after she spreads word to everyone else. Not long after she disappears down the path, people begin to arrive.

"Do you want a shower?" Renee Shaw calls out, a white towel tucked under one arm as the other holds the camper door open.

Alabama Liberty, an unsheltered woman, is the first to shower. Shaw ushers her inside and sets her up with shampoo, conditioner, soap and a set of towels. Liberty's shower is the first in the mobile unit. She emerges with a smile and wet hair, and a visible sense of relief.

Shaw is the founder of the nonprofit Open Mind Foundation, which operates services for the unsheltered population like the mobile shower, dubbed "Showers of Hope." The renovated camper, which features two shower stalls with hot and cold water, is the first mobile shower in Salt Lake City. Tuesday's stops at Liberty Park and a homeless encampment near Victory Road were a collaboration with Nomad Alliance, another nonprofit that also advocates for Utah's homeless population.

"This has been a big goal of ours. In talking to the population, we can't do much to build affordable housing now, but what we can do is make life easier for the people that are out here, and that includes the most basic of dignities — which is a shower," said Kseniya Kniazeva, founder of Nomad Alliance.

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Shaw began her program after her friend Debbie Thelin became homeless during the pandemic in Salt Lake City and had to travel out of state to survive the winter. After months of being unable to pay her rent, Thelin's landlord gave her notice and an agreement that, if she left, it wouldn't negatively affect her credit.

"I had nowhere to go; I didn't know what to do. I had even asked a couple of friends to stay in their garages, and it just wasn't feasible. I wound up realizing that my car was my reality, and I had my cat with me, and the only way I was going to survive a winter in the car was going to be in southern California," said Thelin.

Leaving behind everything she knew, including her parent's graves, was "really difficult," said Thelin. She had also just lost her father to suicide and described that year of her life as "shattering."

"I was in a lot of shock experiencing one thing after another that was preventing me from being able to get back up and forward," said Thelin. "That definitely has been difficult leaving the only place I knew. I honestly didn't know how I survived because I felt I knew the ins and outs of Utah and that would be where I'd be able to get assistance being a resident. But that just wasn't feasible with the cold winters and with how they treat the homeless."

So Thelin found herself in Los Angeles, where she began to access its Safe Parking LA program, which also provided mobile showers and laundry services.

"It gave me self-dignity ... I have skin issues, too — I have eczema — so it just made it so I could keep my body clean and not get wounds that would become infected," she said. "Even sitting in a car or getting in the shade, you are kind of at the mercy of the elements. And so (Safe Parking LA) made it so that we could all get cleaned up and get a bite to eat in the same spot, without having to run ragged just to feel put together, to even face the world."

Safe Parking LA provides safe overnight parking for people living in their vehicles. The parking lots have check-in and check-out times, along with security, turning empty parking lots into safe places for those who need it.

"It's mind-blowing at how just something like this a soft landing," said Thelin. "It really just made it so that I really could focus on looking for jobs. It made it so that I had that time, and I wasn't just run down with all the basics that you would have in your normal home that you take for granted."

That soft landing ended in Thelin's exit from homelessness, finding a job in Los Angeles and eventually moving with that job to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Although she's no longer in Salt Lake City, she's stayed in touch with Shaw and is "thrilled" to see services reaching people in Salt Lake City.

"When I was filthy, because there were some days that if it was raining and stuff, you couldn't get showers. I found myself looking down and not eager to face the world and a little not worthy. You just don't feel as worthy as everybody else. And I feel like showers should be a basic human right," said Thelin. "I would really like to see the city officials supporting services like this. It feels like they haven't been supportive, and it's disheartening."

Recently, the Salt Lake City Council set aside $500,000 to address hygiene needs of the local, unsheltered population and to help manage the Jordan River.

"The annual budget is $2 billion for the city. What's $500,000 so we don't have an E. coli crisis in the Jordan River or feces in the backyard of a business? This is a bit of a push to government to show up harder," said Kniazeva. "There is a real need to be brave and create novel solutions, like other cities are doing; otherwise, it's going to be doing the same thing expecting a different result."

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